Centered on the Margin (part 2)

Sermon by: Rev. Mary Alice Mulligan, Ph.D.

Scripture: Matthew 9:18-26

Last week we listened to the call and celebration party of low-life Matthew. Today, we hear that story again in part 2 of “Centered on the Margin,” but then we’ll add the rest of the passage the lectionary committee invites us to listen to.

On this Father’s Day, almost any father will tell us the birth of a child is a joyous miracle. So, we get a hint of the pain the father in today’s scripture feels when he learns his child is dead. Last week, Jesus “saved” Matthew from the tax table. Today, we look to Jesus to save a father from excruciating pain and his daughter from death. We also hear of another “saving.” A woman ill for 12 years secretly reaches out to Jesus, after all “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”

Listen for the word of God from Matthew 9: 9-13, 18-26.

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well. When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread throughout that district.

Usually, our attention is drawn to the spotlight. We are captivated by whoever is in the limelight. Like people are quick to report if they see Tom Brady hurrying through the Tampa airport. Wherever a crowd is cheering, that’s where we are looking. Of course, we don’t only struggle to see those who are famous. Our awareness is also pulled if we are driving down the highway and are passed by a Lamborghini. How sweet is that?

There seems to be a particular gene in humans able to detect who is most noteworthy. If we go to General Synod, back home at coffee hour we start by saying how William Barber took our breath away, and then how we got to meet the new General Minister and President, Karen Georgia Thompson at a Conference after-session. We just can’t help ourselves.

Probably most of us remember hearing about the person who was bent over, searching the ground under the streetlight at the corner. When a passerby asked what he was doing, the man explained he was searching for his house key which he had dropped. So the person joins him in searching. After a few minutes the helper asks him to point out exactly where he thinks he dropped it. He says, “Oh, I dropped it back down the block, but I thought I would search here, since there is more light.” We are drawn to wherever there is more light, more attention, more applause. No matter what the situation, whoever is in the spotlight gets our attention.

But not Jesus. He centers on the margin. The focus of Jesus’ attention is the periphery. In story after story, Jesus saves people in the “margin.” Last week, in part 1, we were reminded how unattractive the margin usually is. To say the margin is a place of disadvantage is an understatement. People in the margin exist in the shadows or have fallen between the cracks, out of the world’s notice; or if noticed, they are considered repulsive. The folks we hear about today display an array of marginalized hopelessness. We know the slimy tax-collector, Matthew, made disgusting occupational choices. And then the woman, ill for 12 years in a way that makes her religiously unclean, untouchable for all those months. And then a little girl, whose father is a religious leader, a person of power, but whose privilege and prestige cannot protect him from the worst event of all, the death of his child.

When Jesus approaches the margin, he cannot ignore the people there. As soon as his attention is drawn to them, salvation comes. Although in last week’s snapshot of the calling of Matthew we received the delightful glimpse of Jesus’ partying with the riffraff, today we are reminded that Jesus is not just having a good time. He is “saving” people. Today’s passage is about “salvation.” The woman who is doubly marginalized by her gender and her bleeding-illness is reported as saying to herself, “If I can just touch the fringe of his prayer shawl, I will be made well.” The word we translate “be made well,” is the same word we translate in other places as “saved.” “If I can touch his clothing, I will be saved.” In calling Matthew; in healing the woman; and in raising the dead child; Jesus is “saving” them – making them whole. The Bible dictionary helps by clarifying the word as meaning: to “rescue from impending destruction.”(1) By his words and actions, Jesus pulls people back from the edge of destruction. Get it? When Jesus attends to people, they are “saved” – saved from meaninglessness, from vice, from sickness, and perhaps even from excruciating loss. Jesus’ saving power is riveted on society’s margin dwellers. Jesus’ ministry, in fact, centers on the margin.

