A Tale of Four Healings

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

6-11-23

 

If I Only Touch The Hem of His Garment
Elizabeth Wang

I struggled to figure out why these two sets of stories

are here together in one reading.

Up until this morning, I was thinking about

chucking the last part out and  

pretending the gospel writer didn’t put them together.

But where’s the challenge in that, right?

After thinking about it, I came to a conclusion:

These are four stories of healing.

Some obvious, some not so obvious.

 

First the obvious:

We have the story of the leader of the synagogue

whose daughter is on the brink of death,

or may actually have been dead.

The leader in his desperate faith tells Jesus,

“if you only lay your hand on her, she will be healed.”

And the second, on the way to that healing,

Jesus is interrupted by a woman

who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years.

In that time, it wouldn’t have just been an inconvenience

for her, she would have been seen as unclean,

and would have been separated from the community.

In her desperate faith she tells herself,

“If only I touch his cloak, I will be healed.”

 

These are the two obvious stories of healing.
Two people are sick or dying and then

they encounter Jesus and they’re not.

There are two others that are not so obvious.

One is the calling of Matthew.

 

 

Matthew, or Levi as he is also known, was a tax collector.

Now when we think of Tax collecting,

we think of an IRS auditor, which, although

it’s dreaded if we’re being audited,

it’s mostly seen as a respectable occupation.

So if we just read it without the historical context,

it’s just a story of Jesus calling a business man

with a slightly annoying occupation to be a disciple.

 

But tax collectors were seen as a little more than annoying.

After the Roman Empire took over a country, the countries remained generally how they were before,

except that the citizens had to pay taxes to Rome.

To do this they would employ a local person

someone who lived among and already knew everyone,

who knew who all the people were, who had money, and did trade.

They set up toll booths on the road, taxing people

coming in and coming out of a town or area to do business.

 

The Romans would give this person a contract

for an amount of money and the Tax Collector would have to raise that amount of money. 

Then the Tax Collector got personally paid by what they could raise above that amount of money.

So the more they could strong arm out of the people and businesses, 

the more wealthy and comfortable they were.

 

Tax collectors were hated by their community.

They were seen as traitors – they were in cahoots with the oppressor. 

They were ostracized from their communities.

No one wanted to be around them.

They most likely ate with other tax collectors,

or even with other Romans or Gentiles.

No respectable religious person would have eaten with a tax collector 

because that would make them unclean too.

So Jesus sees Matthew is sitting in his tax booth one morning,

Jesus is not just polite to Matthew.

Jesus doesn’t just say have a nice day,

which could have been seen as a scandal in itself.

 

Jesus asks Matthew to follow him.

To be one of his disciples, to be part of his religious

community. And Matthew does this.

He goes and follows, leaves his old life behind

and finds a new life as a disciple of Jesus.

Matthew is healed of his life of oppression and corruption.

And that Matthew is the third healing.

 

But there is one more.

 

Right after the calling of Matthew,

we see Jesus and the rest of the disciples,

eating with Matthew.

In Luke’s gospel, it says Matthew threw him a party.

And at this party, was all of Matthew’s friends –

the other tax collectors and Jesus is eating with them.

 

Now because of the weather and the way houses

were built, most dining was in the open,

out in front yards or in places where people could be seen.

 

Some public and religious figures used

this to capitalize and show off their status.

Kind of like celebrities go to clubs

and movie premiers and awards shows.

 

So other people are watching this party

and seeing Jesus, the up and coming preacher

in town, eating and having a party

with these hated and despised people.

  

We first hear line from the other religious leaders that

we will hear repeated over and over again in the gospels:

“Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

 

And this is the fourth healing story.

 

Jesus is in the midst of a community that is divided.

One that believes that some people are sacred

and some are unclean. That some are worthy of God’s love and some are not. 

A community of haves and have nots.

And his public presence with the assumed “have nots” of

God’s love is the first step of healing that division.

Jesus is healing both the sinners and tax collectors,

who have assumed they are outside of God’s love,

and he’s healed the religious people who think they’re

better and more worthy than the tax collectors.

