Parish Magazine Item for July
From The Rectory
I don’t know if you’ve ever had that sense of finding your people, a tribe or individual with whom you particularly connect. Maybe at school your group were all into the same music. Or you feel a great bond with those who follow your sports team. In The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis wrote about friendship arising when two or more people discover “that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one."”
Perhaps we might ask, who were Jesus’ people? He came to his own people, the people of Israel. And he would send his disciples to all the nations, to all sorts and conditions of people, to “whomsoever” would believe in him. He calls us all.
But whom did Jesus seek out in the Gospels? Who sought him out? If we ask these questions of Matthew chapter 9, we find, perhaps, some surprising answers.
Jesus calls Matthew, a tax collector. Now, I don’t suppose most of us love paying taxes. But two issues make this particularly surprising. One, Israel was occupied by the Romans. To be a tax collector was to be a collaborator. And perhaps all that contact with Gentiles would make tax collectors ritually unclean. Likely, it at least made them questionable. And, two, tax collectors seem to have been corrupt. They seem to have overcharged and exploited people. And yet, Jesus calls Matthew to come and follow him. Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners. The strict, devout, sound, religious Pharisees don’t like it. Jesus is compromising. Lowering the tone. Selling out. What’s he doing? These are not the right sort of people at all. But Jesus says God desires mercy. He is a doctor who has come for people who know they are sick, not for the stuck up who think they are doing perfectly well without Jesus, thank you very much.
And then, a bit later in the chapter, two people reach out to Jesus. A synagogue ruler whose daughter has died. And a woman who has had a flow of blood for 12 years. Again, perhaps both of these involve ritual uncleanness (because of the association with death and blood). Jesus calls both the woman and the little girl “daughter”. The ruler and the woman seem very different. She’s shy. He’s respectable. But both of them are desperate. Both of them bring their need to Jesus. They come asking for mercy. They know they need a doctor, a Saviour.
Who are Jesus’ people? Men and women. Younger and older. Important and overlooked. The in-crowd and the outsider. Anyone in fact who will come to him with their need, anyone who will answer his call to follow him. Jesus welcomes us all to his table to come and eat with him. And he renews and transforms us. We can come to Jesus as we are, and he will make us whole and new. He will draw us in to his people and encourage us to welcome others in, to show to them the mercy we have been shown. Jesus’ people are, or should be, a surprising bunch, of needy repentant sinners who know his kindness and generosity to the desperate and undeserving.
The Revd Canon Marc Lloyd