Who Gets An Invitation? Sermon Transcript - Traditional Worship

Well, good morning.

Once again, my name is Reverend Elizabeth Mosley.

I am the executive minister here at FUMC Dallas, and I am so glad to worship with you all today while Mitchell, our senior minister, is out this weekend for some much-deserved vacation time with his family.

 Today we'll be continuing our worship series, as Joe alluded to, Pull Up a Chair, where we are talking about how important it is for us to pay attention and create space at the table.

Last week, Mitchell preached from the Gospel of Matthew about what it requires of us to turn our gaze from ourselves

 from our desires for the front of the line or for the best seat to others?

How can we make sure that we are looking out and pulling people in?

How can we make sure that we're creating room for others and not just taking it all up for ourselves?

Now this week, we are going to stay in the Gospel of Matthew.

The scripture we look at is, from the outset, pretty simple, I think.

 But it's not so the more you dig into it, like so much of scripture.

It invites us into discernment and reflection at a much deeper level as we consider not only who to invite to the table, but how to make sure that it's easy for them to get there.

Would you bow with me for a moment of prayer?

Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts

 Be acceptable in your sight, for you are our rock and our redeemer, and we love you.

Amen.

 The scene in the scripture that we are gonna read today is an interesting placement in the gospel.

It falls after the very lengthy teaching in the Sermon on the Mound and in the midst of several stories of miraculous and meaningful healings that Jesus does.

 The story is kind of smack dab in the middle of this whole section, really, of miracles, including healings and stopping of the wind and the waves and casting out demons.

And it's also one of three very short and quick stories where Jesus's actions provoke the ire of other groups of religious leaders.

 Now the first group that is opposed to Jesus' actions in the first story are the scribes.

The third group that is opposed to Jesus' action are the disciples of John the Baptist, who was a very well-respected, albeit alternative, religious leader of the time.

But in the story that we're gonna talk about today, the opposition that Jesus faces comes from the Pharisees.

 Now before I actually read the scripture, the broader context, like I said, is that Jesus has been healing a bunch of people.

Like an alarming amount of people he has been healing.

 And it's really creating a holster.

And these are really powerful stories.

The story of the man with the diseased skin, the story of the centurion's servant, Peter's mother-in-law, the story of the paralyzed man, and then it says that a bunch of people, I mean a whole group of people, come to the house and just swarm Jesus, gather all around him, and he heals them all.

He heals them all, everyone who is sick,

 everyone who is distressed, and their lives are returned to them in this one miraculous moment, this encounter with Jesus.

And yet, Jesus does all of this outside the bounds of the religious authorities of the time.

 And this is really important for us to recognize because there is evidence to show that by this point, by the end of the first century, which is really where this scripture would have been written, the healing from disease was actually within the purview of religious leadership.

 There weren't really doctors per se, certainly not like we know them today, because at the time, sickness and wounding and illness and disease was a result of sin and disobedience to God.

And therefore, healing was the result of God's power and forgiveness.

All healing came from God,

 And the religious authorities had come to view it and be viewed as the means by which God healed.

Does that make sense?

So God did the healing, but they're like the instruments of that healing.

And these religious authorities had begun to take on that mantle, take on that identity.

Now notably, the primary goal of the priests and the Pharisees and other formal religious leaders

 was holiness and the preservation of it.

Their goal was not really the individual relief from suffering.

So the goal for the religious leaders who engaged in this kind of

 act of healing, whatever that might look like, was to preserve the sanctity of the worshiping body, not really to provide care for an individual for their own sake.

And while there were doctors outside of the official religious systems, healing had continued to develop as an aspect of religious power.

 Now, this was not a very steady or stable system by any means.

There was still a lot of skepticism and fear and inconsistency, kind of like it is today for us to go to the doctor sometimes.

But because healing was often linked to divine power, the fact that Jesus had just healed a bunch of people

 and he had done so outside of the formal religious framework, and if you combine that with the fact that he started actually challenging the framework itself, well, it's almost like he's declaring a connection to divine power beyond anyone else.

