Matthew 9: 9-26 (links validated 5/17/26a)
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Jesus comes to save the whole world. He does it one table, one dinner at a time, because eating together is a way we have of connecting to each other. One writer said, I have many food-related memories from childhood. Food bank lines stacked with government-issued blocks of processed cheese my scrawny arms could barely carry. Mean lunch ladies who told me that free lunch kids like me could only have the white milk, not the chocolate milk. I learned early that food could divide people or make someone feel excluded. I learned the economic difference between white milk and chocolate. I have other memories of food, such as my mother’s fried chicken. I remember those rare Sundays when she wasn’t working as a nurse’s aide, when she would invite folks from her church to Sunday dinner. It didn’t really matter who you were—you would lose your sense of etiquette trying to negotiate your favorite piece of that golden brown bird. I learned that food could make one feel welcome. I learned that hospitality—and, symbolically, food—could not only mediate social relationships but even break boundaries. Whom we ate with could be inclusive and recalibrate relationships. It was always powerful to see my mother as host and pastors and parishioners as grateful guests. God’s hello’s interrupt but they also break boundaries; God’s hello’s come out of the blue but lead us to God’s path...Sermon Starters (Proper 5A)(2026)
Brené Brown has helped revive a Teddy Roosevelt quote in her book Daring Greatly: “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deed could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” Might we confidently say that the Pharisees who chastise Jesus for eating with sinners are the critics? The woman in need of healing and the leader whose daughter had died are definitely people who know their need and are scrambling in the dust and sweat of life towards the one they believe can help. Faith, like Jesus models in his own ministry of trusting the will of the Father, is lived in the dust and sweat and blood. Literally.Breaking Through Barriers
Anne Lamott is a now well-known Christian writer, but no one could have foreseen that in her early adult years. At that time, she says she was addicted to drugs, alcohol, tobacco and bad men. She lived in a houseboat near a dirt-poor neighborhood. Lamott writes, “This is where I liked to be when I was hung over or coming down off a cocaine binge, here in the dust with all these dusty people….” There was also a Presbyterian church nearby — a ramshackle, run-down, hole-in-the-wall, with a handful of old black women who could sing. Sometimes Lamott would stand by the church door and listen to the music. But she would always leave before the sermon began. She wanted nothing to do with Jesus. After a few months she would sometimes enter the church to be surrounded by the music and to join her voice with the handful of singing people. But she still left when it was time for the sermon. Then one day she found out she was pregnant. The father was married to someone else and she was in no shape — financially or in any other way — to raise a child. So she got an abortion. She didn’t go to church that week. Instead, she went to her bedroom with a pint of Bushmills and the codeine the nurse had given her, and began drinking. She spent all week drunk and stoned and drugged. That Saturday night, she began hemorrhaging. She was too disgusted with herself to wake up a friend to ask for help. So she coped with it on her own, soaking pad after pad, until the bleeding stopped several hours later. Weak and shaking, she crawled into bed. She says, “After a while as I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner […]. I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus […]. I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn’t help because that’s not what I was seeing him with.” She tried to write the whole experience off as a delusion brought on by too much booze and the loss of blood. But during the following week, she notes “[…] everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in.” Lamott slammed the door instead. She did go to back to church though, and even stayed for the sermon. She thought it “was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials.” Then the last song got to her. It felt like “something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling — and it washed over me.” She left the service before the benediction, crying. “I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, ‘[Forget] it: I quit.’ I took a long deep breath and said out loud, ‘All right. You can come in.’” Lamott’s life didn’t change all at once. It took her another whole year to get sober and a year after that to get baptized. But once she allowed Christ into her life, change was inevitable. And just as inevitable was that Jesus would never give up on her — or on anyone else — until she had experienced the depth of his love calling her to a new life...Jack Zeller's Vision
