You may well not think of yourself as a particularly religious person here in church this morning. But the Bible is clear that we are all religious, whether we think of ourselves that way or not. Every human being worships something or someone. So no one came into this meeting this morning who is a non-worshipper. And I guess, also, everyone of us here has certain ideas about Jesus Christ: who He is, what He is like.
I’ve always been struck by this little cartoon.
(PICTURE HERE)
You see that little man there moulding Jesus to his own shape and saying, "Ah yes! That looks better!" We have a way of fitting Jesus into our own ideas. I think all of us are like that.
But today’s passage reveals Jesus as someone who would reverse that cartoon. It would be Jesus gently moulding you or me and saying, "I think that would be better". I think that if you and I had been present for these events in Matthew 9, we would have been as we saw what was going on. I think we would have found Jesus riveting but deeply alarming – like one of those street entertainers at something like the Edinburgh Festival who, as they wander along entertaining the crowd, keep picking on different people to embarrass them in ways amusing to everybody else. You can’t take your eyes off one of these guys, but you’re always nervous that he may be going to pick on you next. I think Jesus would have been like that – magnetic but disconcerting and disturbing: Is He going to pick on me next? Is He suddenly going to point out what’s wrong in my life? And I suggest that in this short passage He redefines for us: who are religious people; what is religious behaviour; and how I start a real religious life. So those are our three headings for this passage.
But first let me say that if all that talk about religion sounds deeply unattractive to you, remember what I’ve just said: we all have some sort of religion. We may even be worshipping ourselves. But is the sort of religion I have at the moment worth having? Is what I worship worth worshipping?
(1) Who are religious people? (Matthew 9: 9 -13)
‘As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him’ (v. 9). As you may know, tax collectors had an image problem in 1st Century Palestine. First, they worked for the Romans who had conquered the country and ruled it; so they were collaborators and traitors. Second, they made their money by extortion and fraud (in fact the rabbis classed them as robbers). And third, the job forced them to have contact with the Romans, non-Jewish Gentiles, and that made them permanently religiously/ceremonially unclean. To call one of these to follow Him was a strange act for Jesus. It might have been excused as a 1st Century act of political correctness had He left it at that. But the celebratory meal that followed was deeply shocking: ‘While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?" ’ (vv. 10, 11).
People who make their money dishonestly are usually people who know how to party. And we’re possibly talking here about the sort of occasion when there would have been a table in the corner where ‘pot’ was being smoked, another table, perhaps, where the local Mafia bosses were hatching their plans. Perhaps a prostitute wandered amongst the tables touting for custom. Maybe there was a stripper, a topless dancer. And certainly there would have been a great deal of drunkenness in all directions. A shocking and shameful scene.
Now look at verses 11 to 13: ‘When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?" On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." ’
I’ve asked Vicky and Rupert it they would act out for us three unlikely scenes in the doctor’s surgery. Here is the first of them:
"Next, please." "Hello, doctor." "Ah, hello. What seems to be the trouble?" "Oh there’s no trouble at all, doctor, I’ve come to tell you how tremendously WELL I’m feeling. There’s nothing wrong with my head or my neck or my back or my knee." "Really!" "I haven’t got flu, or mumps. There’s no trace of sleeping sickness. I haven’t got malaria." "Good!" "No concussion, no anaemia, I’m not depressed, I’m sleeping like a baby." "Fantastic!" "Fit as a fiddle. Bright eyed and bushy tailed!" "So! What is the problem?" "There is none." "No problem? That’s good! Goodbye!"
Have you ever gone to the doctor to tell him just how well you are? And yet how often you and I talk to God about our goodness. We think that’s what He’s interested in and, if we’re good enough, then He’ll be interested in our prayers and in answering them. He may bless us and help us in our lives.
But Jesus did not come to find out how good you and I are. He came to deal with how bad we are – to deal with our sins. God knows what He is dealing with when He deals with you and with me. He comes as a doctor to the sick.
