2nd Sunday after Pentecost

The Rev. Josh Stromberg-Wojcik, Priest-in-Charge

Matt 9:9-13, 18-26

Today we hear a gospel reading that contains two, possibly three mini-stories within it. There is the story of Jesus calling Matthew and eating with Matthew and other tax collectors and sinners. There is the story of the synagogue leader asking for Jesus to raise his daughter from the dead, of another woman suffering from hemorrhages touching his cloak for healing, and the story of Jesus raising the synagogue leader’s daughter from the dead. Today, Jesus is busy helping others and being his same kind, loving self, in a variety of ways. He is eating and associating with those who are outcast by society, telling them that they matter when the rest of society tells them they don’t. And he heals or raises from the dead anyone who asks, from the children of the leaders of the synagogue, even a woman suffering for 12 years with hemorrhages whom everyone would have considered unclean. And both the story of Jesus eating with the outcast and healing the sick and unclean are stories of Jesus healing broken relationships, which is at the heart of Jesus’ ministry.

The story of the woman with hemorrhages reminded us during our bible study on Thursday of another version of this healing story, Luke’s version (ch 8), in which Jesus feels power go out from him, and wants to know who touched him. The disciples don’t understand, since it is a busy crowd: of course lots of people are going to touch him. But Jesus, rather than shrugging it off or just healing and leaving, makes an intentional point to make personal, human contact with each person he heals. In the story from Luke, the woman comes to Jesus in fear and trembling, explaining how she had been healed and expecting to be punished for “stealing” Jesus’ power. Instead, Jesus tells the woman, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.” Rather than punishing her, and more than just healing her, Jesus wanted to make personal contact with the woman. Likewise in today’s gospel. The woman suffering from hemorrhages believes that if she just touches Jesus’ cloak, she will be made well. Jesus turns, and, importantly, he sees her. Really sees her, as a full, fellow human being. And he says, “Take heart, daughter: your faith has made you well.” He makes intentional human contact. His healing always comes hand-in-hand with intentional relationship. One important thing that Jesus does, besides physical healing, is healing broken relationships. And he does it over and over.

Jesus didn’t only heal broken relationships by making intentional human contact with the woman with hemorrhages, or making human contact with the recently deceased daughter of the leader of the synagogue, whom he takes by the hand (again, making intentional relational contact). He also heals broken relationships by including the tax collectors and sinners. Clearly some people have an issue with tax collectors such as Matthew. But who has the issue with the tax collectors? I think that, in the popular imagination, it is the common people, the poor people, who have this problem with tax collectors. But biblical scholars Melina and Rohrbaugh point out that few tax collectors would have been rich, and many were doubtless quite fair and honest. Recent research suggests that the real people who despised tax collectors were the rich and educated, because poorer folks such as day laborers had little or nothing on which such duties could be levied, and thus had no real reason to despise the tax collectors. Rather, the wealth of the rich tradesmen passed through the hands of the tax collectors to the chief tax collectors, who were the real ones who profited from those taxes; thus, tradesmen, and the rich and educated, were the ones who despised tax collectors. Regardless of who despised the tax collectors, Jesus was eating with them, as well as sinners. He was telling them, it doesn’t matter if wealthy, influential people despise you. It doesn’t matter if they call you all manner of names and try to intimidate, bully, and dehumanize you. I see you, I care about you, I love you. You have basic human dignity, and you are worthy. You are children of God. He saw the broken relationship, and took intentional steps, going out of his way to eat dinner with those who were despised by the rich, to show them that they do in fact matter. Jesus makes a clear, intentional point to restore that broken relationship. Those who were excluded are now included.

One of my favorite clients at the HIV Day Center, who has given me permission to share his name, Chris, likes to joke about the epidemic of snobbery in our country. As a gay black and indigenous man with AIDS, he is often the victim of various kinds of snobbery and insults. One of his favorite responses to the snobbery he receives is to ask, “and what does your snobologist say about that?” I think Jesus would be laughing right along with him. Because he is using humor to interrupt a harmful pattern that causes broken relationships. And, at the same time, he is pointing out that that person who is being a snob missed a golden opportunity to be genuinely curious about who Chris is, what his story is, and to form a relationship with someone who I know from experience has a heart of gold. They missed the opportunity to affirm Chris’s full humanity, instead giving him the message that he is just garbage or furniture, the same message he has gotten over and over by countless people, starting with his parents and his church. (By the way, Chris has an amazing, inspiring faith despite the spiritual terrorism he experienced, which is another story for another day).

And that is an example for us, and an invitation, to engage in healing broken relationships. When we serve someone less fortunate, perhaps at Hope and Bread for example, or at a soup kitchen or anywhere else, it’s not just about filling an empty tummy (although that helps), nor was Jesus’ healing solely or even primarily about physical health for those Jesus encountered. They are both more importantly about really seeing the person there, about making an intentional connection with that person, perhaps the start of a relationship with that person. At the very least, our interactions should communicate to that person that they matter. That they are a child of God, regardless of everything else. And God loves them, period. Because, more often than not, in our society, as it was in Jesus’ day, for many people who are considered poor, homeless, “riff raff,” or discriminated against for any reason, there are given the message that they don’t matter, that they don’t count, that they are intruding on the lives of people who are supposedly “better” or “more important” than them. While false, these messages are rampant, and they are painful.

But Jesus gives us a different message. All people are holy, chosen, and important. We are all worthy of respect. We all have basic dignity as children of God, made in God’s image. May we follow Jesus’ example, to see the humanity in all people, and to go out of our way to affirm the humanity of those who are being dehumanized, that your kin-dom come, your will be done, here on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.