Jack Zeller, a retired farmer who still lives in the 150 year old farm house on the 600 acre farm where he grew up and has lived all of his life, was moved to send this description of a wondrous experience of God’s presence at a time when he and his wife, Terry, were desperately praying for a child: “I live north of Oshkosh on my family farm. I look forward to your writings every week and this one hit me in my heart. I had an experience over 48 years ago that was like no other. My wife and I had been married for five years and we were trying to conceive for the last three years with no results. We prayed every day to make our dream come true and have a family. We eventually started to look at adoption to fulfill our dreams. “One evening my wife went to bed and I stayed on our couch in the living room watching television. I eventually fell asleep but was awakened by something that is extremely hard to explain. I saw a circular bright light enter the living room beside me. It was very bright and hovered at my side. I could not see inside the light but knew there was someone there. A voice came to me and said ‘Do not worry, you will be expecting soon and the first born will be a son!’ The light hovered for a short time and then just drifted away. I had a hard time comprehending what had happened and ended up in tears on the couch. I ended up going to join my wife in bed and she looked at me wondering why I was crying. I explained what had just happened knowing she would question what I said. She did not, and we laid there together holding hands in silence. It was wonderful!! Seven months later we found out we were expecting! Yes, it was a son! Our second born was a daughter! (I lost my wife Terry in July 2025 after a six year battle with cancer and after fifty-two wonderful years of marriage. I never mentioned to anyone else what I had experienced forty-eight years ago knowing they would question my mental status. After Terry passed, I felt badly that I had never mentioned it to anyone else, losing any evidence that it had ever happened. I finally did mention it to my daughter after Terry's passing thinking she should know. To my surprise, she told me that her mother had indeed told her what happened shortly before her passing. Terry must have known that someone else should know what we had experienced. I truly felt validated and relieved."
Recommended Resources
I Desire Mercy, Not Sacrifice
("Hospitality in the Mideast is so ingrained a practice and a virtue that the stranger is always welcome, the bread is always broken, and the cup shared. But people did this only with their own kind. The open-handed approach of Jesus broke down barriers...")Let Them Be All That They Can Be
One day in the eleventh grade, I went into a classroom to wait for a friend of mine. While I was in the room, the teacher, Mr. Washington, suddenly appeared and asked me to go to the board to write something, to work something out. I told him that I couldn't do it. And he said, "Why not?" I said, "Because I'm not one of your students." He said, "It doesn't matter. Go to the board anyhow." I said, "I can't do that." He said, "Why not?" And I paused because I was somewhat embarrassed. I said, "Because I'm Educable Mentally Retarded." He came from behind his desk, looked at me and said, "I don't ever want to hear you say that again. Someone's opinion of you does not have to become your reality."...Illustrations, Quotes and Lectionary Reflections (Ordinary 10A)
Jesus called Matthew to follow him. Then, just verses away, Jesus is asked to follow. I should think that maybe this "following" comes full circle as an example to us. As Jesus follows, the suffering woman touches the fringe of his cloak and he "turns and sees". As he follows to the place where the young girl was, he "took her by the hand". Do I hear whispers of "Follow in the ways that Jesus follows"? In the turning and seeing? In the looking into the face of someone who most needs to be noticed. In taking someone by the hand who most needs a touch? We work with people who need a touch. We walk by others in stores who need a smile. We worship with those whose needs are the same...
Illustrated Resources from 2008 to 2025
Which Healing?
