Pareja, Juan de, 1606-1670. Vocation of Saint Matthew, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58714 [retrieved June 12, 2023]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pareja-vocacion_mateo.jpg.

RCL Year A, Proper 5 (Alternate Readings)
Hosea 5:15–6:6, Psalm 50:7-15, Romans 4:13-25, Saint Matthew 9:9-13 and 18-26

Today marks a significant turning in the Church Year. We leave behind the birth and glorification of Jesus, the beginning and the ending of his earthly life with us, and we take up his teachings and ministry among us and his first disciples. This shift is marked by a long string of Green Sundays that will extend through November 26, The Last Sunday after Pentecost, except The Transfiguration, a white feast, on August 6. The Gospels will be from Matthew, as this is Year A, and we shall work our way on these Green Sundays from Chapter 9, verse 9, where we are today, through Chapter 25, verse 46, where we shall be on the last Sunday in November. No wonder our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers call this period of time “Ordinary Time.”

The Lectionary changes a bit as well. We follow the readings known as Track Two or Alternate readings, and we will find that there will be a thematic connection between the Old Testament Reading and the Gospel. The skillful preacher will notice that the Lessons almost preach themselves. Letting the Lessons preach themselves is, in my book, akin to letting God be God. The Epistles will be sequential and not usually thematically related to the other two readings.

Today’s lessons illustrate this arrangement perfectly. Hosea ends the first lesson by prophesying that God desires “steadfast love and not sacrifice.”[1] Jesus quotes that verse in the Gospel when he says, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”[2] He is saying that sinners who know their need of God and act upon that need do more to preserve their relationship with God than the Pharisees who keep themselves ritually pure by avoiding tax collectors and sinners. Jesus came on the account of tax collectors and sinners. Hosea prophesies a similar point. God desires his people to be merciful, that is constant in their love of God, rather than to rely on sacrifices to keep their relationship with God intact.

The Epistle concerns a different matter. Abraham preserves his relationship with God not by obeying the law and offering the appointed sacrifices but by acting faithfully. The law convicts most everyone of sin, but faith overcomes sin by demonstrating a confidence that God will keep God’s promises.

Just imagine that dinner after Jesus calls Matthew. Jesus selects Matthew, a tax collector and a sinner, as a chosen follower, and immediately other tax collectors and sinners come in out of the cold because Jesus has demonstrated that they are welcome to be in his company. Their sinfulness has not relegated them to a moral ghetto. They have worth. They have value as human beings, and Jesus appreciates their worth and their value. The sinners take nothing away from him. They have a reserved place in his kingdom. This, of course, rattles the cages of the Pharisees, and, unfortunately, they will never be able to transcend their contempt of sinners. Jesus wins over the sinners because he loves them. The Pharisees are incapable of loving them, but Jesus came to love them, and to show them that their worth comes from God and not the Pharisees.

There’s a little bit of the Pharisees in each one of us. I can tell a story on the preacher today. When I was a seminarian, and some seminarian flubbed a reading in the Chapel, and then went on very confidently to declare, “The Word of the Lord,” I would audibly say, “I don’t think so.”

There’s a little bit of the Pharisees in each one of us. But all that means is that we, too, have something that we can give to God. And I believe that God can take care of that, too.

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[1] Hosea 6:6.

[2] Saint Matthew 9:13.