SERMON PREACHED BY
THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
ON THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
5 JUNE 2005

 

 

"Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick."  (Matthew 9:12)
 
 
 
There was a time that it was common for preachers to refer to Jesus as the "physician of our souls."  If we don't hear that phrase any more, it's probably because people nowadays don't like to think of themselves as spiritually or mentally sick.  Or even as sinners.  Somebody wrote a book some years ago entitled "Whatever happened to sin?" No, today we say, "I'm OK, you're OK."  Like Hyacinth, we keep up appearances.  We mustn't admit any kind of weakness.  We learn early on that "How are you?" is not a question, but a greeting.  And the only acceptable answer is "Fine, thank you, and you?"  And those who do take it as a question might tell us about a bit of neuralgia, or a bothersome flare-up of arthritis, but are unlikely to share that they have been diagnosed with severe depression.
 
In today's Gospel, Jesus comes across Matthew sitting at the tax booth, or as the KJV put it, "sitting in the receipt of custom."  Jesus said "Follow me," and without reservation, Matthew drops everything --- his quill, his parchment, his calculator, and presumably even a bag full of shekels, and follows Jesus.
 
Now to our modern ears, there is nothing strange about this occurrence.  But Jesus' listeners were scandalized.  A tax collector in Jesus' day wasn't merely the equivalent of an IRS agent doing his job.  He was, to use an old Prayer Book term, "a notorious and evil liver."  He was an agent of the Roman government, which, of course, was occupying the land by force.  The tax collector was actually an independent contractor.  He was expected, for example, to extract so much money from a particular area, and whatever he managed to garner above and beyond that amount, found its way into his own pockets.  Everybody knew that.  It reminds me of an experience I had when I worked in Honduras, and had to obtain a resident visa.  I went to Tegucigalpa to the appropriate government office, and produced the necessary documents, one of which was a police report from the U.S. stating that I had no criminal record.  "Es en ingles," said the government agent.  I asked what language other than English he would expect from the police department in Brooklyn, New York. "Hay que traduzcarla," said the minion.  ("It has to be translated.") I explained that I could provide the necessary translation.  No, he said, that must be done by a "traductor oficial."  And who might that be? I asked.  "Yo," he said, poking his index finger into his chest.  I forked over 100 lempiras, (about $50, or about one-sixth of the average Honduran's annual income) and when it became obvious to me that that fee would never find its way into Government coffers, I demanded a receipt.  "No hay problema," said the official, and he scribbled something on a scrap of paper, which he ceremoniously rubber-stamped.  But we digress.
 
It is interesting to note that immediately after Matthew's call, Jesus doesn't put him to work healing the sick, or casting out demons, but invites him to a dinner party.  (I like Jesus' style!) This is the second scandal in the story.  In Jewish society, the meal was a sacred event.  You just didn't break bread with low-life tax collectors and prostitutes.  And this is precisely why the Pharisees asked the disciples "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"  That fact, to the Pharisees' mind, would disqualify Jesus as a bona fide religious leader, much less the Messiah.  Jesus, in exercising radical hospitality (there's that bothersome phrase again) welcomed Matthew to the table because he deemed him to be sick, not bad.
 
All of us, at one time or another, are spiritually and perhaps mentally sick --- due to malfunctioning synapses in the brain, some traumatic event, or some other cause.  And often we seek professional help to sort things out --- because of our irrational fears called phobias; because we find ourselves doing things we don't want to do (compulsions); or because of an inability, owing some roadblock or another, to do things we would like to do.  Often we are depressed --- feeling low even when life is good.
 
I got into a bit of trouble by something I said in one of my early sermons at Calvary.  I remarked that therapy is like a laxative; it gets you over a rough period but continued use causes dependency.  Senior Warden Tom Taylor got a few irate phone calls and reported the furor to me.  Renowned psychiatrist Chip Reynolds got wind of it and explained to me that while he saw my point, the fact is that some psychoses require ongoing therapy in order to maintain the mental health of the patient.  I included the doctor's sage counsel in the printed version of my sermon, and the faithful were appeased.  Perhaps, instead, I should have used the humor of a well-known spiritual healer, Agnes Sanford, who quipped "A neurotic builds castles in the air, and complains bitterly that they are inaccessible.  A psychotic lives in them, and the psychiatrist collects the rent!"
 
The reason that Jesus got into trouble for calling Matthew (and for that matter, reaching out to the "woman taken in adultery" and various other actions on his part) was not because of his diagnosis, but his cure.  The Pharisees said, in effect, "This person --- prostitute, tax collector, adulterer, thief, is sick.  Therefore, cast him into outer darkness so that the pure, faithful remnant might live in peace and concord."  Jesus agreed that such persons were sick, or that, as Paul said to the Romans (3:23) they had "fallen short of the glory of God," but his treatment was to heal them within the community.  He pointed to the absurdity of trying to heal people who were despised, condemned and morally cut off.  It reminds me of otherwise rational married couples who, because of some serious problem in their relationship, deem that they "need space" --- not just an evening to blow off steam or to simmer down, but months, perhaps, of separation.  My advice always is "You don't learn how to live together by living apart."
 
If we are honest, we must confess that from time to time, we are all sick, morally, spiritually, mentally.  The writers of evangelical hymns certainly believed that.
It's me, it's me, it's me, O Lord, standin' in the need of prayer.
Not my brother, not my sister, but it's me, O Lord, standin' in the need of prayer.
(Lift Every Voice and Sing II, 177)
 
Or this one:
Just as I am, though tossed about, with many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings and fears within, without, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
(The Hymnal 1982, 693)
 
Jesus did not accept the prevalent view of his day that a person had to behave in a certain way to earn a seat at the table.  Did I say "Jesus' day?"  Are we not beset, even today, with a theology that divides sheep from goats, good from bad, saved from unsaved?  Aren't we told that this behavior or that behavior ipso facto unfits one for the Kingdom?  Did not no less august a gathering than the Primates of the Anglican Communion say to certain branches of the Church, "Stay away, don't infect us, come to your senses and then come back?"
 
Jesus had a different approach.  He takes a page from the book of the Prophet Isaiah (1:18) who said "Come let us reason together, though our sins be like scarlet."  Jesus says, "Come to the table.  You talk, I'll listen."  An old Negro spiritual expresses such that inclusive theology of Jesus in these words:
Plenty good room, plenty good room,
Plenty good room in my Master's Kingdom.
 
There are forces within the bosom of the church today who believe that the Christian life is a series of battles to be fought, rules to be kept, rules, by the way, which are often used to bash down others, keeping them at the periphery, while purporting to speak in the name of love.  And the movement already shows signs of caving in under its own weight. There are those for whom the classic profile of a Christian believer is a rigid boilerplate from which there is no variance at all, and it is no surprise, therefore, that just about everybody in such communities looks, talks and acts just about the same, and speaks a language intelligible to no one outside their spiritual ghetto.
 
My brothers and sisters in Christ, my prayer is that we might be committed to building up a community which seeks to include, and not exclude others from the table, a community founded on compassion instead of contempt, hope instead of fear, a community that does not elevate narrowness, but celebrates instead the fact that "there's a wideness in God's mercy."  To quote last week's distinguished preacher, Philip Bauerle, "Life's too short to do anything but love."
 
Amen.