Monday 19 September 2011

Matthew 9 – They that be whole need not


Imagine you were God.

And you’d come to earth to set up your kingdom.

And you were looking for the right people to help you run it.

I wonder… who would you pick?

Perhaps you’d draw up a list of the qualities you’d hope to find in the ideal candidate:

  • Must be religious (non-churchgoers need not apply)
  • Must be an acknowledged spiritual leader, pastor and teacher
  • Must be devout and pious, a man/woman of prayer
  • Must be a well-respected, upstanding, pillar of the community, active in local charities and voluntary organisations
  • Must give at least, say, 10% of income to the church
  • Must be a non-smoking, non-drinking, non-fornicating, perfect family man/woman

Imagine you lived in first century, Roman-occupied Palestine.

You could’ve probably done a whole lot worse than to select a few interviewees from a certain religious sect, mentioned thirty times in the book of Matthew (on average about once a chapter!), and right there in the thick of it as usual in Matthew chapter 9.

The Pharisees.

Devout; religious; holding to the highest moral standards; popular with the people; exemplifying everything upright and decent, respectable and godly.

The Pharisees were basically a “shoo-in” for the top job, and they knew it.  And it’s quite obvious from their remarks in Matthew 9:11 that they’d already picked-out wallpaper for their new executive offices up on the top floor.

“Here comes the big announcement, guys.  Remember, just act casual, and try to look surprised.  Wait a minute, why is he going over to those publicans and sinners!?”

Imagine their surprise then, when the Chief Executive himself started to call out the names, and amongst them were:

  • A paraplegic (Matthew 9:2)
  • A social and religious outcast, excommunicated from the synagogue (Matthew 9:9)
  • A corpse (Matthew 9:18)
  • An “unclean” woman, “polluting” everyone she came into contact with (Matthew 9:20)
  • Two blind men (Matthew 9:27)
  • And a demon-possessed mute (Matthew 9:32)

And much to the chagrin of the Pharisees, the only qualifications God seemed to be interested in were:

  • SicknessThey that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick (Matthew 9:12)
  • SinI am not come to call the righteous, but sinners (Matthew 9:13)

And that desperate, last-ditch, reaching-out-and-clinging-onto-something that Jesus called…

  • Faith Be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole (Matthew 9:22)

Faith?  Sure.  Must be a man/woman of faith.  That would be on anyone’s tick-list.

But, sin?  You’re having a laugh!

And, sickness?  How on earth can sickness qualify anyone for anything!?

Sickness is an aberration, a malfunction, a wrong state of being.

Some people say that the presence of sickness and disease in the world proves that there is no God.  At the other end of the spectrum, some people say that sickness is of the Devil, and it’s not God’s will for anyone to be sick.

If they were still here today, maybe that’s what the Pharisees would say.  Certainly, that’s what some of Jesus’ disciples seemed to be saying, when they asked him whose sins were to blame for a man’s lifelong blindness (John 9:2).

Jesus’ terse response to all such thinking is simply, “Only the sick man has need of a doctor.”

Perhaps it’s also true to say that only the sick man is aware of the “wrongness” of his situation, of the “wrongness” at the very heart of the human condition.

When a chronic depressive turns back the sheets on a bright new day, and the morning lies before him like an unbearable weight, he doesn’t need anyone to tell him that something’s not quite right with the world.

And as paradoxical as it may seem, that sense of “wrongness”, that sense of “need”, is the only true gateway to God, and the ultimate “rightness” of perfect “oneness” with him.

Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24).

And for a man who possesses all of life’s riches, in health, wealth, talent and temperament, position and popularity, how difficult it is to see more than two feet beyond those dazzling, all-consuming blessings, which unfortunately, like the proverbial “all good things”, must one day come to an end.

How perverse is human nature, when the more blessed we are, the more difficult it becomes to see the wood for the trees – to see the one, true blessing, which lies at the root of all blessings – the blessing of possessing God himself, and with him, all things.

How difficult it is for the little “Pharisee” in me, with all his comfortable respectability, his cold religiosity, his all-important social standing, to reach out, as the woman of Matthew 9:20 reached out – to reach out with nothing to lose, nothing to offer, nothing more to give – to reach out with hands that were empty enough to take hold of what so many in the crowd were too “heavy laden” to carry – to reach out “having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (2 Corinthians 6:10).

In one of Aesop’s fables, the North Wind and the Sun had a competition to decide which of them was the strongest.  They agreed that whoever first succeeded in making a passing traveller take off his cloak would be declared the winner.  The more the North Wind blew, the more the traveller wrapped his cloak around him, the more tightly he clutched it to his chest.  Only in the warming rays of the Sun did the traveller finally relax his grip, and let the now-superfluous cloak fall from his shoulders.

Sickness.

It can bend you.  It can twist you.

It can crush you.

But how perverse is human nature – in the warm sunshine of blessing, God so easily becomes “superfluous”, an unnecessary burden, just an extra weight to be carried on the road; whilst in the howling gale of sickness, the stricken traveller needs no encouragement to reach out for something – anything – to shield him from the blast; he needs no encouragement to reach for that once-burdensome “cloak”, to wrap it firmly around his shoulders, to clutch it tightly to his chest, to cling onto it with all his might.

Perhaps Paul said it best.

Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me
(2 Corinthians 12:9).