Yesterday I was supply preaching at a church in Aurora, IL, a far west suburb of Chicago and the Gospel for the day was the call of Matthew to be a disciple of Jesus. Now this was a fairly traditional congregation but good folks that I enjoyed worshipping with but I would have liked to have had a projection system. I’m a product of my generation – I tend to think visually rather than in text and this story about Matthew begs for some images.
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. 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’?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'[a] For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
The way that I went with the sermon was our natural tendency to fall into us/them catagories, in this case Us = Pharisees/Church Members/Good People/God Approved vs. Them = Tax Collectors/Sinners/Non-Christians/Bad People/The Damned. What we forget is that Jesus came for “them”, not “us”, and if you begin to think of yourself as the preferred “us”, you’ve lost touch with the mission of Jesus.
My wife is a bigtime BonJovi fan and she turned me on to “Lost Highway”, which ties into some of this, since I see Matthew as something of the patron saint of lost souls.
In my rearview mirror
My life is getting clearer
The sunset sighs and slowly disappears
These trinkets once were treasure
Life changes like the weather
You grow up, grow old, or you hit the road ’round here
So I drive (drive drive)
Watching white lines passing by
My plastic dashboard Jesus
Waiting there to greet us
Hey Hey I finally found my way
Said goodbye to yesterday
Hit the gas, there ain’t no brakes on this lost highway
Yeah, I’m busting loose, I’m lettin go
Out on this open road
It’s independence day on this lost highway
Hey hey, hey hey
Don’t know where I’m going
But I know where I’ve been
I’m afraid of going back again
So I drive (drive drive)
Years and miles are flying by
And waiting there to greet us
Is my plastic dashboard Jesus
Hey Hey
Hey Hey I finally found my way
Said goodbye to yesterday
Hit the gas, there ain’t no brakes on this lost highway
Hell, I’m busting loose, I’m lettin go
Out on this open road
It’s independence day on this lost highway
Hey hey
Hey, hey
Oh patron saint of lonely souls
Tell this boy which way to go
Guide the car, you’ve got the keys
Farewell to mediocrity
Kicking off the cruise control
And turning up the radio
Got just enough religion
And a half a tank of gas
Come on
Let’s go
Sometimes we settle for mediocrity in our churches and worship, have too much religion and not enough Jesus, and way too certain about where we are going. Matthew had no clue and got up and went – a feeling I can really relate to right now. Jesus got into the midst of the real people, all the “thems” and spoke their language, ate their food, lived where they were, and invited them to bust loose for the journey, an independence day from sin to something new with him.
Like I said, I wish I had a projector but here it is for you.