And truly, when we read this section of scripture, we can see that Jesus is making it very clear that he is, in fact, the Son of God.

 not just a random religious leader, but actually God.

And that is where our story today comes in.

I invite you to rise for the reading of the Gospel.

Matthew 9, 19 through 13.

 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.

 And as he sat at dinner 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 come to call, not to call the righteous, but sinners.

For the word of God in scripture, for the word of God among us, and for the word of God within us.

Thanks be to God.

You may be seated.

 How many of you like to host people in your house?

Yeah?

How many of you like to throw a really good party?

Yeah, okay.

That's not me.

I'm not gifted particularly in that way.

But I will tell you that my parents,

 were and are excellent hosts.

That's probably why I'm not gifted in that way, because I never really had to, because they handled it all.

They love to cook, both of them.

They love having friends and family over.

They love setting a beautiful dining room table.

And when we were younger, my sisters and I were always enlisted to help with prepping the house.

I've had to set a table with multiple types of silverware.

 I've had to polish that silverware, I've had to dust shelves, I've had to arrange pillows, I've had to clean up the yard, let alone my own room and all the stuff that I'm sure I left laying around.

We like to just say we were regular Cinderella's.

But I'll say this, more than just creating a lovely, welcoming space for people, my mother in particular,

 would also go above and beyond to invite people into our space, into her home.

She would always invite our friends and neighbors over, but she would also invite seemingly random people who honestly just maybe didn't have anywhere else to go.

 And so our holidays, if I look back over the years, our table often included people that we never saw again.

For example, one Thanksgiving, we had a post-doctoral science student who attended Rice University, which is where my mom works,

 and she was from China, and so when Thanksgiving break came up, she just didn't have the time or the funds to fly all the way home.

So she came to our Thanksgiving table.

Another Thanksgiving, we had this couple from France, and I'll be honest, I have no idea why they were there or where they came from or what the connection was, but they were invited, and that Thanksgiving, they were our only guests at the table outside of our immediate family.

 One Christmas, I'll never forget, we had one of my mom's former coworkers who couldn't join her own family for Christmas because they had disowned her because she was a trans woman.

 In fact, earlier that year, my mom had given her a ride to work every single day for months after she had sold her car to help pay for her surgery.

And that relationship that they formed there naturally then led to an invitation to our dining room table on Christmas Day, as well as the after-dinner walk and then dessert, of course, in front of the fire.

 My mom is to this day one of the best people I know at embodying the idea of the more the merrier.

 If you are lost or lonely or outside the group or have nowhere else to go, you can always head to Bel Air, Texas in the middle of Houston and find my mom and she will have a seat at her table for you.

And it will be beautiful with China and crystal and silver.

 My parents truly have always modeled this really incredible, if you think about it, really radical, over and above welcoming attitude.

And I'll tell you, my mom doesn't really talk about her faith much, but she lives it out.

And she gets it straight from Jesus.

 straight from this story, I think, in particular, as we really dig in and look at what Jesus is doing with Matthew, the tax collector, as well as how he responds to the scribes.

Now, just for a little information, just so you know, we can learn about the Bible here.

This story is actually in Mark and in Luke, but the name of the tax collector in those stories is Levi.

 We don't know if this is the same person.

Some people like to say it's the same person with two different names.

That's not probably true, but it doesn't really matter.

And otherwise, the entire story is exactly the same.

Jesus sees a tax collector, invites the tax collector to follow him, and then has dinner at the tax collector's house.

 Now tax collectors were interesting characters in the first century Israel.

They were often Jews who worked for the Roman Empire, collecting various taxes.

The thing is that they could often charge over and above whatever the tax amount was at the time, and then they could keep the difference for themselves, and they often did that.

 in a really unjust, predatory way.

And because the tax collectors dealt with the Romans so often, they would have been considered ritually unclean and therefore unable to worship regularly in the temple or really participate in normal Jewish society at all.

As a group,

 They inspired hatred or scorn or disgust.

It wasn't necessarily personal.

They just, because of their jobs, did not qualify for access to religious life, and certainly not for dinner with an influential religious teacher.

