Sunday, June 8
Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Weekly Theme
Restoring Love

Weekly Prayer
Beckoning God, you promise long journeys and new names. Call us out to risk holy adventure with unusual table companions. Linger with us so that we may be faithful disciples, touching the fringe of your healing on behalf of all your children. Amen.

Weekly Reading
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; 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 him 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 the righteous but sinners."

While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue 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 hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said 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 instantly the woman was made well. 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 throughout that district.

Reflection
by Kate Huey

The Gospel story from Matthew is filled with insiders and outsiders. Jesus walks through the story, everywhere he goes reversing the expectations of those on either side of the lines that have been drawn. This makes the story more interesting every step of the way. For example, there were boundaries drawn around folks like tax collectors (and other "sinners"), women with bleeding problems, and dead people as well. You knew you could make certain assumptions about them, and about what ought to (and could) happen to them. Tax collectors were hated for their participation in the system that oppressed the people; taxes are offensive enough in life, but these guys were collecting them for the hated Roman Empire: "Tax collectors, then, were carp feeding off the river bottom of Roman rule," Thomas Long writes. "For Jesus to call a tax collector as a disciple would be as if he were today to call a political ward heeler in a bribery-saturated precinct, a narcotics detective on the take, a mafia don on the CIA payroll." And it wasn't enough that Jesus called one of these "carp" away from his tax-collecting: he actually sits down and eats with them, something that is not just surprising, but "astonishing" to Richard Swanson: "Meals,"after all, "are swaddled in rituals. Observant Jews, then and now, understand that meals center the world; they bring stability and joy back into an inhospitable world. But that means one must be careful, especially under the domination of Rome, with whom one eats." Perhaps we have lost this reverence for the sharing of meals and the meaning of sitting down and eating together.

First, tax collectors and sinners eat with Jesus: shocking enough. But a woman with a long-time hemorrhage was considered unclean and should know better than to be touching a holy man of Israel. Even so, she dug around in the rule book for an exemption, a nugget of hope, a tiny place on the map of salvation that might be allotted to her so that she might find her way back to the community that had marginalized her. Then there was the dead girl, another "daughter," and surely Jesus would accept that boundary, even if he ignored all the others. Dead bodies were not to be touched any more than bleeding women and ostracized sinners. Whether "the house" belongs to Jesus or to Matthew (scholars don't agree), it's clear that Jesus is the host who sets the table and makes out the invitation list (as he does today, at our communion table). Jesus is surrounded by people who need salvation, and in this passage salvation looks like healing and restoration to life and to the community more than it resembles our traditional notions of salvation that we "earn" by professing proper beliefs and performing religious duties. He faces questioning and criticism on one hand, and laughter and mockery on the other. In the face of both, he "makes well" the ones who come to him in true faith, a trust that sees beyond religious rules and communal judgment and regulations.

There are differences and similarities between the dead girl and the grown woman, both in need of healing and restoration. They may both be called "daughter," but one has presumably lived a life of more security and "place" (Swanson, however, observes that this "daughter" would have experienced limited freedom as a female in her culture, and was probably confined much of the time to her home), and even in death she has someone more powerful who can approach Jesus face to face and plead her cause. The dead girl's father is undaunted by death, or desperate enough to trust that all his daughter needs is the touch of Jesus.

The woman, on the other hand, knows she's not allowed to hope that Jesus will touch her, but she counts on a fringe of hope, just the edge of his garment, because she sees with the eyes of hope that true power lives more in this man than in all the powerful institutions and rules that push her away. Desperate hope twice placed in a single touch by One who breaks the rules and goes beyond the barricades we erect. One conversation and healing is private, an encounter between the woman and Jesus, who understands what has happened and why. The other healing, though the crowd has itself been "put outside," is much more public, and word spreads of God's mighty deeds in this man, Jesus.

If we read the story of Matthew as a "call narrative," we ought to pay more attention to what is going on around Jesus than what is going on inside Matthew's head and heart. Thomas Long says we moderns like to analyze these characters psychologically instead of grasping the power of the call itself and who Jesus is in the story: "The main point of this story is not to speculate about what is happening inside Matthew; it is to perceive what is happening outside through Jesus.... This is why services of Christian worship even today begin not with a psychological inventory ... but with a call to worship.... Even now, the word from Christ, the word from beyond us, comes to us, powerfully beckoning us from workplaces and our ordinary routines into a life of faithful following." Dianne Bergant agrees, and finds a lesson for our own lives, as we renew our commitment to the gospel in different seasons and circumstances: "At each juncture of life the call may make a distinctive demand. In the beginning we might resemble Matthew, in awe of the wonder of the experience and willing to sacrifice all to follow Christ. As we move through life we may become bogged down by its demands and its hardships." But it's not our own efforts, she says, that heal us or provide us assurance of salvation: "Our own observance of religious practices might lead us into false security ... it is not conversion that grants us faith. Rather, it is the faithful responsiveness to the call, which is expressed in conversion of life."