("Myra Dean tells about the aftermath of the death of her son, Rich Stark: 'And the worst part is when you realize you're going to live, because you just want to die...")Like Spring Rain
("A veteran Maryknoll priest told about praying with people during a time of distress: they were facing an terrible drought. Being subsistence farmers, the drought meant they would have crop of potatoes and barley...")Proximate
Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy, which is now a movie, if you’re not the book-reading type, tells people that what called him into his work was “getting proximate.” Stevenson works with prisoners who are on death row – work he was introduced to in graduate school. He describes being a student at Harvard and beginning work with a law firm – the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta. His first assignment was to talk with a man on death row – simply informing him that there had been a stay of execution in the case, meaning that this man would not be killed at the date that had been given to him. Stevenson recounts that as he gave this news – what seemed a tiny piece of information – the man had tears in his eyes. He asked for Stevenson to repeat what he’d just heard, to make sure his ears weren’t deceiving him. Stevenson recounts that this encounter changed him. Prisoners on death row weren’t prisoners anymore – not a faceless mass of criminals – but people. There were stories and names and faces and whole lives lived before the crime for which they had been convicted. Stevenson says that what changed him was this proximity...Get Up and Follow
Some of you may be familiar with the operas of the great composer, Giacomo Puccini, who wrote such works as Madam Butterfly, and La Bohème. While suffering with cancer he was working on his opera Turandot, which he continued to write at a clinic to which he had been sent in Brussels. Turandot proved to be his final, though still unfinished, work. It is said that he realized he was not going to be able to complete it and asked his students to finish it for him. He left many pages of drafts for a duet and the last scenes of the opera. The completion of the project finally was left to one of Puccini’s students, Franco Alfano, who completed the opera six months after the maestro’s death. Soon after Puccini died in 1924, the opera opened at the La Scala Opera House in Milan. It was conducted by another of his students, his son-in-law Arturo Toscanini. Toscanini conducted the opera until he reached the point where Puccini's work had remained incomplete at his death. Toscanini stopped the orchestra and singers and put down his baton. He faced the audience and announced, “Thus far the master wrote. Then he died.” After a pause, he said, “But his disciples continue his work.” He raised his baton and finished the opera, which was greeted with thunderous applause...Preaching Helps (Proper 5A)(2008)
("Whether it is because you lived through it or because you've seen plenty of documentary footage of it, the odds are that most people here this morning pretty well know what the term 'Beatlemania' means...")Hope Against Hope
("A mother was raising two sons alone. And in their teen years, both sons were challenging her to the limits --- bad choices, wrong friends, dangerous and risky behaviors...")Be a Blessing
Doug Behm once told the story of an impoverished family living a hardscrabble existence in the southeastern part of the US. The soil in that area was worn out, so harvests were never abundant. As a result, that family was so poor they had very few of the things other people consider the “necessities” of life. However, one year the family unexpectedly managed to have a small amount of money left over. They decided to use their extra income to splurge on something for the entire family. So the farmer pulled down a used Sears catalog — one that he had been saving for other purposes, of course. The family gathered around the catalog and entertained themselves for hours, imagining all the possibilities. Eventually, they agreed to buy a mirror for the house. That may sound like an odd choice to most of us, but the reality is that none of the family members had ever seen their own reflection before. So they were all very excited, waiting for their package to arrive. When it finally came, they carefully unwrapped the mirror and each person got a chance to look at themselves one at a time, starting with the oldest. The father took the first look, and he frowned. Then the mother looked at herself and smiled. One of the younger ones giggled at their reflection. Finally, the mirror was passed to little Willie. He looked in the mirror and didn’t know whether to frown or cry. That’s because when he was very young, he had been kicked in the face by a mule. Due to that, his face was scarred and it wasn’t a pretty sight. While he was processing the reality of his appearance, Willie turned to his mother and said, “Mom, did you know I looked like this all the time?” She replied, “Yes, Willie, of course I did.” Then he asked, “And you still loved me?” His mother answered, “Yes, Willie, I still loved you; the face didn’t make no difference. I love you because you’re mine.”...Stories and Circles
"In her book Writing for Your Life, Deena Metzger offers this quote about stories: 'Stories move in circles. They don't move in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles. There are stories inside stories and stories between stories, and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home..."Ordinary 10A (2023)
