Proper 5, Yr A (2026) The Rev. Karen C. Barfield

Proper 5, Yr A (2026)                                                                      The Rev. Karen C. Barfield

Romans 4:13-25                                                                        St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

In the name of the one, holy, and loving God:

            in whom we live, and move, and have our being. Amen.

The Pharisees asked Jesus’ disciples,

            “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

The Pharisees didn’t understand.

Jesus was a learned Jew

            who taught in the synagogues.

He came from good and faithful Jewish parents

            and a long lineage of Israelite people.

Why in the world did he keep violating Jewish purity codes

            by sitting at table with sinners?

Overhearing the Pharisees’ question, Jesus responds…

            “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.”

Now, these are loaded statements!

At face value, they are well and good,

            but I think Jesus is offering a bit of “course correction” for the Pharisees.

Throughout today’s gospel reading,

            Jesus does not seem to care about any “purity” codes.

First, he calls a tax collector to be his disciple.

Matthew was a Jew

            but had, to some degree, turned his back on his people

      by joining up to collect taxes for the Roman oppressors.

Tax collectors were also known to pad their own pockets

by extorting extra money out of the people,

      so you can add “greed” to his list of sins.

As Jesus walks by the tax booth, he calls out to Matthew:

            “Follow me.”

And Matthew got up and followed him.

Then Jesus sits down for dinner not only with many tax collectors

            but with other sinners as well.

Then a woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 long years touches his cloak…

            thus rendering him ritually unclean,

                        but he doesn’t care.

Instead, he calls her “daughter,”

            restoring not only her physical health

      but also her place within the community, from which she had been excluded.

Then he goes and touches a dead girl,

            once again rendering him ritually unclean according to Jewish Law.

But Jesus’ concern is only restoring the life of this girl

(and her father’s in the process).

Now, to be fair to the Pharisees…

            They are just being good and faithful Pharisees.

       They spend their life interpreting the Law and following it.

Jesus is doing a new thing.

“I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

The Pharisees are the righteous…

            in their minds, they are righteous and are being obedient to the Law.

      They do not associate with sinners or the unclean.

They do not recognize that they are in need of any healing.

It is interesting to me that all these other people in today’s story

            recognize their need for healing

      and that Jesus possesses the power to heal them.

That includes a leader of the synagogue,

            who kneels down before Jesus.

Maybe Matthew felt trapped inside his job as a tax collector

            but didn’t know how to get out

       until Jesus walked by and offered him the invitation to follow.

“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

“Go and learn what this means,

            ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”

This past week one of the pastors in our clergy Bible study said,

            “Sacrifice is about making right my relationship with God.

       Mercy is about tending to the healing and restoration of another.”

In today’s gospel story,

            Jesus is about tending to the healing and restoration of others,

       regardless of who they are, their position, or their circumstance.

Jesus is about mercy.

Love God.

            Love your neighbor.

      Love yourself.

Once again, as the Spirit seems to frequently work, this past Monday (June 1, 2026)

            The Center for Action and Contemplation posted a meditation entitled,

      “Loving Beyond the Boxes.”

“Father Richard affirms God’s desire for us to know and welcome all of ourselves

and others:

“God is clearly more comfortable with diversity than we are,

            and God’s final goal and objective are much simpler.

“God and the entire cosmos are about two things:

            differentiation (people and things becoming themselves) and

            communion (living in support of coexistence)….

“Religious people who use the scriptures to condemn or exclude others

            seem to have different goals and objectives from those of God or Jesus.

“Their arguments generally have to do with very secular concerns:

            power and control,

                        fear of the other and the unknown,

      and idealization of the family unit that Jesus himself neither lived nor idealized….

“Institutional religion tends to think of people as very simple;

            therefore, the law must be very complex to protect them in every situation.

“Jesus does the opposite:

            He treats people as very complex –

                        different in religion, lifestyle, virtue, temperament, and success –

      and keeps the law very simple in order to bring them to God:

“A legal expert put him to the test:

            ‘Teacher, which commandment in the Law is the greatest?’

“He replied to him,

            ‘You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart

                        and all your soul and all your mind.’

“This is the first and foremost, and the second is like it:

            ‘You are to love your neighbor as yourself.’

“On these two commandments hang everything in the Law and in the Prophets. (Mt. 22:35-40)

“Jesus takes the risk of allowing people the freedom to be themselves

            and to love God according to the shape of their own heart, soul, body, and mind!

“Religion developed for the sake of social control,

            but Jesus doesn’t give us much grist for the social control mill.

“Jesus is asking a different set of questions,

            ones that take away our private agendas

      and remind us of the ways we have not yet begun to love.

“For Jesus, it is all about union –

            union with God, others, and what is, however it presents itself.

“We cannot let labels trip us up.

“We all belong,

            but how cleverly our moral pretenses prevent us from struggling

       with what is right in front of us!

“How ingeniously our ego protects itself from compassion and understanding.”

[Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Where the Gospel Leads us,” in Homosexuality and Christian Faith: Questions of Conscience for the Churches, ed. Walter Wink (Fortress Press, 1999), 86, 87, 88.]

“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

“Go and learn what this means,

            ‘I desire mercy,

       not sacrifice.’”

My friends,

            we are all recipients of God’s love and mercy!

When Jesus walks by and calls out to us “follow me,”

            we are receiving the invitation to accept God’s mercy

      and then to go and offer that mercy to every person we meet.

God’s love and mercy extend beyond any box we can create.

Jesus appears inside locked rooms

            and breathes upon all the Spirit of God’s Peace.

Neither receiving God’s mercy…

            nor extending God’s mercy…

                        are easy things to do,

      yet it is to such healing and restoration that we are called.

May we have the courage and strength

            to get up and go.

Amen.