Second Sunday after Pentecost
“Rhetorical Questions” — Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (Hosea 5:15-6:6/NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (Matthew 9:9-13/NRSVUE)
As some of you know, I was out of town late last week officiating my nephew’s wedding. Being asked to do this is definitely an honor — and kind of an occupational hazard when you’re the only minister in the family. I have one niece and five nephews, and this was the third of their weddings that I’ve performed, so I’m halfway done now, thanks be to God (just kidding).
This time, the big event was on Friday evening, but the rehearsal was in the middle of the afternoon on Thursday, which made our travel logistics kind of complicated. Valerie and I both had to work on Wednesday, so going out a day early wasn’t an option; and because there were no flights on Thursday that would get us to Madison, Wisconsin when we needed to be there, we ended up flying to Chicago very early Thursday morning, renting a car, and driving two and half hours north.
We knew we’d be cutting it really close, but we thought we still had a better than average chance of making the rehearsal — odds that got a whole lot worse when we arrived in Chicago and saw what the midday traffic there was like.
In a quest to improve those odds, Valerie got behind the wheel. If you’re going somewhere by car and find yourself pressed for time, she is the person you want to be in command of that vehicle. This is, of course, my diplomatic way of saying that she’s not shy about driving really fast when circumstances call for doing so — which they definitely did last Thursday. I was relegated to the role of navigator, even though I’m always willing to take on other responsibilities as needed — you know, like opening water bottles and doling out snacks.
As we neared Madison, I let her know it was looking increasingly unlikely that we’d to manage to get there on time for the rehearsal. And so, she — having been charged with accomplishing that goal, and being someone who takes her responsibilities quite seriously — responded to my update by stepping on the gas a bit harder. Staring ahead at Interstate 90 with laser-like focus as the Wisconsin countryside went by ever faster, she asked matter-of-factly, “What exit am I going to be taking?”
I replied, “142…. And, just so you know, the speed limit here is 70.” Like I said earlier, I’m always ready to do more than what’s required of me, so when you ask me a question, you’re probably going to get your answer and then some, but I’ll leave it to you to figure out why I chose to volunteer that particular extra piece of information.
Valerie responded with a question that I’d describe as loaded: “Excuse me, did I ask you what the speed limit was?” And then it got really quiet in that rental car for a while because I didn’t want to dig myself in even deeper by saying anything else. There are some questions that don’t necessarily require a response; and sometimes you make things more difficult for yourself when you say more than you should.
“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” the Pharisees ask Jesus’s disciples in today’s short reading from Matthew’s Gospel. And this a pretty loaded question too. For starters, even though they technically ask it of the disciples, the question is really aimed at Jesus. And second, the Pharisees already know the answer (well, at least they think they do anyway): Jesus — this guy who claims to have been sent by God — can’t be what he says he is because he is violating God’s law by associating with people like that; he himself is unclean and unworthy because he’s always in the company of those who are unclean and unworthy. By even asking this question, it’s pretty clear that the Pharisees have already drawn their own conclusion; they’ve already delivered their verdict with respect to what’s going on here. But there’s more to this story.
To put today’s passage in some context, right before it begins, Jesus has just performed some healing miracles right after delivering his famous Sermon on the Mount — miracles that embody the kind of compassion and mercy towards people that Jesus demands in that sermon. And after today’s passage ends, Jesus goes on to do more of the same.
On the surface this might sound great, but these miracles also have a catch — at least as far as the Pharisees are concerned. What I mean by this is that Jesus tends to focus most of his healing energy on those deemed to be undesirables, outsiders and outcasts.
In the chapter right before today’s reading, Jesus touches and cures a leper; he heals two men who are possessed by demons and living in a cemetery among the dead; and then he heals the servant of a Roman centurion. Right after today’s passage ends, Jesus will lay his hand upon a dead girl restoring her to life, and then he’ll be touched by woman who has been bleeding continuously for twelve years (whom he then heals). And all of these acts were understood to be serious no-nos under a very literal reading Jewish law.
But Jesus doesn’t seem to care about that. When confronted with a choice between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law, he’ll always choose the former; he’ll heal anyone, anytime, without regard to social or religious boundaries. As you might imagine, the Pharisees — who are the enforcers of those social and religious boundaries — really loved that.
