This is the sermon delivered by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen at Ashiya Christian Church on Sunday, June 11, 2023, drawing from Matthew 9:9-17.
The Bible passage we have for today is a little interesting, in part because we don't always read these verses together. When we read this part of the Bible, we'll often read the calling of Matthew in verse 9 as one thing, then read verses 10-13 as a separate and unrelated conversation, and then read verses 14-17 as one more entirely different conversation altogether. Rarely will we take the time and look at these they way they were meant to be understood; as three parts of a connected lesson; a single, concrete story making a very, very important point.
The three parts of the story - Matthew's calling, the argument with the Pharisees about sinners, and the argument with John's disciples about fasting - might seem to be unrelated. But as Jesus often does in the Bible, he is using the different people and situations around him in order to make a much larger point about who God is; demonstrating God through his behaviors as much as through his teachings.
So Jesus begins here by calling a brand-new disciple, Matthew, and then immediately taking this new disciple into a place where he would be not only in conflict with these Pharisees, as we might expect given their rigid and uncompromising theology, but also with another group of disciples who come from a similar theological school as Jesus.
Think about that. Matthew’s first exposure to following Jesus is being thrown right into conflict. He sees, right away, that the Christian path leads to places of conflict, places that put Christ’s followers up against the traditions and expectations of the world.
As soon as Matthew decides to follow Jesus, he immediately gets drawn into a moment of contradiction between the beliefs of the strict religious traditions of his time, and the confusing, difficult path that God has laid before Jesus and his followers. And that conflict begins with what is easily my favorite question asked of Jesus in this gospel, when this group of traditionalist Pharisees approach Matthew and ask,
"Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"
Now I want us to take a moment and sit with that word there, sinners. One of the more interesting things I've found about the teachings of Jesus is that when he talks about sin he is usually very, very specific. He'll give details, tell stories, weave parables, and more, all to explain to those listening exactly what he means. In Matthew 25, for example, when talking about the great separation between those who God will welcome as beloved and faithful, and those who will get to experience eternal fire, Jesus doesn’t just call the unfaithful people “sinners.” He is actually very descriptive, very specific about what he means:
"I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I
was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick
and in prison and you did not visit me.’"
Whenever sin comes up, Jesus may not always be clear - parables can be confusing for some, after all - but he is usually specific. It's not like Jesus to simply refer to a group as "sinners," as though what made someone a sinner was self-explanatory, and understood simply and clearly by everyone present. Jesus knows that “sinner” is a loaded word, and one which isn’t very well defined!
So when we hear that word tossed out in today's story, to describe the people that Jesus has specifically chosen to sit and have dinner with, we can understand that while this may be how these Pharisees describe Jesus’ dinner companions, it's not at all how Jesus would describe them himself.
You see these Pharisees, like many of us, used the term "sinner" to refer to basically anyone who didn't meet their rigid, specific, and very narrow understanding of what it meant to be a "good" person. Sometimes that might have had roots in the scripture, but oftentimes it was more cultural than anything. Tax collectors, for example, were just hated for who they were and what they did in society but, in those days, there was nothing in the scripture that said tax collecting was a sin! To these people, the term "sinner" referred to the poor, the hungry, those who were ritually "unclean" (not unlike the Japanese burakumin, for example), disobedient women, anyone from Samaria, anyone who was sick….basically, any sort of oppressed, suffering, or minority group in society could (and often did) wind up being considered a "sinner" by these Pharisees.
And that is who Jesus, without a second thought, chooses to sit down and eat with. He chooses to sit with those who are suffering in society, not those who are prospering from it. He chooses to sit with those who have been abused, rejected, and left out, rather than those who have been fully welcomed. And, as he explains to those Pharisees, he chooses to show mercy to these beloved outsiders, rather than sacrificing them in the name of social conformity.
The love of the outcast is more important to Jesus than the comfort of society.
And as those Pharisees wander off, the disciples of John come over next, asking why they fast often, the Pharisees fast often, but Jesus and his disciples don't fast very much. After all, as different as John's disciples and those Pharisees might be, they all can at least agree on these basic, traditional practices, right? These important rituals that have been passed down in the church for generations, these ways of doing things that haven't changed in ages upon ages must be good, and right, and true, right?
And once again, Jesus contradicts them. Just like our church communities themselves, wineskins are something that becomes more brittle as they get old. They harden, and crack, and break, which is exactly what you don't want to happen with the thing you're putting wine into. If you don’t bother to replace your wineskins from time to time, taking it for granted that what worked yesterday will work tomorrow, if you keep pouring new wine into that wineskin again, and again, and again, that wineskin will eventually start to leak.
It’ll just be a drop or two at first; so small you might not even see it. But before long those drops become a trickle, and that trickle becomes a break. Before too long that wineskin you’ve been ignoring won’t be able to hold any wine at all. No matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you work, your best efforts will end with you just pouring wine right through the cracks, and onto the floor.
There may be some wine left over, pooled in the bottom, but nothing new that you try to put into it will stay.
No amount of effort will ever make that wineskin hold new wine again.
For a great many churches in this world, this is what life has become. We make new programs, invite friends, hold concerts, parties, and anything else we can think of, working our hearts to exhaustion trying to infuse our communities with fresh, new wine. We want people to come, to gather, and be a part of our life as a church community.
But we want that community to be the same as it always was; old wineskins, but with new wine.
So we keep pouring our efforts into bringing in new people, trying to fit them into old systems and we watch, helplessly, as they fall through the cracks. Young people wrestling with some of the greatest and most difficult ethical and moral questions of our time come to church, and find polished worship, shiny guitars, loud music, and no answers whatsoever. Families struggling to make it to their next paycheck show up looking for mercy, grace, and a little bit of hope, and find churches run by the wealthy few who turn away the needy because it’s not in the budget.
Safety and stability become the focus of our churches, as that new wine spills through onto the floor.
And as we look around our sanctuaries wondering where Jesus is, we realize why the parable of the wineskins is paired with that first question, the one about sinners. That passage shows us that Jesus doesn’t gather together with those who do things the right way, who’ve lived a safe and careful life in the cracked, old wineskin of the traditional church.
The loving work of Jesus isn’t in here; it’s out here.
Jesus knows what we do not; that the next generation of the church is living and breathing right now among all those we've long called sinners. The next generation of the church is growing and rising among those who are different, those who are unusual, and those who are weird. The next generation of the church is gathering and moving among all of those who live their lives in ways we don't yet understand, but who are made just as much in the image of God as any one of us.
Jesus knows that the next generation of the church doesn’t fit in our cracked and old wineskins. That’s why we’re meant to throw them out.
Because the goal of our church, of Christ’s church, was never to dutifully and faithfully fix up the old wineskins anyways. The goal of Christ’s church is to go out and find brand new-wineskins, to fill them up with joy, and hope, and grace, and mercy, and love, and then to go out from these walls in search of all the lost and broken people of the world with whom we can share this overflowing cup of God’s impossible love.
So, as we go forward as a people who I know truly love Christ with all our hearts, and our minds, and our very souls, let’s start looking for new wineskins; new ways to be a church that sits with the oppressed, the suffering, the poor, and the outcast, knowing that it is in this new and unexpected place, among new and unexpected people, that Christ Jesus always chooses to take a seat.
Amen.
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