As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
And as he sat at dinner[a] in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she was saying to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And the woman was made well from that moment. When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread through all of that district.
My sermon from the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost Sunday (June 7, 2026) on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26.
I’d like to start today’s sermon with a question: what does a good Christian look like?
Now we know, based on the Bible and our own experience, that only God can hold the totality of our human story. Attempting to analyze, process, and categorize every thought, action, and even our inactions through some kind of theological framework is impossible. It’s spiritually healthy – and a bit freeing – to admit how God’s standards don’t often match our own. But I imagine that most of us might carry a mental picture of what we think a good Christian actually looks like. It’s a picture we might have purposely put together and crafted through deep study, prayer, and paying attention to our own personal histories. Yet it could also be one given to us unconsciously by others who shared this is what a good Christian looks like. Maybe the picture we hold looks like our grandmother, our uncle, or that friend who showed up for us in our time of need. Maybe that so-called Christian speaks, talks, dresses, and has the family life we wish we had instead. The good Christian is, we imagine, pure, holy, and different in ways we recognize but couldn’t fully describe. We don’t regularly compare ourselves to the picture we have of this “good Christian” because our lives are often too busy to keep constantly measuring how faithful we actually are. Yet during those moments when we see ourselves as that good Christian, we can’t help but feel a little more holy and true. The image we hold of what it looks like to follow God has a way of shaping how we read the Bible, listen to these stories, and interact with our neighbors and friends. And when someone comes along who doesn’t look, sound, or act in the ways we’d expect a good Christian to be, that picture in our heads – rather than Jesus – ends up deciding who we believe truly belongs to God.
Now today’s reading from the gospel according to Matthew is rather short but is also very full. We begin with a call story before moving into a healing and a resurrection I wish we all experienced way more often. Jesus was, at the time, busy preaching, teaching, and healing all around the Sea of Galilee. It’s at this moment, while in the midst of his ministry, when we meet the one who the early church later decided wrote the words we just read. Matthew was a tax collector who was probably assigned to collect money based on how many fish people caught. Like I’ve shared in other sermons, the Roman Empire outsourced their tax collection services to individuals and businesses that operated like street gangs. These groups were empowered by the Romans to use violence and intimidation to get whatever the ruling authorities wanted. And so these tax collectors were seen by the community as wicked people whose occupations – and maybe even their existences – violated God’s law. They were, in the eyes of almost everyone, the complete opposite of what a faithful follower of God looked like. Yet Matthew – and so many of the other tax collectors Jesus interacted with – weren’t the business owners contracted by the Roman Empire. He was simply the grunt shaking people down for money. The Rev. Dr. Mark Allan Powell in a commentary on this passage shared how recent scholarship has noticed these tax collectors often had a very specific look about them. These men (and they were almost always men) often “had something wrong with them: mild mental challenges, speech impediments, physical deformities, and the like. They were often enslaved persons or, at least, were people who for some reason could not find work in a more desirable profession. The man called to follow Jesus was obviously not an enslaved person (since he left his position), but he was probably representative of a class of people considered pathetic, despicable, or both.” Tax collectors were not only doing those things their community found to be dishonorable, gross, and ugly. They, through no fault of their own or because of the situation they found themselves in, also looked as if this was the only kind of work – or existence – or future – they could possibly live in.
And it was exactly these folks – including so-called sinners – who were invited to party with Jesus in Simon Peter’s house. Now we’re not told who these “sinners” were but, based on context and how this word was used in other places, “sinners” was a euphemism for prostitutes. These workers, though, weren’t in this profession for themselves since they were most likely sold, enslaved, and forced to do this work at a young age. Their future – and lives – would be short since we have no records of those who Jesus would have encountered ever retiring from that lifestyle or making it into their 20s. Peter’s home wouldn’t have been big enough to keep all these guests inside so everyone would have seen who Jesus chose to break bread with. And so the house party Jesus threw was the kind of party respectable neighbors would have called the cops to immediately shut down. The community Jesus pulled together was, in the words of Mark Allen Powell, “the most pitiable people of [Jesus’] world, though of course it may have been difficult to pity them when they were robbing you or physically assaulting you or tempting your husband to spend grocery money on adultery or infecting your sons with venereal diseases. In Jesus’ day as in ours, pathetic individuals were both easy to pity and easy to despise.” Jesus, though, chose to do more than pity those who looked like they deserved the short, miserable, and painful present and future they were living through. He showed them mercy and how the kingdom of God belonged to them too.
And that might make sense to us since we assume Matthew, who immediately became an ex-tax collector, was at Jesus’ table too. We expect those who turn from what we assume is an unChristian life to be brought in by their God. Yet nothing within these few verses implies that every other guest left – or could leave – their current circumstances behind. For those who were enslaved; who look different; those who society decided didn’t deserve a future with them; for those failed to break out of the ongoing cycle of poverty and violence; for those who, through no fault of their own, were caught in a system that consumed their life; and those who looked like they deserved everything that had happened to them – Jesus welcomed, invited, and set his table for them. We often read Jesus’ proverb about coming for the sick rather than the well as his way of promising to cure whatever is infecting us. But Jesus knows we don’t always necessarily have the option – or get to change – our life or the future coming our way. We often assume our walk with God depends only on the choices we make and, especially those with us with a little money, security, and opportunity to have agency over our life – we assume being with God and choosing God are the same thing. Jesus, though, knows just how big life can be and that we are – and always will be – defined by something other than what we do or what’s been done to us. So he chooses to see, to know, to welcome, and to embrace those “in spite of [the] current circumstances that reflect nothing of God’s reign or righteousness.” Jesus chooses to include, feed, and to honor those who otherwise live in shame. And while Jesus himself often didn’t look like he was following God because of the company he chose to keep, he embodied a kind of mercy, grace, and an ever expanding table that showed who our God chooses to be.
Amen.