Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Year A, RCL

June 8, 2008

All Saints’, Bentonville

Gospel:

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him.

And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" But when he heard this, he said, "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."

While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, "My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live." And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, "If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well." Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, "Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well." And instantly the woman was made well. When Jesus came to the leader's house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, "Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping." And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread throughout that district.

This morning’s Gospel reading starts off, “As Jesus was walking along”.  What a walk it turns out to be. First he bumps into Matthew, the tax collector, a lackey of the hated Roman occupiers of Judea.  Then he accepts a dinner invitation with Matthew and his fellow tax collectors, as well as an assortment of other sinners. Then a rich man, a leader in the synagogue, overhears Jesus saying that he desires, “mercy, not sacrifice” and the leader promptly falls to his knees and asks for Jesus to come restore life to his deceased daughter.   As they make their way to the daughter, Jesus is stopped by a woman whose menstrual cycle has continued unabated for 12 years and is therefore considered unclean by proper society. 

You see, Jesus was in the process of forming a new community.  A community where sinners and saints, rich and poor, the accepted and unacceptable, the sick and the healthy, all are included in the encompassing mercy and love of God. In his short stroll through the Judean countryside Jesus reveals his intention to abolish the distinction between insider and outsider.

Communities have historically formed by creating distinctions between who is accepted as part of the community and who is kept outside.  Jesus’ message was radical because he was introducing a new operating principle - one that eliminated the usual division between insiders and outsiders.

One of the 20th century’s most original thinkers, Rene’ Girard, has taught that the formation of human communities involves, at its heart, the scapegoat mechanism, the selection of a victim to be sacrificed for the benefit of the rest of the community. Group solidarity has long been dependent on the creation of the scapegoat.  We seem to need someone to blame in order to hold us together. 

I grew up in a time when we tended to blame the communists for all the ills in the world.  With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the disappearance of that particular scapegoat, we searched a bit, until 911 gave us a whole new category of outsiders to hold responsible.  So we blamed the billion Muslims in the world for the malicious actions of a few dozen.  Seeking solidarity within and a scapegoat without, we choose to invade Iraq.  And more locally, here in Northwest Arkansas, looking around for the outsider to blame for our problems: the presence of drugs, crime, crowded medical and educational facilities, even traffic, we look for those who are different and find brown faces to blame.  “It’s the illegals,” we say, “that’s the problem.”

But in the midst of his wanderings among the scapegoats, among those usually offered up as sacrificial lambs, Jesus said, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

If the maintenance of our faith community was dependent on the castigation of the other, on the creation of the outsider, it would be perfectly understandable.  It’s the way that human beings have evolved, the way in which communities formed throughout human history.  It’s just not what Jesus taught.

Now this is an interesting gospel message to hear on a day in which we celebrate the rite of Holy Baptism.  Baptism really does seem like an insiders practice.  Although the rite is available to all, it is a rite that creates a distinction – a distinction between those who have been baptized and those who haven’t – between those who have been symbolically accepted as a full a part of the Christian community and those who have not.

But what we envision for the children who are being baptized this morning, for young Gavin and for Braden, is a world where community solidarity isn’t dependent on the creation of the outsider - a world where we take seriously the baptismal covenant, words that we will all say together in a moment, when we promise, “to seek and serve Christ in all persons, striving for justice and peace among all people”. 

I received a call the other day, from Margarita, a leader in the Hispanic community in Northwest Arkansas.  The purpose of her call was to talk with me about the need for children of undocumented immigrants to receive physical examinations at the Community Clinic.  Physicals are a requirement that the school system has for children to enter into school.  But as we talked she spoke of another concern, children entering the school system are required to present birth certificates – and that sometimes presents a problem for the children of parents without documents.  Then Margarita mentioned that in lieu of a birth certificate, baptismal certificates are sometimes accepted.

It is at that moment, I had a vision.  I imagined our baptismal font, the one you see in front of you, positioned on the sidewalk in front of an elementary school on the first day of class.  I imagined an alb clad acolyte holding the cross beside the font, and another pouring water into the basin.  And maybe another holding a sign that says, “El Santo Bautismo – Gratis”.  Holy Baptism – Free. And a line of beautiful five and six year old children, their dark eyes filled with anticipation and hope,  ready to receive the waters of baptism, the chrism that marks them as Christ’s own forever, and then a baptismal certificate that certifies that the child received the sacrament of Holy Baptism with water. But a certificate that also records their date of birth and parentage and thus grants them entry into an educational system – thereby proclaiming by Word and by example, the Good News of God in Christ – that in this world their will be respect for the dignity of every human being.   It’s a baptismal certificate acknowledging that in Christ there is no outsider, no other, no need for scapegoats.  What is radically different about the formation of a Christian community is that solidarity isn’t dependent on the creation of a people that are outside of the love of God.  The good news in Christ is that we are all part of the Kingdom.