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From Black-and-White to Color
A sermon by Dr. Jim
Somerville
Pastor, Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost - June 8, 2008
Genesis 12:1-9; Romans 4:13-25; Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
When I read through the
Old Testament lesson last week I couldn’t help but notice how much Abraham and I
have in common. There he was, living in a place where things were familiar,
where life was comfortable, when one day—out of the blue—God told him to go.
“Go,” God said, “from your country, and your kindred, and your father’s house to
the land that I will show you.” In other words go from the place that feels
most like home to you, and from the people who are your closest family, and the
house that you’ve always lived in, to a place you’ve never been before, where
you don’t know a living soul. Well, that’s sort of what happened to me. I was
living in a place where things were familiar, where life was comfortable, when
God told me to go. But if Abraham and I have anything in common go is
not the worst word we can hear.
Some people are born under
a wandering star, and I imagine Abraham as that kind of person. I picture him
walking out to the edge of the pasture when the evening chores were done,
stepping up on the bottom rail of the fence and looking out toward the horizon,
wondering what was out there. Yes, he had inherited his father’s farm, and yes
his life was comfortable, but that’s all it was. He couldn’t help thinking
there must be more to it than that. And so the word of the Lord that came to
him may have been the sweetest word he could hear. “Go,” it said. “Go from
your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will
show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make
your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless
you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the
earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:1-3, NRSV).
Do you remember that story
about a man named Jed, “a poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed? But then
one day he was shooting at some food and up through the ground come a bubbling
crude. Oil, that is. Black gold. Texas tea.” For some reason when I read
this part of Abraham’s story I always picture Jed Clampett, running back to that
little cabin where he lived, telling Granny the good news, grabbing her hands
and dancing around the room. I can see Abraham doing the same thing, and I can
see him the next morning, sitting up high on the seat of a wagon with Sarah
beside him and his nephew Lot sitting on the load in the back as Abraham slaps
the reins and jerks away from the house, the morning sunlight on his cheeks and
a look of absolute rapture on his face, as if he were fully alive for the first
time ever, as if overnight his world had gone from black-and-white to color.
Was it like that for
Matthew, the tax-collector? Was he sitting there at his booth feeling the
resentment of every Israelite who slapped down a hard-earned coin to pay Roman
taxes when Jesus stepped up? And did Matthew, who had learned to avoid eye
contact, finally look up only to see Jesus looking down with eyes that knew him
through and through and loved him anyway? “Follow me,” Jesus said, and for
reasons even he couldn’t understand Matthew did. He got up from his collector’s
booth and followed, leaving the coins on the table. And something happened as
he did. He felt a freedom he had never felt before, as if the invisible chains
he had been wearing had just fallen from his wrists and ankles, as if the prison
door had swung open on its rusty hinges, and he stepped out into a brand new
world, a world that had gone from black-and-white to color in an instant, in the
time it took him to get up out of his chair and follow.
I’m having to fill in some
blanks here. I don’t know how Abraham felt about his call, or how Matthew felt
about his, but I know how I felt about mine. I know what can happen to your
life when you open the door to let God in, how light can fill up the dark
corners and color can flood the room. As I read the Gospel lesson last week I
could picture Jesus moving across the stage of this drama, lighting up one life
after another. He called Matthew to follow him, he ate a meal with sinners and
tax collectors, he healed a woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years, and he
raised a man’s dead daughter. It was all in a day’s work for him, but in his
work he brought people back to life and health, he brought them back into
relationship with God and each other. It was as if, everywhere he went, the
world changed from black-and-white to color behind him, and swirling rainbows
followed in his wake.
But not everybody was
happy about that. The Pharisees, for instance, seemed to prefer a world where
everything was black-and-white. When they saw Jesus eating with the wrong crowd
they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and
sinners?” In their black-and-white world it just wasn’t done. The world was
divided into those who were sinners and those who righteous and the two had
nothing to do with each other. So for Jesus, who was apparently some kind of
holy man, to sit down and eat with the obviously unholy was inconceivable. Why
did he do it? Didn’t he know that God wanted his people to be holy, even as he
was holy? Didn’t he know that true holiness required separating oneself from
all that was unclean? That’s what the word Pharisee meant, “to
separate,” and that’s why the Pharisees wore it like a badge of honor.
But Jesus wasn’t
separating himself at all. He was in there mixing it up with the tax collectors
and sinners as if he had no fear of contamination. “Why does your teacher eat
with those people?” they asked his disciples. But Jesus overheard them and he
said to the Pharisees what they were always saying to others: “Go and learn what
this means.” The Pharisees would usually follow that phrase with some quotation
from Scripture, some passage about holiness, about purity, about keeping oneself
unstained by the world. But Jesus said, “Go and learn what this means,” and
then he quoted from the prophet Hosea, the one who had married a prostitute as a
way of showing God’s unconditional love for an unfaithful people. “Go and learn
what this means,” he said: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I have come
to call not the righteous but sinners.”