For 27 years, I served at an organization in Seattle that worked with homeless and runaway adolescents. One evening I noticed a young man sitting alone at a table in the drop-in center. I went over and began a conversation with him. He told me his parents were first-generation Americans from Ethiopia and that they didn’t understand him anymore. He quickly grew silent, feeling he had shared too much, too soon. Trying to reengage, I turned the conversation to food and asked him if there was a good Ethiopian restaurant in Seattle. He told me of a little place near where I live. When I assured him I would try it, he cautioned me: “It’s very traditional; we all eat from the same bowl.” I said I was familiar with the custom, but he shook his head as if to say that I really didn’t understand what I was saying yes to. He held out his hands, dirty from the streets, and asked, “Would you share a bowl with these hands?” Suddenly, this story from Matthew rushed to the front of my mind. This was Jesus in the house of Matthew...A Chance to Be Made Whole
A young man and woman had been dating for a long time. One starlit evening, the young man called up his sweetheart to ask her to go on a ride with him. He said he had something very special to share with her. He picked her up in his much loved antique sports car and drove out to the park. There they had a lovely candle and starlight picnic. For some reason, the young man did not talk much. He seemed distracted. The young woman noticed all of this and was too excited to talk much, herself. She'd been waiting all night to hear his special news. After the picnic, the couple drove around the park looking at the stars. The whole time, the young man spoke of how special and important this moment was. He didn't know quite how to share it with her. Then he smiled over at her with a beatific smile and said, "There, it's happened. My car just reached the 100,000 mile mark. 100,000 miles in this old beauty. Now the speedometer is starting over again. Everything is back to zero." Shocked and disappointed the young woman said, "Yes, you're right. Everything is back to zero."...
Illustrated Resources from the Archives
...and Sinners Came...
("C. S. Lewis believed in God's Sanctifying Grace, and focused upon bringing our attitudes into alignment with those of Christ...")The Blessing of Being Bad
("Theologian Harvey Cox was shocked when he attended a Yom Kippur service for the first time. The service, which is all about repentance, begins with an extended prayer of confession...")Low Standards
("This has been quite a week in the news business. For those of you who remember the Watergate scandal, Deep Throat has come out of hiding...")Proper 5A (2002)
In May, small, premature Celeste was born weighing three pounds and five ounces. Life-sustaining tubes were affixed to every orifice of her body as she lay in the small incubator. Yet, this fragile gift from God brought new life to the tired nursing staff and renewed hope to her family. Holding Celeste was similar to holding a cloud, light but full of life. A smile came across her face and love erupted into the room! Instantly, unconditional love burned in the hearts of the staff and parents alike, as Celeste became that transforming experience of love that transcends all human boundaries. She is a testimony of God’s love and beckons her family back to church to follow Christ in a new way!...Insiders, Outsiders and Blessings
"During the Napoleonic Wars, a young battle-weary French soldier fell asleep while on guard duty. He was court-martialled, found guilty and sentenced to death..."When God Calls Ordinary People
("Doris Taylor was born in SA, 1909. When she was seven an accident caused injury to her spine and she was almost continuously in hospital for the next 9 years. At the age of 16 she was very seriously disabled - she couldn’t turn her head, sit up, or even feed herself...")Ordinary 10A (2005)
("Once upon a time there was this politician who was a good family man and a devout Catholic. He went to Communion every Sunday and contributed to the support of his pastor (what more could be asked)...")Ordinary 10A (2002)
("Once upon a time there was a suburban parish that had a reputation for being a "great" parish – there was something for everyone. The preaching was good; the priests were understanding; the choir outstanding; the people involved...")Proper 5A (2002)
("Next-wave magazine tells the story of a group of people who struggled with this same problem. Jason Evans writes, I was tired of the church, as I knew it. It was an event, a building, a program...")Calling All Sinners
("I recently read John Grishom's latest novel The Testament. I enjoyed the story and learned something about the complexity of sin...")Grace Changes People
The first story is about Hank Hayes, who died five years ago in Alabama. Hank's life got off to a pretty ugly start. He was raised in an atmosphere seething with hate. You see, Hank's dad was a Klansman, and not just any Klansman, but imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Hank bought the line he got from his dad. He grew up full of hate himself. He too became a Klansman. And so he must have appeared as a likely suspect when a black man was lynched in Mobile. Hank was eventually convicted of murder in that high profile case. The primary witness was a man who received a lenient sentence in return for his testimony, and later admitted that he had both lied and committed perjury. The jury set the sentence as life without parole, but the judge was able to overrule the jury and sentence Hank to death. The governor refused to intervene, even when somebody came forward saying that Hank was with him the night of the murder, far from the scene of the crime. And so after Hank spent seven years on death row and exhausted all his appeals, the State of Alabama put him to death in the electric chair. There are lots of good arguments against capital punishment, but I'm not going to make them today. Rather than talk now about Hank's death, I'm going to talk about his life, and how God's grace invaded that life and changed him, transformed this Klansman who ended up in the electric chair for a crime he probably did not commit. Grace came at Hank Hayes from several unexpected directions...Faith Can Do Anything God Can Do!
