Jesus Shows Us How to Follow
Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-25
2nd Sunday After Pentecost, June 11, 2023
Pastor Ritva H Williams
Today as we begin the season of Ordinary Time, our readings lead us to ask some basic questions like: what is faith? what does it mean be righteous? how does faith and righteousness get acted out in my daily life? how will we live together as faithful followers of Christ in this place and time?
Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans presents Abraham as the example who shows that God’s promises and gifts emerge entirely from God’s grace, mercy, and steadfast love. God’s promise that Abraham and his seed would inherit the earth was not given because of anything Abraham did or because of any personal qualities Abraham had. In other words, it had nothing to do with Abraham’s faith or righteousness. As Eugene Petersen points out, God made a holy promise, not a business deal. Business deals involve legal contracts that spell out required conditions and actions. Failure to meet them makes the deal null and void. God’s promises are not like that. God’s promises depend entirely on God’s grace and love to fulfill them. The good news is that we humans cannot break God’s promises! (Romans 4:13-25, The Message)
So what about Abraham’s faith? Where does it fit in? God’s promise did not come to Abraham because of his faith. Rather, Abraham’s faith was his response to God’s promise. He believed God’s promise. He trusted God’s promise. God reckoned Abraham’s faith as righteousness. Righteousness is about being in right relations with God, with one’s self, and with others. Faith understood as an amalgam of belief, trust, commitment and loyalty are the bedrock on which healthy relationships are built.
Here’s the thing: faith and right relations with God are not things we manufacture or conjure up on our own. They are gifts from God, the fruit of Holy Spirit working within us to align our hearts, minds and lives with Christ. We know from the stories in Genesis that Abraham sometimes doubted, and did not always live in right relationships with the people around him. But over his lifetime his faith grew stronger, and so Abraham is seen a very human and, thus imperfect, model of faith, but good enough to be regarded as a common ancestor of all who live by faith in God’s grace, mercy and love. That includes you and me and the little ones who were baptized just minutes ago.
Baptizing people is one of the best things I get to do as a pastor, and baptizing babies is the best of the best. In Holy Baptism God accepts and affirms these little ones as holy and good just as they are — totally dependent on parents and caregivers for their every need. Totally trusting those adults to love, care for and protect them as they eat and sleep and grow. Before they are able to make any decisions, before they have a chance to break any commandments, Christ names and claims them as beloved children, created in God’s own image, and gifted with Holy Spirit. We stand witness today, that like Abraham they do not need to earn God’s grace, mercy and steadfast love. It is already theirs! God’s grace, mercy and love empowers them to become their unique true-child-of-God selves, and frees them to follow Christ as the Spirit leads them.
For Jesus, 2000 years ago in Galilee following the Holy Spirit’s leading meant:
Calling Matthew the tax collector to follow him.
Dining with tax collectors and sinners.
Defending his dining companions and eating habits.
Affirming a hemorrhaging woman’s faith.
Restoring to life a synagogue leader’s daughter.
Each of these actions involves Jesus saying and doing something that bumps up against someone else’s ideas about what is good, proper, and holy. Tax collectors sitting in tax booths were usually displaced persons who could find no other work. They were despised and resented by everyone who had to pay market, transit, or port taxes that went to into the pockets of Herodian and Roman overlords. The really religious people (like the Pharisees) looked down on tax collectors and called them “sinners” because they didn’t measure up to really religious standards of purity and piety. It turns out that Jesus himself doesn’t measure up either. He and his disciples do not fast like the Pharisees or followers of John the Baptist.
Jesus’ defense of eating with tax collectors and sinners is quite simply that his mission is “to call not the righteous but the sinners.” My hunch is that when Jesus looks at these so-called “sinners” he sees people who are more sinned against than sinning, people who are hurt and broken by situations they did not choose and that are beyond their control. By gathering them together around his table he creates a community where they are welcome, accepted, and celebrated. Jesus brings them into right relations with God, with each other, and ultimately with themselves. Jesus does not impose the purity or piety practices of the really religious people on them. Those practices have been a source of shame and humiliation for them. Jesus declares that his mission is about creating new life, new ways of being, not putting patches on old clothes, or pouring new wine into old wineskins.
The two healings that follow illustrate this point. A synagogue leader overwhelmed by the sudden death of his daughter begs Jesus to lay his hands on her. As Jesus follows the synagogue leader to his home, a woman suffering from years of constant bleeding touches him in a desperate bid for healing. Both incidents involves females in situations of so-called “impurity.” Dead bodies and bleeding females were thought to be unclean and unfit to approach God or participate in worship. Anyone who came in contact with them had to undergo a process of purification. But Jesus doesn’t give a hoot about all that. He restores the girl to life and to the bosom of her family; and affirms the woman’s faith and restores her to the community of God’s people by calling her “daughter. ” Here we see that purity is more contagious than impurity, and that restoring people to community should be our first response to when anyone is being isolated by circumstances they did not choose and cannot control. Here we see what faith and right relationships look like in ordinary life, and we hear Jesus call each of us, “Follow me."
While we cannot predict what following Jesus will mean for our newly baptized members, I have a strong hunch at it will involve bumping up against someone else’s ideas about what is good, proper and holy. So be it! The good news is that God has already accepted and affirmed, named and claimed, these little ones as God’s very own beloved children, made them members of the all-inclusive body of Christ, and will empower to make a positive difference in the world.
Please pray with me
(adapted from “The Measure of Our Faith” by Pastor John van de Laar, sacredise.com ).
We celebrate a faith that is measured
not by the usual signs of greatness,
but by the marks of love;
and we celebrate the God who gives it.
We celebrate a love that is measured
not by romance or emotion,
but by acts of compassion and service;
and we celebrate the God who gives it.
We celebrate a life that is measured
not by the trappings of wealth or power,
but by the lives that are healed and enriched;
and we celebrate the God who gives it.
God, who measures every heart and life,
we praise you for the life that is revealed in Christ,
and for the Spirit who empowers us to follow
Christ’s example.
We praise you, O God, for the love and grace
which we find in you, receive from you,
and against which we shall ultimately be measured. Amen.