Let’s try another unlikely scene in the doctor’s surgery:
"Next, please." Cough. "Hello Mrs ..." Cough. "Sit down please. My goodness, you look very ill, very ill indeed! Are you sick?" "Yes." "Have you been sick? Are you feeling very unwell? Do you know where this place is? This is absolutely disgusting! This is a doctor’s surgery and I’m a General Practitioner. GET OUT of the place before you infect everyone!"
Well, I told you they were unlikely! But it would have been as ridiculous for Jesus to refuse to deal with Matthew and his friends as for a doctor to refuse to have a sick person in his surgery.
It’s true that a human doctor may catch the disease from the patient. But it is not true of Jesus. We should not make any mistake about what was going on in this meal recorded for us in Matthew chapter 9. We shouldn’t think for one moment that Jesus’ presence at that meal implies that He condoned sin. Jesus wasn’t a 20th Century liberal, claiming that under their rough exteriors all these party-goers really had hearts of gold. And that the important thing was to get alongside them and to affirm them in their present situation. Jesus agreed with the Pharisees that these men were sinners. And He came to change that.
One more unlikely scene in the doctor’s surgery:
"Next, please." "Ah, hello. Mrs Smith isn’t it?" "I remember you, you came in yesterday. I’ve got your diagnosis now. You seem to be very ill. It’s my confirmed opinion that you’re very ill indeed. But I’ve got a solution: My suggestion is, GET BETTER! You must try really hard to get better. Cheerio!"
A doctor who told us to try to get better would be no help at all. You and I already know that we ought to be better than we are. We don’t need Jesus to tell us that. But He comes to deal with us at our point of deepest need. He comes to change us, to cure us. Look at verses 12 and 13 again. ‘On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." ’ And the person who is truly religious, according to Jesus, is not the person who is more righteous than others, but the person who knows that he or she needs forgiveness.
Now where does that put you this morning, can I ask you? Did you come to this meeting with any sense of needing forgiveness?– that there are things wrong in your heart and mind that need dealing with? Forgive me for saying this, but if you didn’t, you know you really should have left the service when we had that confession right at the beginning. There wasn’t any point in staying after that. There is only one place where God deals with human beings. It is at that point where they acknowledge their sin and ask Him to forgive it and to deal with it. You acknowledge what is wrong in your heart at the moment and ask God to touch you at that point. He can’t start anywhere else in your life or in mine.
Now to the second thing which, I suggest, Jesus redefines for us.
(2) What is true religious behaviour? (vv. 14, 15)
‘Then John’s disciples came and asked him, "How is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" ’ (v. 14). These questioners may have been provoked by what Jesus had just said, because He had called into question the Pharisees’ religious practices: their strict observance of religious ceremonies (like fasting) was what they thought put them right with God – made them righteous. Had they missed the whole point? Well, yes, if they had failed to recognise who Jesus was. ‘Jesus answered, "How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast" ’ (v. 15). Wedding guests don’t fast. I’m sorry that I haven’t got an unlikely scene at a wedding reception for Vicky and Rupert to act out for you. But we all know that when a man and a woman come together in marriage it is a time of great joy. And so, while Jesus walked on earth, it was no time for fasting, because He, the bridegroom was present. There would come a time for fasting once He had been taken from them.
So all religious behaviour must focus on Jesus. It is to be a personal relationship, not rule-keeping. The bridegroom is here, God has come down among you, relate to Him (or rather, relate to Jesus). That is what Jesus was saying at the beginning of verse 15. Christianity is an appeal for relationship; and all Christian behaviour can be summarised as doing what Jesus wants us to do. Christian behaviour is behaviour that is related to Jesus.