("God can do anything!', my friend Jimmy Turner told Angus Burke. They were having this big argument about about Danny Rosenfield who was critically ill with leukemia...")Our Ministry of Blessing
("It was a snowy and cold evening in Rapid City, South Dakota when our choir director Joan Goschke brought the rehearsal to an end. After a while the usual after-choir chatter centered on next week's Thanksgiving holiday...")Old Wineskins
("Back in the early 80's, when I was living in Hull, a social worker friend of mine told me about an elderly man she'd recently had to deal with. He'd been re-housed from an inner city slum that was being demolished, into a modern house on the outskirts of the city, on a vast new, housing estate...")An Imperfect Apprentice
("In his book The Last Word, Willimon tells a story of serving one of his churches as a pastor. They decided to do a door to door canvassing of the community to invite people to church. Most of the people going door to door were older women who belonged to a weekly Bible study...")Be a Blessing
("Bob was the perfect antithesis of anything that was considered cool and, in fact, long before anyone had created the stereotype of a nerd, Bob was living the Geek dream...")Faith on the Fringes
("Many years ago, I worked for the Farm Bureau Insurance Company. Their slogan was 'Where Belonging Makes a Difference,' because they required all of their clients to join the Farm Bureau before they could purchase any kind of insurance from them...")Living on Credit
("A couple of people from our church had been in a serious car accident. The mother was injured, but she was going to be o.k. However, things didn't look quite so rosy for the little five-year-old girl...")The Company We Keep
Walt Kallestad is senor pastor of Community Church of Joy, one of the largest Lutheran Churches in the country, located in Glendale, Arizona. When Kallestad turned 50, he bought a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and began riding the roads around Phoenix. One morning, Kallestad stopped at a local coffee shop and there were some other bikers sitting at a table. He ordered his coffee and sat down alone at a table, when one of the bikers called out to him “Hey Harley man, come on over and sit with us; we’re talking dirty.” Kallestad joined them at their table…and sure enough! They were talking dirty! It wasn’t long into that conversation that they asked him what he did for a living, and he told them “I’m the pastor of Community Church of Joy.” The entire table fell silent! They stared down into their coffee cups, they coughed nervously, a couple of them apologized for the inappropriate jokes they had just told a minister. And then one of them asked about Walt’s church, and whether bikers like them would ever be welcome there? Kallestad’s face brightened and told them “You come to our church, just the way you are, and I guarantee you that you will be welcomed.” As a side bar to that story, Kallestad was invited by some of those same bikers to join them on their annual trek to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and spoke at a worship service of several thousand Harley-Davidson riders...Feeling Useless?
