Christ Lutheran Church in Aptos, CA
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I don’t know about you, but I have some serious whiplash from that Gospel passage today. We’ve got Jesus choosing Matthew, the wretched tax collector.
Then a dinner party full of wretched tax collectors and sinners that the religious authorities can’t stand.
Then a terrified grieving father rushing toward Jesus, to heal his daughter. And not just of a common cough and cold, but... Uh... DEATH.
And in the middle of all that, a woman who’s been bleeding for twelve years reaches out and desperately touches the hem of his robe to be healed.
There’s a lot of action here. But I see one thing these people all have in common: they’re all running head-first into the brick wall of life.
One of my favorite shows is Ted Lasso. Alex and I watched it with much of the developed world during the COVID lockdown. We’d watch it after Rory went to bed (the show is a bit spicey). Now she’s almost thirteen, so we’re rewatching it with her. Alex and I stopped watching part way through the third season and since the fourth season is dropping soon, we’re getting caught up.
Rewatching it now, as an ordained person, one scene really hit me from a pastoral perspective...
Ted has some hangups. He’s a great coach; easy-going and funny, everybody’s friend. But he’s going through a divorce, he has a young son back in the US, and he’s been having panic attacks on the field (or pitch if you’re a true football aficionado) during matches.
The team’s sports psychologist tries to get close to him, and Ted resists. He has a bad taste in his mouth from the marriage counseling that didn’t save his marriage, and he wants nothing to do with therapists. But finally, after a particularly bad panic attack, he hits rock bottom. Shows up in her office curled up on the couch. When she walks in, startled to see him, he says, “Whatcha got for me, doc.”
The nice thing about rock bottom is the rock part.
Because now, you have something to stand on.
They get around to talking about Ted’s dad. Turns out his father died by suicide. Ted recalls it. It’s an emotional scene. And then the therapist asks him to remember something good about his dad. Ted says, fighting back tears: “He was a good dad. And I don’t think he knew that. I think if he woulda known how good he was at stuff he didn’t really care about being good at… I don’t think he woulda done what he did.”
And then, tearing up, Ted says: “I wish I woulda told him. I was just so angry. And then he was gone... And I knew right then and there that I was never gonna let anybody get by me without understanding they might be hurting inside. Life is hard. It’s real hard.”
That’s Ted’s vow. That’s his whole ministry, really — this goofy, warm, relentless attention to the person right in front of him. It’s beautiful.
It’s also what Jesus is doing in this Gospel passage.
Life is hard... Real hard... For every single person in this story.
Like Matthew. It's easy to peg him as the bad guy. But if I had to guess, I'd say Matthew didn't get invited to many dinner parties besides the one Jesus threw for him. He was probably pretty lonely. And Jesus walks right up to him and says follow me, and Matthew gets up. Just like that.
It’s as if something in him had been waiting for exactly this divine recognition.
Then there’s the hemorrhaging woman. Twelve years of bleeding. Which means twelve years of ritual impurity according to her religious community, her social world, her sense of belonging. She can’t even approach Jesus directly. She sneaks up behind him, hoping to just touch the hem of his cloak without being noticed.
Now, I know... We get hung up on the transactional part of this story: Have enough faith and be healed. Abracadabra.
But if we fixate on that, we miss what would’ve been the most scandalous moment to a first-century audience: an unclean person touching a rabbi. In public. That’s the story.
But Jesus doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t just snap his fingers, heal her, and move on. He turns around, engages her, and calls her daughter. He restores her, but not just physically. He restores her to love. Communion. Belonging.
I wish I knew the rest of her story. All the text gives us is: ‘From then on, the woman was healed.’ But I think that healing ran far deeper than the bleeding. She could return to her community. She could touch others and be touched.
And maybe you know what this is like. When you’ve been that sick, that isolated, that long, and you’re suddenly called back in? You can’t help but become a blessing to everyone around you. Like Abraham in our Old Testament reading. The blessing isn’t just for him. It’s for the whole world. It transcends lifestyle, culture, tribe, creed. God’s love has to go somewhere. It doesn’t pool or settle or stagnate. It’s always on the move.
Look around you for a second. Every single person in these pews is carrying something. Life is hard. Real hard. And when we see that, it makes sense: God wants mercy, not sacrifice. Or maybe, mercy is the sacrifice. God doesn’t need our piety or zealotry or sacrificial offerings. So with that, we can be merciful. On ourselves and our neighbor.
We can step out of seeing life through the lens of law. We can stop seeing our job as being the final arbiter of right or wrong, good or evil. We can stop obsessing so much on our own identity and tribe and creed. And we can just love in the love that came before us, brought us into being, and will carry us wherever we’re going next. Like Abraham. On the move with God setting up altars of praise and not knowing where or with whom he’ll be communing with next.
So again, look around at your neighbor’s eyes. See what they’re carrying.
Maybe a diagnosis that arrived without warning and rearranged everything. Or a marriage that’s harder than they let on. The loneliness of feeling like everyone else has it figured out (this is universal, btw). The patriarch or matriarch quietly holding the whole family together (financially, emotionally) and lying awake wondering what happens to their kids or grandkids when they’re gone. A young person trying to make their way in a world sprinting towards the unknown.
Nobody’s story here is making the news. But we’re all running into the wall.
And Jesus works right here. In the impossible. In the places where we’ve run out of road. He restores and heals and — as we just watched — brings life clean out of death.
Which brings me back to Ted. Ted Lasso is good at his job and his mission. He really is. But occasionally, somebody gets by Ted. Ted has bad days. He’s going through his own stuff.
But Jesus doesn’t miss anyone.
NO ONE is getting by him. Every tax collector, every bleeding woman, every terrified father, every dead girl. Every person in this room. God knows that life is hard. In Jesus, God bodily experienced this pain. And not one person walks past him without a blessing.
This might come in strange, unexpected ways. It might not look like the kind of healing you or I envisioned. It might not come until after we cross the veil.
But right now, we believe that he’s here. In this bread and this wine. Not grading your personal rightness. Or checking what tribe you’re in. Just turning toward you the way he turned toward that woman. He takes your impurity and gives you wholeness. We are that dinner party of sinners and tax collectors. We are all bleeding and dead in some way. Life is hard. Real hard. But Jesus meets you here. And calls you what you are.
Son. Daughter. Beloved child.
And so it is.