 Now the dinner scenario itself is also actually a very important setting.

Who you had dinner with was kind of a big deal.

Your table guests, whose table you were a guest of, it mattered in the social and political standings of that day.

I mean, and let's be honest, it's the same for us today as well, isn't it?

It's why when you are invited to a party,

 What do you do?

You automatically go to the RSVP list and see who else is invited.

It's why when you host a party, you regularly check that RSVP list to see who has responded yet.

It's why non-profits will list their host committee members on the invitation to their fundraiser.

 It's why when you post on social media, you keep track not only of the number of likes, but also who is liking your post and commenting and et cetera, et cetera.

We get this dynamic that it matters who you're seen with, who you identify with, and who identifies with you.

 Now, throughout scripture, especially in the gospels, the fully realized reign of God, the eschatological fulfillment of God's work in the world was often described as a great feast or banquet or really awesome party.

 Every time that Jesus has a meal or attends a meal or tells a story about a meal, it's a link to that understanding, a commentary on how things will be when all is finished and complete and God's reign is fully established.

Now the Pharisees, like we said before, were concerned with purity.

But here's the catch, for them it only went one way.

 If you engaged with or ate with or connected with someone who was unclean or impure, it made you unclean or impure.

It didn't go the other way around.

It didn't work backwards.

A clean or pure person could not make an unclean person clean.

Yeah, I said that right.

Only God can do that.

 And according to the Pharisees, really that happened for the community only via very specific rituals handled by the Pharisees themselves in the temple.

On top of all of that, the Pharisees were obviously, well maybe not obviously, but I'm just telling you it's true, they were involved in the religious power dynamics of the day.

 and they would have been very careful who they gathered around a table with from a socio-political perspective as then well as a religious purity one.

So all that to say,

 From the Pharisees' perspective, not only was Jesus healing people outside of their religious ritual system, something that only God could do, he was also associating with people who were unclean and considerably lower social and religious power, and that was just not cool.

Jesus was not being cool.

He was really messing up the relational dynamics basically of every party he went to.

 And so the Pharisees see this and they grumble to his disciples.

And of course Jesus overhears them and he calls them out immediately.

He makes it very clear that actually he's not really bothered by the normal sociopolitical religious rules and standards that the Pharisees seem to be.

And he's not actually worried about purity laws or losing his social political standing or power.

 In fact, he, this person, remember, who has just performed miracles and healed a whole bunch of people and who is about to heal a whole bunch more people, is actually more interested in being with the unclean, being with the rejected sinners, than he is in judging them.

 He's actually more interested in being with the marginalized and the outcast and the lost and the social and religious pariahs than he is among the so-called power players of the day.

This is what Jesus means when he tells the disciples to go and learn what we read in Hosea.

That quote that Jesus says, he actually quotes it again a few chapters later,

 I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

Jesus, God, actually wants to be with people even if they're messy and messed up and is less interested in any narrow religious system with limited access and limited impact.

 For Jesus, if the table represents the fully realized reign of God, then the table is open and available to the people who need it the most.

Those who might not have a seat at any table get a seat at Jesus' table.

And that includes us.

 Because I suspect that as much as we all are here today, either in this room or watching online, as much as we might be connected to the life of the church and to the body of Christ, and as much as we might feel like we have a little bit of righteousness, I suspect that we are also, some of us, very much aware of how often we fall short.

 So don't miss that this message is for us as well.

And that is really lovely.

That is really good news.

But that is not all that I think this scripture is inviting us to consider.

 I want to draw your attention to this specific analogy that Jesus uses here, this phrase about how the sick are the ones that need a physician and not the healthy.

And that makes obvious sense to us.

That's true.

Doctors don't really treat those who are well because there's nothing to treat.

 And Jesus uses this analogy to make it absolutely clear that he is God and is here to redeem and restore and forgive the sins of the world, to forgive our sins.

But the truth is, is even when people are sick, there are still people who won't go to the doctor.

Do any of you sometimes have trouble going to the doctor, even though you know you should?

 And the truth then is that even though we are all sinners, there are still some people, some of us inside of this room, who still might not actually go to Jesus either.