And so sandwiched in the middle of all these accounts of illicit healings is our reading for today. As it begins, Jesus is walking along and sees a man named Matthew, who happens to be a tax collector, sitting there in his tax collector booth; and he says to Matthew, “Follow me.” And Matthew, without saying a word, gets up and follows him. The fact that Matthew, this latest addition to Jesus’s growing band of disciples, was a tax collector is pretty important; and it definitely would have mattered to those Pharisees.
In that society, tax collectors were among the lowest of the low. They were an integral part of a system that took from the poor to give to the rich (some things never change). In addition, the exorbitant taxes the Israelites were forced to pay were used, in part, to fund the Roman Army that occupied Israel’s cities and oppressed their inhabitants (again, some things never change).
And the face of this entire system for the Jewish people was the tax collector who constantly demanded money from them. Suffice it to say, Matthew wasn’t the most beloved guy in town; and in the Pharisee’s eyes he was every bit as icky as all of those people Jesus had healed.
Apparently, after Jesus called Matthew to follow him, he invited a bunch of Matthew’s fellow tax collectors and other sinners of various sorts over to the house to have dinner with him and his disciples. The Pharisees really loved that too, and their increasing disdain for this whole situation prompted them to ask the question I mentioned earlier: “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
At some level, this was another one of those questions that didn’t really need an answer. As the Pharisees see it, Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners because he’s just as unseemly as those people are; as Jesus sees it, though, he eats with tax collectors and sinners because he cares about them and he’s called to minister to them.
Maybe Jesus could have just left well enough alone, remaining silent and agreeing to disagree. But instead, he chooses to turn things up a notch by giving the Pharisees an actual answer to their question; he says to them, “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.” It seems that Jesus, who was already in pretty deep for the things he’d been doing, decided to open his mouth and dig himself in even deeper.
You see, when Jesus tells the Pharisees the he “desires mercy, not sacrifice,’” he’s quoting the words God had once shared with the prophet Hosea (which were in today’s first reading). And when he tells the Pharisees to “go and learn what this means” he’s saying that these religious leaders, these keepers of the law, these defenders of the faith — have missed the entire point of the scriptures they claim to know so well and interpret for others.
Jesus’s point, of course, is that instead of focusing who’s clean, who’s worthy, who’s pure, and who’s welcome, the Pharisees should be tending to everyone’s needs; instead of working so hard to keep certain people down, they should be working to lift them up. And so, in his response to the Pharisees’ rhetorical question, Jesus essentially tells them that they’re either ignorant or hypocritical; and since neither option is exactly a compliment, I’m sure they loved that too.
But did Jesus really need to say anything here? I mean, it’s fair to say that doing so mostly served to get him in even more trouble than he was already in. Besides, as the saying goes, actions speak louder than words — and Jesus actions throughout the gospels (tending to the needs of people at the margins, associating with society’s outcasts, preaching and living out his love of God and neighbor) tell us all we need to know about who he is and what he stands for.
And yet, Jesus not only acted but also talked a lot over the course of his life and ministry, so it’s fair to say he saw both as necessary. Seeking to exemplify Christ’s way of being in the world, the Franciscans’ Rule for conduct from the thirteenth century declares, “Let all the brothers preach by their deeds,” but, the truth is, Saint Francis, who was an itinerant preacher, was quite a talker too.
The point of all this isn’t that words are unimportant, because they are important; it’s that our actions need to align with what we say — and with what we say we believe in — otherwise we, like the Pharisees, end up looking like hypocrites, and we certainly don’t want to do that.
As I learned in the car last Thursday, and as Jesus learned in today’s story from Matthew’s Gospel, words can get us in all sorts of trouble when we choose to use them. Sometimes we do this unintentionally and unwisely (like I did) and sometimes we do this intentionally and provocatively (like Jesus did). But, honestly, the worst kind of trouble we seem to get ourselves into with our words is when they are consistent with our deeds.
On the last weekend of this Pride Month we, as a congregation, will be voting on a new Open and Affirming Covenant. A whole lot has changed in the world and in our church since we adopted our initial covenant about thirty years ago, and the process that our ONA team undertook to revise it has been long and challenging, but also incredibly necessary. And, make no mistake about it: this is an process that we will need to revisit in perpetuity if we are to remain true to our goal of being faithful about the commitments we make to our siblings in the LGBTQ+ communities and the ways in which we choose to live into those commitments.
Because perhaps the single most important lesson that today’s gospel story teaches us is this: Words matter and actions matter; and if you say that you believe in something — if you say that something or someone matters to you — then you better be prepared to back up what you say with what you do.