Which means, even we can be saved. Jesus can bring salvation to each of us. No matter what we’ve done. Now some of our siblings with a more conservative theology believe everyone is going to eternal punishment after they die, except the small percentage of people who claim Jesus as Lord and Savior, the one who saves them from hell. But conservative Christians are not the only ones allowed to use “salvation” language. The Bible shows lots of people “being saved” in this life. People are saved from childlessness by conceiving late in life; others are saved from certain death on stormy seas by God’s calming the wind; and people are saved from hell-on-earth meaninglessness by an invitation from Jesus Christ to join his community of disciples.

But salvation in not just found in the Bible. Consider the rough young man in eighteenth century England, who was met by some of his former drinking buddies. They began to tease him for taking his faith so seriously. He had become a “Methodist.” They taunted him: “So you are saved? You believe Jesus turned regular water into actual wine?” He replied, “I don’t know about that, but I know in my house, he turned beer into furniture.” Jesus rescued him and his family from a horrible life (what we might call certain destruction). He was saved.

So, we can talk about our salvation in the here-and-now. Right now, Jesus is reaching into the marginal areas of our lives to establish our well-being. Where we need him most, Jesus wants to save us.

Scholar David Buttrick, often uses the phrase: we become part of the “being saved” community, by which he means that Jesus does not just stop by one day to bless us with a promise of heaven and then we are “saved.” No, Jesus calls us to leave behind whatever has imprisoned us – as Matthew was imprisoned by the tax table. Jesus calls us to leave it behind and follow him, a continuous following. As we follow along the way of Jesus, we realize we are “being saved.” Salvation is an on-going happening. Whatever imprisons us – selfishness, hopelessness, poverty, grief, loneliness, meaninglessness, over-indulgence, meanness – whatever imprisons us, Jesus is calling us to be saved from it. He calls us to be part of the “being-saved” community.

Then, together we can center on the margin. As we follow the way of Jesus, we do what he did. Namely, focus on the margin where we find devastating hidden needs. The church of Jesus Christ is tasked with heading into the margins to carry on his saving ministry. Now don’t get me wrong. Humans cannot save each other by human effort alone, but we are not alone. Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into the church. So we participate in his ministry by the power of his Spirit, trying to be as attentive to the invisible, muted ones as Jesus was.

Isn’t it amazing? He knew when the fringe of his prayer shawl was touched by someone in the margin. So he encourages us to notice them, too. We need to notice those around us who are hanging on by a thread. As a congregation we need to ask: Who around us are the most desperate? Who are the most difficult to see? There is where we put our focus.

As a congregation, we already know some of the invisible ones are the children out of school for the summer, who are also out of the school breakfast and lunch programs. All Faiths Food Bank reports 40,000 children in Sarasota and DeSoto Counties are food insecure for the summer. Unbelievable, 40,000 children. St. Andrew focused on All Faiths as our monthly mission in April for that very reason, although we are welcome to add additional offerings anytime over the summer.

We know, as a congregation, we are already attentive to the margins. But who else needs our attention? Parents scraping by on minimum wage jobs, who put cardboard in their kids’ shoes when the holes are small, who haven’t been to a dentist in 20 years, who pray every day the car starts. Can we work for higher wages? Or what about our homebound members who haven’t received a real piece of mail or a phone call in weeks? Or the neighbor, the sole caregiver for an ill family member, who could desperately use an afternoon at Selby Gardens if someone would offer to spend a few hours giving a little care at the house. All those people, practically invisible, but Jesus calls us together to center on them, because in the biblical sense, our actions through God’s power, can save them. As the church of Jesus Christ, we carry on Jesus’ ministry by centering on the margins.

So, as recipients of the gracious salvation of Jesus Christ, we are invited to force our gaze away from the famous and comfortable, to focus on the marginalized of the world. And if we pay attention, we can feel the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit, filling us, then blowing us right into the margins to serve.

(1) From the annotation for Matthew 9:21 in The New Oxford Annotated Bible.