Not really anyway.

Not with our whole hearts or our whole selves.

Now we might show up on a Sunday here or there, but we don't really believe that we belong.

 or that we really have a place here or that God's grace really is for us.

Now, a lot of people are afraid to go to the doctor.

That's a very common situation.

But did you know that a recent study revealed that the biggest reason that people will not go to the doctor is not because they're afraid of it.

That's the second biggest reason.

The first reason that people will not go to a doctor even when they're sick

 is because it's too expensive.

It costs a lot to go to the doctor these days, in case you didn't know.

Insurance premiums have risen astronomically this year, are set to continue to rise.

Fewer people, therefore, are able to afford insurance, which means that things come out of pocket.

 The United States owes at least $220 billion in medical debt, at least.

 But it's not just monetary costs that make it hard to go to the doctor.

The time that it can take to schedule an appointment, to have to leave work or pull a kid out of school to get there, and then you wait in the waiting room for goodness knows how long to actually see the doctor.

You finally get the prescription, but then you have to take that to a whole different place to get it filled and wait for that.

That time, all of that time, it's prohibitive.

 for people who don't have hours in their day to make it happen.

Our healthcare system is expensive.

It's a mess for doctors and facilities and patients alike.

And really, it's because the boundaries are so high.

The access is too hard.

So even though it's there for them, even though they're invited and encouraged to go to the doctor, it's actually too difficult to get there, and so they don't.

 Jesus is right.

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but when those who are sick can't get to the physician that is there for them, it's a huge problem.

And that analogy that Jesus uses in this scripture is so true for us in the church as well.

 We can create the room.

We can make sure that there is another chair.

We can polish the silver and prepare the meal.

But we can also make accessing it really hard for people if they aren't already on the inside.

We can make it really difficult for people to feel like they can show up as they are and still experience the life-saving power of Jesus.

 we can kind of be like the Pharisees, expecting them to go through our own version of a religious purity test or a social inventory before they can be fully included.

It's almost as if we treat access to church like applying for healthcare, where we deny access if there's a pre-consisting condition that we consider not beneficial to our own status.

Jesus came to call not the righteous,

 but the sinners.

And when the seemingly righteous make it too hard for the sinners to be welcomed at the table, to even get to the table, then the righteous are actually part of the problem.

And this morning, I think in this scripture, the invitation for us, if we claim to follow Jesus, if we claim to be faithful, if we're trying our best, is to figure out how to be part of the solution.

 It's to recognize, we have to recognize that this table is not ours to monitor, that the guest list does not belong to us.

It belongs to God.

This church, this community, this banquet or party is not a place that you can only get to when you have it all figured out.

This is actually the place to go, to show up,

 When you are still in desperate need of God's grace and mercy and forgiveness.

We are all invited here and now to recognize our own need for grace.

And I think we have to wrestle with how often we keep ourselves from the table as well.

 You know what's interesting?

The more people who participate in a healthcare system, the better the system works for everyone.

That makes sense, doesn't it?

Whether it's insurance or preventative treatment or herd immunity or streamlined support, when everyone is invited to participate, it actually works better and we as a society are healthier because everyone is included and involved and can have access to good treatment.

And here's the thing, the same is true of the church.

 We are all better when we gather together at this table, at this banquet, at this party.

And that includes the people that you think are sinners and not worthy.

And that includes even you when you feel like you're not worthy.

So whatever boundary, whatever issue with access, it's not just about a seat, it's also about the doorway.

 When we block or blockade entrance to people into the life of the church, into this body of Christ, when we put up a boundary, no matter how small, but certainly if it's big, that's on us and our job, the invitation here is to identify where those boundaries are and then to remove them.

 to work together to do that, to believe that the Holy Spirit is at work in our midst and in our hearts, and so we're not doing this alone.

But we need to be like Jesus, and like my mom.

We have to lean into the reality that in our church, in our community, the more really is the merrier.

 We have to go and learn.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

And we have to remember that God wants the doors wide and the seats plentiful so that there really is room for all.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.