How do you define faith? Is your understanding of faith expressed in your spiritual practice? Do you think of faith as right belief or as trust, as a relationship with God that seeks just the hem of God's garment, throws caution to the wind, and breathes expectation of grace and healing in spite of all evidence to the contrary? Have you ever felt outside the community? Do you know what it feels like to find your way back, or to hear the invitation that Jesus offers you, to return and be restored? Did you ever have the experience of slipping alongside the crowd, hoping not to be noticed, thinking that there may be a "way in" for you, or a way back? Have you ever heard "the rules" invoked as a reason to keep others out? Who might these "others" be? In what ways might we (insiders) believe that the marginal status of these "outsiders" is somehow deserved?

It's significant that no one notices the woman on the edge of the crowd, at least no one except Jesus. That tells us something about the people God notices in our own time and place. How is God still speaking to us today, calling us to participate in the healing and the bringing back of those who are beyond our borders and boundaries? How is the still-speaking God challenging our comfort zones, those areas of protection and comfort, of assumptions and privilege? Have you ever felt that your confidence in the power of God had found its limits? Have you ever heard the crowd mocking and laughing at the hope and vision of those who would lead us into unexpected and grace-filled places?

We might ask ourselves which characters in this story are the ones who are truly sick and in need of healing. Jesus' statement, of course, is full of irony. But he also teaches the crowd, and every one of his disciples to this day, something about the nature of God, and he uses Scripture to back up his teaching when he quotes the prophet Hosea: "I desire mercy, not sacrifice" (9:13). But he quotes Scripture and then acts in way that's consistent with it, rather than simply plucking a line that suits his purposes. He says that God wants mercy, and then he himself shows mercy. But his mercy and compassion seem to mess up the orderly system that's in place, and it continues to mess up orderly systems to this day, perhaps even in the life of our congregations and in our denomination, the United Church of Christ (those familiar words, "that's not the way we've always done it" are familiar for a reason!). Perhaps compassion messes up our public life, too, with its laws and traditions (engraved in stone, no less). And compassion messes up our culture, which digs in its heels and tells us that we somehow deserve what we have and don't really need to change our systems to make sure that everyone has enough. We might spend some time reflecting quietly on the question of where the center is in this story, and where the margins are, and where we find Jesus throughout.

A note on sin and sickness in this passage: Thomas Long has written a thought-provoking (and illuminating) reflection on sin and sickness in his excellent commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, just before this passage (Westminster Bible Companion series). He says that our view of sin is "too small" – it's really "a power that captures us, that infects society, that pollutes nature, that enslaves the human heart, that destroys life ... a force that enslaves and destroys human life, and it employs many devices and servants: chaos, the demonic, illness, and death. Sin is the biggest word we have to describe all the powers loose in the world that oppose God’s will...." He goes on to discuss disease and death in that light, as "agents of rebellion against God, shock troops under the command of the power of sin," not as punishment deserved by the one who is sick, but as "something that happens to the whole creation. Sin is out to destroy God's good work, and illness is one of its devices of destruction." We read this story, this brief episode in the life of Jesus, rooted in the faith (the trust) that God wills wholeness, health, and harmony for all of God’s beautiful and good creation. In Jesus, that wholeness, healing, and harmony drew, and continues to draw, near. How will we respond?

For Further Reflection
Catherine of Genoa, 15th century mystic

All this I saw as clearly as if I touched them, but I cannot find the words to express them. These things that I speak about work within me in secret and with great power.

From The Feminine Mystic, Lynn Deming, ed., Pilgrim Press.

All readings for the Week
Genesis 12:1-9 with Psalm 33:1-12 or
Hosea 5:15-6:6 and Psalm 50:7-15 with
Romans 4:13-25
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

About Weekly Seeds

Weekly Seeds is a source for meditation and prayer based on the readings of the "Lectionary," a plan for weekly Bible readings used in Protestant, Anglican and Roman Catholic churches throughout the world. When we pray and study the Bible using the Lectionary, we are praying and studying with millions of others. We invite you to continue the conversation on the “Opening the Bible” forum at http://i.ucc.org.

Weekly Seeds is a service of the Congregational Vitality Initiative, Local Church Ministries, United Church of Christ. Bible texts are from the New Revised Standard Version, © 1989 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The Revised Common Lectionary is © 1992 Consultation on Common Texts. Used by permission. The Ancient Christian Devotional is © 2007 by Thomas C. Oden and ICCS, and is published by InterVarsity Press. Used by permission.