 

Now sometimes healing doesn’t feel like healing

at first, sometimes the doctor has to break the leg again

to get it to set right again. And of course, that leg takes

a whole lot more time to heal, but it’s still healing.

 

By eating with those sinners

by hanging out with all the wrong people

by calling a tax collector to be his disciple,

Jesus is healing this rift by showing all of them

that God’s call and care are not beyond anyone.

As much as he heals the woman who’s hemorrhaged for 12 years,

Jesus is healing this community.

 

My internship congregation was in Milwaukee, WI.

I worked with two churches,

Reformation was the name of one of them.

In the 60’s and 70’s Milwaukee changed a lot.

By the 1980’s, all of the members of Reformation

and the businesses and the funding and tax dollars

had moved out into the suburbs, and the neighborhood that the church was in was mostly black and very poor.

And because of the lack of opportunity and support,

it was a pretty dangerous place.

 

On Sundays, in the 80’s, the members of Reformation would

drive to the church and the members would wait in their cars, 

and the council president would get there and he would unlock the door and stand by it. 

And he would wait for the rest of the congregation

and the supply pastor to come, and when the last person came 

(there were like only like 30 of them,

so it was easy to count) he would lock the door

and bolt it up and they would have worship.

And after worship and a cup of coffee

they would do the same thing in reverse.

This was a very unhealthy situation.

They didn’t know it, but they were very sick.

 

Then in the 1990s they called a full-time pastor.

His name was Mick Roschke and he had a very different idea of how to do church.  

He had this building that was basically empty

during most of the week, so he invited people in the neighborhood in for different things. 

He would walk the neighborhood looking for

anyone who would receive him.

 

Single mothers, prostitutes, drug dealers, drug addicts.

He’d invite them in the church for grief support groups

and addiction groups, for donuts and coffee,

he got doctors to come and give clinics and check-ups.

He got bikes donated and he said

he was giving them out like sticks of gum.

By the time I got there 10 years later in 2002,

the church was no longer at 30 people sneaking in and out of  the doors, 

there were hundreds there on a Sunday.

Mostly all people from the neighborhood

but some old timers were still there.

Now Reformation was a beacon to the community.

 

I was part of a grief group that was made up of

drug addicts, former drug addicts,

and mothers who had lost their children to drugs

and gang violence. The pain that all of them

had seen and experienced was astounding.

 

Reformation was the place where people knew

they could come during the week for food,

support, and counseling, for justice, for bible study,

and just for friendship and a hug.

 

I looked them up today and one of their quotes says:

Reformation has “an irrational commitment” to a community

of people that society generally doesn’t want to deal with;

it is what Reformation is called to do.

It seeks a compassion that “stands in awe of what the poor

have to carry rather than in judgment of how they carry it.”

 

That community and that church were healed by inclusion.

It’s still not rich, and there’s still problems, but the people

who come through those doors have been healed of addictions,

and have turned away from drug dealing and violence.

And old and new members have been healed of the idea that

some are outside of the scope of God’s love and care.

  

Now, some of the old members of the church were still there

when I got there, and they told me that it did not

feel like healing to a lot of them at the time.

They grumbled and gruffed like the religious leaders.

And a lot of them left, but a surprising amount of them stayed

and were there to tell me what the transition was like.

And how their notions of God and the neighborhood their

church was in was changed in the process.

They were healed too.

 

We live in communities in need of healing.

We have sick and dying,

we have the corrupt and the cruel.

We have communities that are torn apart

and we have communities along side them

that are divided from them.

We are sick and we don’t even know it.

 

We at Christ Lutheran are a community of people,

who come together

for mercy and to give mercy,

we are the saved and we are called to save,

we are the receivers and the givers

we are the forgiven and the forgivers

we are saint and sinner for the world.

 

Jesus, the physician, has come to heal us all.

And he has called us to follow,

to follow him in mercy, and to heal the sick.

Some of us are called to help heal the body,

but all of us are called to help heal the community.