Matthew 9:9-13,18-26 Commentary

Notice who is willing to utilize the doctor in their midst. First of all, even a tax collector becomes a disciple! That tax collector is joined by others, sinners and cheats every one, at dinner with Jesus. The waiting room is full! And though some of the Pharisees complain about this practice, there is one religious leader who does come calling on the Great Physician because he realizes his need is greater than his pride. Sitting beside him in Jesus’s proverbial office is an unclean woman breaking the ritual purity laws to get her chance with the Doctor. Let’s take note of the fact that the synagogue leader makes no mention of Jesus needing to go cleanse himself from this interaction. The leader is in the thick of it himself, having already asked Jesus to come and touch his dead daughter’s body. Would this miracle on the way have encouraged him and his choice to not let death go quietly into the night?

Jesus tells the bleeding woman that her faith made her well. The word “well” is actually the verb in that sentence (to save), and it is in the perfect tense. Her faith has been part of her healing, and it will be a kind of healing that lasts. It is a different word than the one Jesus uses with the Pharisees in the first half of our text. There, the word means “being in possession of one’s physical powers” or “being competent or able” to accomplish things… as in, doing things with your own strength. Those of us trying to live on our own strength deny our need for the Great Healer and his recovery plans. But those of us like the synagogue leader and woman who was bleeding, we know where our limits are and know that we have to look outside of ourselves to the God who is greater. We live by faith in Christ’s strength, not by our own strength.

All the same, notice how Jesus gives the Pharisees a prescription for what ails them. He says, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” Jesus is telling them to become disciples of a new way of living their religion—or rather, to remember the old way that’s always been there alongside the offering system. The laws of the Torah that have to do with the sacrificial system are not in isolation to the laws in the Torah that have to do with how we ought to live. And in fact, in situations where the sacrifices cannot be made (such as exile or when the Temple is destroyed), and even when sacrifices were still being offered, the prophets kept harping on God’s desire to see them live their faith according to the statutes he gave them—laws which deal extensively with how to treat one another with mercy and limit revenge and harm done to one another. These were ever-present and were what came with the sacrifices wrapped up in confessing sins, thanking God, making peace with others, and symbolically expressing one’s devotion to God. This way of living, not the offerings in and of themselves, were how God brought healing and wholeness to the people.

And if God had to choose between the two, mercy and living in the Jesus way is more important than one’s religious ritual purity activities. In fact, God did choose, making Christ the final atoning sacrifice that replaced the Hebrew system for Christians and calling us to look towards becoming living sacrifices that taste like mercy instead.

Textual Point

The flow of chapter nine moves from a dinner party to some disciples of John coming to ask about fasting (which is not included in the lectionary selection) to that conversation being interrupted by these two people in need of miracles. The lectionary has paired the two stories that deal with a physician, but the story in between also highlights reality to me: this ‘random’ topic could perhaps be read as an example of the way Jesus is peppered with questions as he goes about his day. As a parent and as a teacher, the amount of random things I get asked, sometimes mid-class while we’re working on an assignment, makes this possibility feel very true to life. Just yesterday a former student walked into class a few minutes before the first bell to ask me what happens to our bodies and souls when we die, believers or otherwise!

Illustration Idea

Brené Brown has helped revive a Teddy Roosevelt quote in her book Daring Greatly: “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deed could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Might we confidently say that the Pharisees who chastise Jesus for eating with sinners are the critics? The woman in need of healing and the leader whose daughter had died are definitely people who know their need and are scrambling in the dust and sweat of life towards the one they believe can help. Faith, like Jesus models in his own ministry of trusting the will of the Father, is lived in the dust and sweat and blood. Literally.