2026-06-07 Pentecost 2

Scripture Readings

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen!

Pretty much the last place on planet earth I’d ever choose willingly to go is to the hospital. Especially the ER. I’m impatient and hate waiting. In Moose Jaw, it’s an automatic 3 hours and probably more like 6-8 of just sitting around waiting to get looked at. Don’t you long for the days when the doctor came to your house and fixed you up with merely the contents of a little black bag?! We didn’t used to have to spend billions and billions of dollars and wait around all day! Those were the days.

But when was the last time you went into a Hospital and found a whole bunch of healthy people who weren’t injured and who weren’t sick in any way? My guess is probably never! And in the same breath, you wouldn’t be surprised to see people arriving at the Hospital in an ambulance who have just had a stroke, or somebody who has just been involved in a car accident. It makes sense that people who need medical attention would show up at a Hospital. That’s what the Hospital is there for, isn’t it?

The Church is a Hospital of sorts too. It is the place where sinners go for spiritual healing. We heard again today that Jesus has come to call sinners to Himself, that they may receive the healing for their souls. Just think about this Bible reading – Jesus “came not to call the righteous but sinners” (MT 9:13).

Jesus calls the most unlikely people. A group of stinky fish-smelling fisherman and now even St. Matthew, a tax collector. Tax collectors in Jesus’ day were treated much like they are in our day. They’re like the Hamburglar at McDonald’s. Remember him?! “Robble, robble, robble” away with your tax dollars! Yet in Jesus’ day, it was probably a whole lot worse for tax collectors. Firstly, they worked for the hated Roman government. And not only that, they would often over-charge people on their taxes and keep the excess for themselves, padding their pockets at the peoples’ expense!

This kind of person – reviled by everyone in town – this is who Jesus came to call?! This is who Jesus sat and ate dinner with. It is quite profound. It shows us beyond the shadow of a doubt that there are no prerequisites for being a disciple of Jesus Christ. There is nobody “too bad” or “too unworthy” to respond to Jesus. There is not a certain goal of righteousness a would-be-Christian must first reach to win God’s favour and be good enough for His Kingdom.

The fact is, none of us are worthy, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. This is the great leveller when it comes to salvation. Yet because of God’s great mercy, His forgiveness wipes our slate clean. And this Divine forgiveness is really hard for us to grasp - and even harder for us to put into practice.

When Jesus did precisely this, He received such a rough time from Pharisees and other “religious” people who just couldn’t understand why this Prophet of God, mighty in word and deed, would associate with known sinners! Jesus hung out with prostitutes, tax collectors, derelicts and all kinds of other undesirable people with checkered pasts. He talked with them, walked with them and ate at their houses. He did so to seek and save what was lost; that they might learn of their sin, repent of it and receive God’s forgiveness and healing.

A man went to the doctor for his yearly check up. This man had been a smoker for decades, despite his doctor telling him he needed to stop. “I know, I know” the patient would always reply, but he kept on smoking. At this check up, the doctor had taken some X-rays of the man’s lungs. After the tests, the man was waiting in the office for the doctor to return with the results. When the doctor finally came in, he didn’t say a word. He walked over to the wall and turned the light on behind the X-ray so that the man could see the results. “These," said the doctor, ”are the X-rays of lungs that are completely full of cancer.” The patient’s heart nearly stopped beating from the shock! It finally seemed like all those years of smoking finally caught up to him! Certain death was staring him in the face. The man didn’t say a word. The doctor’s voice finally broke the silence. “These, however, are not your X-rays. But they very well could be if you don’t stop smoking now!”

We can be so stubborn when it comes to admitting we have a problem, can’t we? We know that what we are doing is wrong, yet we feel as if we have lots of time to deal with it – eventually. We will get around to it later. We can especially be like this in our spiritual lives. The vast majority of people in our time feel that they are more or less “good” people. Not many are willing to admit that they are sinful, that we they messed up and have earned nothing but God’s wrath.

As a result, many people, like the Pharisees of our Bible reading, feel pretty comfortable. They feel pretty smug and self-righteous. They feel they don’t need a doctor because they feel that they are not sick! Yet the Word of God shows us that we are not “good” people. Indeed, we have sinned much. Yet Jesus, the great Physician of body and soul, reaches out to us to give us the healing we need for our lives. Jesus was criticized for reaching out to the lost – yet would we criticize a doctor for seeing sick patients?! No, we wouldn’t, because that is what doctors exist to do. This is how sick people get better and receive healing.

Christ has given this mission to seek and save the lost to us, His Baptized people. We have been healed of our sin by the death and resurrection of Christ, and we continually receive that healing week after week, day after day, as we confess our sins and receive God’s forgiveness. But there are many out there – lost – without the healing forgiveness God has given for the life of the world. We are all part of bringing the message of the Good News to the world!

Beyond the shadow of a doubt, the church is the hospital for the sinners. It is our hospital. We must always remember that Christ died for us and our sin, not just the people “out there.” Many Christian people throughout time have forgotten this, and have slipped into a belief that “going through the motions” of being a Christian is enough. Faith became an external duty, rather than an internal reality. People would go to the temple to make a sacrifice to God, but they didn’t really get the point. They didn’t understand the reason behind the sacrifice: a contrite heart that seeks God’s mercy.

We must be careful we likewise don’t fall into this trap. We can come to church, find our pew, sing some hymns, and then tune it all out. We live the rest of the week according to our sinful flesh and then come back to church to make it all better! It is easy to do. But as we do it, the living faith of the church becomes a museum of the saints – not a hospital for sinners who desperately need God’s healing Word.

Hear the message of Christ your Lord: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” (MT 9:13). This message changes us from the inside out. It has a huge impact on our lives because we realize how much we have sinned and how much more we have needed God’s grace. And God has indeed been gracious to us in Christ! He has removed our sins from us as far as the East is from the West. That grace and mercy that we have received from God flows through our lives into the lives of the people around us.

Consider St. Matthew. As Jesus called him to follow, Matthew did not go back to stealing from people. Zacchaeus, another tax collector, followed the Torah and re-paid the people who he had stolen from. The grace that God has given to us is the grace we give to others. May we always remember that we exist to be a Hospital for sinners who are healed by the grace and mercy of the great Physician Jesus Christ.

We may be inclined to take our physical health seriously, how much more should we consider our spiritual health?! God the Holy Trinity has the cure for what ails you: the blessed Word of His forgiveness for sin in Christ and the “medicine of immortality” that He pours out for us in Holy Communion. May we always heed His call to follow Him, and be healed by His Word and trust His promise of healing. For Christ came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Amen.