Follow Me...Everything Will Be Alright-Based on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Over the course of my very short life, I have found myself in situations where I was the one who stood out from others for obvious reasons, because I was a stranger. As a little kid, I found myself in North St. Louis on Ashland Avenue playing in the neighborhood, while my mom was having a baby shower. Needless to say, I was the only little white boy amongst the black children in the neighborhood. Some were quite surprised to see me there, but we managed to have fun anyway. In college, I was with a group of students teaching at an all Hispanic school in a border town in Texas. At different points in my life, I have worshipped with Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and Buddhists; yet all have been very welcoming of me. These experiences made me feel like a stranger in a strange land at times, but I was welcomed into these communities with open arms. Visiting Dover can be that way for people as well.

I cannot even begin to imagine seeing Jesus touch the lives of those around him in such a way that they are forever altered. To see Jesus take a tax collector and make him a follower must have been something else. Just the dinner conversation alone that evening must have been interesting as the other disciples would have met this man for the first time. Considering the other disciples came from reputable careers in fishing, to have a tax collector amongst them must have been a little “cheeky.” Consider the facts about a tax collector, here is a man who pays the Romans all taxes up front, and then collects an unlimited amount of taxes thereafter, making a hand over fist profit. People in the community are already jealous of this guy, because he has the ability to read and write, but they hate him even more because he works for the enemy and cheats them out of their very precious money. Here is a man who was hated and loathed by his own people, but is openly embraced by the Son of God.

The other miracle of faith here is the healing of the woman who had been bleeding for many years. A woman; according to the Jewish laws, who is unfit for social contact. This is a society that segregates itself based upon laws, and they are unaware of the issues those excluded from society are dealing with. Jesus knows that the woman is having problems, but he also realizes that she is a soul valuable to the community, regardless of her problem. Even though she has this problem, she is still valued to the kingdom of God. If you think about the segregation that takes place in our modern society, the caste system in India is a perfect example. You have the four levels of society, but at the bottom are the untouchables, who are people limited in income and job opportunities. Within our own history, we segregated our country based upon race.

Finally, the girl who was declared dead, found new life with a house call from the Great Healer. Jesus refused to believe that she was dead, but he acknowledged the fact that the faith of those around her was dead. They followed the law so closely, that they were blinded by the fact that anything new in their lives was possible. They had accepted death as the only option for their lives, not eternal life. For each of these cases, Jesus takes sick people and lets them know there is something in them that makes them a stranger to us no more, and that is their faith.

Jesus has entered your life for a reason. Most of us have been strangers to Christ at some point in our lives, where we came to him as sick souls in pain and desiring a cure for that pain. We found Christ at our most vulnerable times in life. I have friends in college who are in the accounting and business field, making almost six figure salaries, and yet they are unhappy and unfulfilled in life. They probably feel like Matthew the tax collector, in that they have these skills and they have money, but they have an empty life. Another friend of mine was a semester away from graduating from college, but got married and has basically wasted away in physical pain and mental pain ever since she got married. She is like the woman who was bleeding, and needs to know the healing power of Christ in her life. Another person I know is in the midst of killing herself slowly through her drinking, and she is someone who doesn’t know how important her skills are to the people around her. Her faith needs to be awaken and made vital again, instead of all the dead faith that surrounds her.

There are many strangers among our lives; that we have the ultimate task of making them realize that they have the cure for all their pain within them, and it is called their faith. Our faith was given to us, and developed by God, as a means of survival when we are sick. However, our faith cannot cure certain diseases or social situations, but it can help us through difficult times. People in our society need to hear that message of faith and be able to help themselves, rather than through artificial means.

I have to say though, the greatest image to me in this scripture is the fact that Christ welcomed the sinners and outcasts to his table for meals. Having a meal in those days was the ultimate welcoming experience. To have someone in your home and lavishing them with a meal was the ultimate sign of respect. To invite the unclean and sinner into your home, was really something special. Sometimes, churches forget their mission, which is to open their doors to all people. We are the place for everyone who is messed up in this world. People who experience broken marriages, diseases that are life threatening, the poor, the homeless, the families with messed up kids, and even messed up parents…they are all welcome here. If you have no car, if your home is roach infested, and you have flea bites…you are welcome here.

As a young child, I knew the importance of welcoming strangers into my home. My family has had the history in welcoming in people of all kinds of backgrounds for one reason or another, and it became second nature to me. Twenty years ago, I watched the Live AID concert on MTV and saw these megastars of music implore people to reach out to the people in Africa who were suffering from extreme poverty and famine. That kind of outreach showed me how important we are to one another. However, nothing compares to the outreach my mother did for a man she worked with who had AIDS.

AIDS in the 1980s was a scary thing as many of you remember. Nobody really knew whether or not you could catch it from casual contact or from someone sneezing. A young man by the name of Toby was the unit secretary for her floor and had contracted AIDS through unsafe sexual practices. He was the first person I knew who had AIDS. I had heard all of these horrible things about AIDS and couldn’t understand why my mom wanted to be around a man who had this fatal disease. When I would visit her at work on occasion, I would generally hide behind her and try not to even look at Toby. Toby knew that I was a naïve little kid, and he tried to explain his situation to me. He had enough compassion and faith to reach out to a little kid. As his condition deteriorated, the nurses who worked with Toby did everything they could to make him feel better. I remember mom making him food, because he used all of his paycheck for treatments. Toby died relatively quickly, but he has had a lasting impact on my life on how others should be treated.

We live among strangers and sinners in our world, but it s our mission in life to reach out to them and make them feel welcome at the table. We encounter some really interesting people and situations every day of our life, but what limits them from knowing God any better than we do? Some of the best places to find people new souls are in the places where Christians don’t like going, such as bars, nightclubs, ghettos, bus stations, street overpasses, and even third world countries. I am not like Johnny Cash, in that I have not been everywhere, but I have seen a lot of things in this world that can be changed. Sometimes we forget the words of Christ when he said, “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.” There are no strangers among us, as we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. We are all sinners, but knowing our faith, is the cure for all of our pain.