Have you ever thought what a strange compliment it is the way the word ‘Christian’ has changed its meaning? When you hear that phrase ‘a truly Christian act’ what does it mean? An act that has got nothing to do with Jesus, nothing to do with religion, but is really good. People say sometimes, "He’s a true Christian," don’t they? It’s a strange semantic twist when you think about it – to turn it away from Jesus. But an extraordinary compliment to Him that it has now simply come to mean ‘good’, because the human race has never experienced anything better than Jesus Christ and the teaching He gave us. If you and I would be truly good, then the first thing to do is to get back into relationship with Jesus Christ, the bridegroom. Human attempts to be moral without Jesus sooner or later go astray. They lead into hypocrisy or worse. Human moral principles cannot be trusted in the long run. The Christian’s moral authority is a Person, not a principle or a book of rules.
(3) How do I start a real religious life? (vv. 16, 17)
Jesus redefines for us how we start a real religious life in verses 16 and 17. First of all that little picture from the world of hosiery and haberdashery and tailoring, is just the same today, and doesn’t need any explanation: ‘No-one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for [when the garment is washed, the new cloth will shrink] the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse.’ That’s just the same today, but perhaps the next verse is a bit different: ‘Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved’ (v. 17). Specially tanned animal skins were used to store wine, and only freshly tanned skins have sufficient flexibility and elasticity to cope with the continuing fermentation of new wine, which is going to expand and would burst older skins which have become stiff and rigid. So Jesus is saying, don’t try and conform me to your own religious ideas.
Don’t do what that little man, in the picture I showed you at the beginning of the sermon, was trying to do – to push Jesus into a convenient shape to fit with your present life and principles.
Don’t do what the Pharisees were doing here: trying to conform Jesus to their idea of what the Jewish Messiah should be. Jesus doesn’t fit within human religious systems. And if we’re going to know Him, we have to throw our ideas out. It’s no good trying to tack Him on to them or fit Him into them. But we all try to conform Jesus to our own religious ideas rather than conform our ideas to Jesus. We want a safe system, under our own control, for access to the spiritual world: the world of meaning and truth.
So, for example, the human mind always wants human holy people – some sort of priestly caste of intermediaries, holy men, gurus, CU reps (which may seem a slightly ridiculous idea, but I just throw it in!) It is safer to look up and revere some human figure who we imagine has some sort of saintly holiness about him/her, rather than come face to face with God ourselves. And so the clergy (and I speak as one) get regarded by some as a sort of third sex (men, women and clergy-people).
Like the bachelor Bishop who used to say that he loved to stay at some of the grand houses in his diocese – the sort of place where a valet would unpack your suitcase for you and turn down the covers of the bed at night. But, he said, he always found it very disconcerting when he found that they had laid out his pyjamas on one side of the bed and his surplice on the other.
The longing for a human intermediary: one small girl was asked at Sunday School what she would do if she was alone at home and the doorbell went and she found it was Jesus there. She thought very hard and then she said, "I would ask him in, and I’d make him a cup of coffee and then I’d phone for the vicar." We’d call in the expert to make the situation safe – like calling in the bomb squad if you discovered an unexploded shell in the flower bed, or call on the vet if the goldfish is upside down or the hamster’s gone stiff or something like that. So when a death occurs in the family we call in the minister. Eternity has broken in on time – get hold of the Maker’s rep quickly to make the situation safe. It’s very natural, it’s very widespread; but it’s given the lie once and for all in the Person of Jesus Christ, who comes to you and to me to provide immediate access to God. That’s what Jesus Christ can do for you today. Through Him you can know eternity, you can know the Creator God, you can know the Almighty, Eternal God instantly.
In Him all the religious systems that we humans have devised have become redundant. In Him we have this immediate access – He Himself is the bridegroom: the one who has authority on earth to forgive sins. And a relationship with Him is new wine. Your and my religious ideas cannot contain it. And this Communion is about immediate access to God. The bread and the wine point us back to something that happened 2,000 years ago, when He died in our place on the cross and your sin was dealt with and my sin was dealt with at that point.
To summarize those few verses from St Matthew’s Gospel this morning, according to Jesus:
The truly religious people are the people who know they need forgiveness.
Religious behaviour is to relate to Jesus and to put Him at the centre of our lives.
We start the religious life when we push our ideas out and put Jesus in there instead.