("Have you ever noticed how when Hollywood attempts to film any of the biblical stories they go all funny. In movies like The Greatest Story ever Told which still seems to get repeated every Easter, the actors all sound like they’re trying to do Shakespeare or something. They do these strange speeches in weird voices with a sort of dreamy, over-dramatic affectedness...")Befriending Even The Weirdo
("Roy Lee was just warning his best friend Homer Hickam that by talking to Quentin, the school nerd, he would be ruining his reputation. But Homer ignored the warning because he had a dream; he wanted to build a rocket...")Keeping Bad Company
("Once upon a time, a minister was traveling through a remote part of the State of Washington when he came across a flock of sheep crossing the road. He stopped his car to wait and soon the shepherd of the flock came by on horseback....")Going Through the Motions
("Around my house I cut the grass. I do it because I don’t want my wife to have to do it. You might wonder why I would cut the grass when I have three young men living at home? Because they wait too long to do it… and my wife ends up doing it...")He Eats with Sinners
An Episcopal priest who likes to have fun, and also likes to do personal evangelism witnessing, had a special tee shirt designed. The message on the tee shirt was in Greek. It was a quote from one of the Gospels. In English, it said, “he eats and drinks with sinners.” The priest would wear the tee shirt into bars. Inevitably, he would be asked what the language was and what it meant. It usually provoked the question, “Who eats and drinks with sinners?” The answer, of course, was “Jesus.” This led to conversations. One of the standard response lines was, “Well, if Jesus wants to eat and drink with sinners, he has come to the right place.” But we really don’t have to go to bars to find a crowd of sinners. Most of the people we see at church pass muster with Jesus...The Challenge, The Call, The Cure
("I ran across an old story about a man who was visiting a friend who had five children. Dad got called to the phone which left the man with the kids. He asked one of the little girls about her doll collection: 'Which one is your favorite?'...")Mercy, Not Sacrifice
("I have to thank Navy Chaplain Robert J. Phillips for the inspiration behind this sermon. He wrote a sermon starter in Circuit Rider which took me back to my days in the Coast Guard and set me on this tack...")What They Left Behind
("I just read a story about this woman who was visiting a church for the very first time one Sunday. That Sunday, the sermon wasn't like any of mine. It was one of those droners that just seemed to go on forever...")The Fear That We Cannot Change
("When I was working with people with addictions to alcohol and other drugs, there was a man on my caseload, an alcoholic, who had been a frequent visitor to the clinic for many years. We will call him Jim. Jim had been through many treatment programs on both an in-patient and out-patient basis...")The Journey from Sinner to Saint
The life Jesus called Matthew to, is illustrated in the following story of two Boy Scouts. 'During a hike in the woods,the troop came across an abandoned section of railroad track. Each scout in turn tried to walk the rails, but eventually lost his balance and tumbled off...
Other Resources from 2008 to 2022
Currently Unavailable
Illustration
("Several years ago, M. Scott Peck and Harvard theologian Harvey Cox were co-leading a seminar for a group of Christians. At one point they read one of the gospel stories similar to the one we read this morning...")Give Me the Name that Means "God Will Save"
("Case in point is the ongoing saga of Carol Race, the mother of 6-foot, 225 pound Adam, a young man with autism. Carol and her husband John have tried to be faithful Catholics by attending Mass every Sunday. They bring their son with them. But Adam, because of his autism, has at times been very difficult to handle...")Ordinary 10
("A priest was leaving church one evening as the Alcoholics Anonymous meting was about to adjourn. He noticed a man crouched over the hood of a rusty Ford smoking a cigarette, and so, introduced himself. The man sighed and told the priest how long he had intended to 'get back into church'...")God's Talent Scout
("Once upon a time, there was a Talent Scout. Not just any talent scout, mind you. This was not a scout for the Yankees who discovered high school phenoms; this was not a musical talent scout who put together the latest made-to-order boy band, filling slots for the latest incarnation of the Backstreet Boys...")Welcome At The Table
("Frederick Buechner suggests that rather than being a completely spontaneous response, Matthew had been preparing for this day for some time. He had grown weary of working for the Romans. He knew he wanted something more, something better, out of life...")