I want you to imagine how
hard this was for the Pharisees to hear, and maybe you can imagine it, because
in the church, too, we often put a lot of emphasis on purity. We insist that
being a Christian means living a certain kind of life, a life free from the evil
influences of a sinful world. It stands to reason then that those who are the
“best” Christians among us are those who do the best job of keeping themselves
free from those influences, the ones who don’t cuss, or smoke, or drink, or
chew, just to name a few. But do you see how quickly Christianity can become a
religion of rule-keeping? Pretty soon we’ve forgotten that we were saved by
grace, and all we can do is keep score. “I’m a better Christian than she is
because I not only come to church, I teach a children’s Sunday school class.”
“Well, I’m a better Christian than he is, because I saw him putting a cold
six-pack of beer into the cooler on his fishing boat.” “Well, I’m a better
Christian than she is, because I’ve memorized the entire 13th chapter
of 1 Corinthians, the one about love.” “Well, I’m a better Christian than he
is. You won’t see my cutting my grass on Sunday.”
Can you imagine how all of
that would make Jesus want to jump off the pinnacle of the temple? “Listen,” he
says. “I didn’t come to pat you on the back for being good Christians, for
keeping yourself free from the sins of the world. The truth is people all
around you are drowning in sin and you won’t even stick out a hand to save
them! You’re afraid you might get dirty.” Where did we learn that kind of
behavior? From the Pharisees, the ones who were so concerned about keeping the
rules of righteousness, about keeping themselves separated from a sinful world.
And what did Jesus say to them? “Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy
and not sacrifice.” In other words, “I want you to look on the suffering of a
sinful world and feel the pain of its people. I want that pain to become your
pain until you have to do something about it, until you have to shuck off the
robes of righteousness and dive into that dirty water to see if you can save
somebody. That’s what I’ve done,” Jesus might say. “I’ve come not for the
righteous, who are standing on the riverbank, clucking their tongues and saying
“I told you so,’ but for the sinners who are going down for the third time,
gulping for air, who need all the help they can get.”
And then he shows us what
that kind of mercy looks like.
While he is sitting there
eating with tax collectors and sinners a man comes to Jesus begging for his
help. His daughter has died and he thinks Jesus may have the power to bring her
back to life again. In Mark’s version of the story this man is a leader of the
synagogue, and if it’s the same man in Matthew’s story it is remarkable that he
comes to Jesus while he is in the home of a tax collector. The tax collectors
were considered sinners, and sinners weren’t allowed in the synagogue, but the
leader of the synagogue goes into the house of a sinner because he is desperate,
and if you are desperate enough you will do anything. In a moment like that
none of your so-called righteousness seems as important as getting your little
girl back. Can you understand that that’s just how God feels about the world,
and can you see that he is determined not to let the rules of righteousness
stand in his way? He sends his son Jesus, who seems perfectly willing to break
the law for the sake of love.
As Jesus goes he is
approached by a woman who has been hemorrhaging for twelve years. According to
Leviticus 15 she was ceremonially unclean. She couldn’t enter the synagogue as
long as her impurity continued, and anyone who touched her or anything she had
touched would be considered unclean. And so she sneaked up behind Jesus
thinking, “If I can only touch his cloak I will be healed, and he won’t have to
know about it.” But he did know about it, and instead of saying, “What have you
done to me, you sinful woman? You’ve made me unclean!” He turned to her and
said, “Take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well.” And just like that
she was healed, and her world changed in an instant from black-and-white to
color, and Jesus went on his way, rainbows swirling in his wake.
When Jesus came to the
leader’s house the professional mourners were already there, wailing away, and
the flute players playing their mournful dirges. Somebody had died, and they
wanted everyone to know it. But Jesus said, “Go away. She isn’t dead; she’s
only sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But he ignored them. He went on into
the house and sent everybody else away until it was just him and the body of
that poor girl. She lay there on the bed like a black-and-white drawing, a
shadow of what she had been before. And Jesus, looking on, was moved with
compassion. According to Numbers 19 anyone who touched a dead body would be
unclean for seven days. Jesus knew that, but it didn’t stop him from reaching
out to take this girl’s hand. If anyone had been there they might have seen the
life coming back into her body like flame creeping up a piece of newspaper, they
might have seen the color rushing back into her cheeks. They might have seen
her eyes flutter open and the look on her face when she saw Jesus. And they
might have seen that as far as he was concerned even this one life was more
important than all the rules in the world.
Strange things can happen
when you let God into your life. Things that once seemed so important to you
might not seem so important anymore. You might give up the family farm, pack up
all your belongings, and head out for an unknown country as Abram did. You
might come to understand that it’s grace, and not being circumcised or keeping
the commandments that saves you, as Paul did. You might look up from your day
job to find Jesus looking back at you with love and understanding, as Matthew
did. You might discover as all these people did that when you let God into your
life things change. His light reaches into all the dark and dusty corners,
fills you with a sense of shining possibility, and sometimes even before the end
of the sermon, you find that your world is changing…
…from black-and-white to
color.
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