Come Inside
This is the sermon I preached Sunday at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text was Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26. Isn’t Jesus always getting into trouble? He hangs out with the wrong people, the inappropriate people, the people he was told to stay away from, the great unwashed. Why can’t he just learn to fly under the radar? Life is so much more comfortable that way. He could still do good, heal a few people, but the right kind of people—the good religious people who don’t stir up trouble. In today’s gospel, we find an array of characters: good religious ones, on the inside of society and those on the outside of society by virtue of their birth or their diseases. We have three distinct movements in this passage, which is why three different people read this passage: The call of Matthew (v. 9). The account of Jesus’ table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners (vv. 10-13). Sandwiched stories of restoration of synagogue leader’s daughter (vv. 18-19, 23-26) and woman with persistent hemo