Salvation history starts here

Many decades ago I was on a rafting trip on the San Juan River in Utah, a 20-something chaperoning a church youth trip to Navajoland. Besides our crew of teenagers, our boat had room for two others, outdoorsy looking women who looked to be somewhere around 45 or 50. As we chatted I somehow shared that I was a runner, by which I meant that I ran short runs a few times a week. They were enthusiastic in their response. ‘You should run ultramarathons!’ they said. They rhapsodized about running canyon trails for miles and miles (an ultra is a race longer than a marathon, anywhere upwards from 30 miles or so), and the amazing glory of a boiled potato with salt when you’re really hungry. I laughed and shook my head – but I was intrigued. Here were these two cool women, the kind of people I wanted to be someday. So run an ultra? Why not? I went home and told my best friend I planned to run one. Wait, she said, how do you get from never even running a half marathon to running an ultra? Ok, I said, I know. But I want to do this someday. It was about 20 years before I finally did it – but I did actually run one, and then another, and then some more. With that one conversation on the river, I could see myself in a new way – even though it would be long time before I grew into that vision.

Today is the first day of what the church calendar calls ‘ordinary time.’ After all the feasts and fasts of the last six months, we’ve come to the long season after Pentecost, the green season. The lectionary schedule of scripture readings starts into more sequential stories, charting a way through the Old Testament and the Gospels that more or less follows along chronologically. And that whole story of salvation essentially begins with what we heard today from Genesis: Now the Lord said to Abram, go. Pick up and leave from where you are, and go to a place that I will show you. And without a question or a quibble, Abram goes. Just like that, setting in motion the whole long traveling story of God’s people. When God wants to get something started, God seems to put us on the move.

So no surprise that we hear Jesus do the same thing in the gospel story, calling Matthew the tax collector. There’s Matthew one moment sitting and doing his job, embedded in the world of graft and exploitation; and the next moment, there’s Matthew getting up and leaving all that to follow Jesus. He’s been a collaborator with the Roman occupiers, making his money by charging just a little bit more than he is supposed to and siphoning off the top for himself. He is so despised that the only friends he could have were those who owed him something. But he walks away from that and hangs everything on this one person who says simply, Follow me.

The narrative makes it sound so abrupt and final, like Matthew is leaving that world for good. And yet after this seemingly radical departure, Jesus and Matthew and the disciples sit down for dinner, and gathered all around them are…tax-collectors and sinners. All these other folks involved in the wrong lines of work, these fellow members of Matthew’s old corrupt community now gathered around this same person who said only, Follow me. Did Matthew bring them along, acting as a kind of apostle to the wrong sort of people? Did Jesus go out and gather them too, all of them jumping up from their tables and leaving everything behind? However it happens, Matthew and all those sinners and Jesus are all part of the party together.

And the Pharisees, always complaining, complain about that. What’s this man doing eating with these people? Doesn’t he know they’re sinners? sinners who have not shown any real sign of leaving their sin behind? For the Pharisees, as good Jews, understood well the process of repentance – that God forgives those who turn away from their sin and turn back, repent, amend their lives and make atonement for their wrongs. But these tax collectors and sinners were still deep in the midst of their sin, still working their unclean trades and living their wrong sort of lives. To the Pharisees’ eyes, they were like the people the prophet Hosea talks about, who do nothing to acknowledge their guilt but still expect God to bless them when they ask for it. And Jesus, by eating with them, was affirming what they were doing. 

But Jesus’ response to this is simple: Those who are well have no need of a physician; it’s those who are sick who need the doctor. A physician needs to go to those who are sick in order to heal them. Jesus is saying, I can’t just wait for people to come to me – I’m not waiting for the change to happen out of the blue. I’m seeking out the lost sheep before they realize they’re lost. These people I am eating with, these whom I have called, need healing, and that is what I am here for. They are here with all of their old lives still with them, without seeming to let go of any of it. But something that only I can see is happening in their hearts.

This is not a simple story of cheap grace. The dinner is not the end of the journey, for the tax collectors and sinners – or for the Pharisees, or for any of us. It’s an introduction, and a vision of what will be. Jesus says, Follow me – walk in the way that I am going. Come as you are. But understand, I am here for your healing, not to have you limp along in your disease. Know that as you walk you will find yourself letting go of things, turning away from habits and ways of being that used to be the norm for you, shedding things that you previously thought too important to lose. Along the way we are transformed and strengthened and renewed and made to look like what we were created to be, in the image of God. God gives a vision of what we can be, of what we truly are. And then, slowly and relentlessly, God helps us become that.

Sometimes in this life of faith it can feel like we’re not really getting anywhere. Years and years of going to church and professing this faith and yet we’re still just as discouraged by small setbacks, just as riled up about politics news, just as irritated and irritable as always. We want to have a closer relationship with God and to be a better person, but we just don’t know how to make it happen. But it rarely happens overnight – it’s a long, slow process, one that depends on both us and God. Our persistence and faithfulness, showing up for prayer and trying to understand scripture and make sense of the faith and help people and serve, all of it in small, ordinary, everyday ways. And God’s persistence and faithfulness with us, drawing us along and meeting us anew every time we restart. The wonderful pastor Eugene Peterson called the life of faith ‘a long obedience in the same direction.’ Nothing flashy. But sturdy. And it gets us along the path.

Spoiler alert: we never really fully get to the finish line on this one. But blessedly, God never seems to tire of the race either. And if we claim that vision, that idea of following Jesus, of being a calmer, wiser, loving person, a life of meaning and purpose, making a difference, all of that – then the Spirit helps us get there. And when we stop to look back over our lives, we might just see that we are different from how we were before, we do experience life in a better way, we aren’t so thrown by bad news. We really do grow into more mature people, with God’s help.

So these stories of God’s call to Abram, Jesus’ call to Matthew, those are our stories too. We can answer just like they did – not because they or we were amazingly faithful to begin with, but because they and we see something we want. We may not see how the road will get us there, but we know that somehow we want to walk it. And we have a friend and healer for our souls who won’t give up on us. We don’t have to know it all or do it perfectly. We just have to start, and keep going. And with God’s help, more will come.