THE RHYTHM OF CHRISTIANITY
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. "Follow me," he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ’sinners’?"
12 On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ’I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
. . .
18 While he was saying this, a ruler came and knelt before him and said, "My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and she will live." 19 Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples.
20 Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. 21 She said to herself, "If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed."
22 Jesus turned and saw her. "Take heart, daughter," he said, "your faith has healed you." And the woman was healed from that moment.
23 When Jesus entered the ruler’s house and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd, 24 he said, "Go away. The girl is not dead but asleep." But they laughed at him. 25 After the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took the girl by the hand, and she got up. 26 News of this spread through all that region.
I
There are a lot of things here that are not what they should be. For one thing, Matthew is wasting his life. And that’s only part of the problem. As a tax collector in his day, he is colluding with the occupation Roman government in gouging people out of their assets. He is what we might call a sell-out. And he’s doing it to feather his own nest.
The Pharisees are not much better. They are laboring under a serious delusion about God, which affects the way they see other people. And how they treat them. Then, of course, we have a woman who is victimized by a chronic illness, and a father who has lost his little girl.
Someone has said, “Disease has no energy save what it borrows from the life of the organism.” These people are being consumed by an intrusive inner adversary. Picture Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth day after pointless day, the very life force within him being devoured by his choice to remain there. Did I say choice?
If you had asked him, he might have said, “I have no choice. I’m stuck here. What else can I do. This is the hand dealt me. How can I change?”
Interesting that you should ask, Matthew. Because you are about to awaken to a new possibility. But more on that later.
As for the Pharisees, look how diseased their thinking is. They are locked into a pattern in which they justify themselves by condemning others. Sinners and tax collectors can’t be candidates for God’s attention. No. You have to try hard, work at it, be good, and not make any mistakes.
Can you imagine what living with that view of God would be like? Some of us don’t have to imagine; we are very much like the Pharisees on this point. We, too, see God as a harsh, distant, perhaps even threatening, force that demands perfection. But look at the effect. That road doesn’t lead to the ball. There is no dance in the step; it is more like a forced march.
II
When it comes to the human condition, we all dance like we have two left feet. We are all a part of a fallen humanity. Even if we consider ourselves people of faith.
We too have misconceptions about God, and we too have misperceptions about other people. Like Matthew, we may think that other people are mere objects to be treated without consideration and disposed of when we’re through with them. Like the Pharisees, we may see God in a way that serves only our own interests, and we may ignore or deny the possibility that God is bigger than we can possibly imagine. When we make either mistake, either Matthew’s or the Pharisees’, we’re not just missing the beat. We can’t even hear the music.
In his book, Metamorpha, Kyle Strobel tells about a friend of his whose name is Cassie. Cassie was a first-year seminary student whose view of God had never been challenged. Suddenly, she found herself in a setting in which it seemed to her that her image of God was being dismantled. It was as though the God she knew and loved was being, in her words, “smashed to pieces.”
But one of her professors helped her to see what was going on. She tells about a critical moment in her personal understanding of God. “I will never forget the moment,” she says, “[when] Professor Ray Anderson...told [our] systematic theology class about a woman who, in her later years of life, decided to begin playing the piano. She searched for the best piano teacher she could possibly find and asked him how she could become a master pianist such as [he was]. He looked hesitantly at her, asking her if she [were] sure she wanted to do this. He explained to her that at her age, [her] bones had naturally calcified and were configured in a certain way. To play the piano, she would need to engage in finger exercises that would break this calcium down, thereby giving her supple, flexible fingers that would allow her fingers to extend to the various keys. He warned her that the finger exercises and the calcium breakdown would be excruciatingly painful, as if her fingers were being smashed” (Strobel, Metamorpha, pp. 20f.).
According to Strobel, “Cassie soon realized that her spiritual calcification was being broken down. Because of her presuppositions, Cassie needed not only to learn about God but also to unlearn what she falsely believed about God.”
When Jesus invited Matthew to the dance we call discipleship, Matthew had to learn some new steps. He had to learn to listen to the music, to hear the rhythm. The same invitation was given to the Pharisees, but it’s doubtful that they even stepped out on to the dance floor.
III
The point is, though, the invitation is extended. Nobody can go home from here today and say that Jesus didn’t invite them to dance. You get around him, and you begin to feel the rhythm.
Jesus stepped right into Matthew’s situation. There he was, sitting at the edge of the crowd -- a wall flower of sorts -- and the whole time, the dance was going on. Jesus stepped right into his line of vision and, for all practical purposes, said, “You wanna dance?”
Thankfully, Matthew took Jesus’ extended hand and moved right out into the flow. Not everybody does. Not everybody likes music. Some people may even think dancing is lewd. Like the Pharisees. They were all caught up in whether Jesus should be dancing with people like Matthew and his friends -- tax collectors and sinners, they called them.
But still, the dance goes on. The woman who had been ill for twelve years: she got into the swing of things. Even the man whose little girl had died. He thought his dancing days were over. But they weren’t. Jesus would place his child back in his arms, full of life and vitality. I’ll bet the man found himself involuntarily swaying to the music. He got what we used to call “Methodist feet.” Don’t you imagine?
IV
I detect a rhythm here. I’ve talked about it before. If you look at the movement in this story, you’ll see that it begins with a call. Jesus steps into your line of vision -- just like he did Matthew’s -- and he calls you. “Follow me,” he says.
You don’t have any more clue than Matthew did what following him will entail. But, “okay,” you say. And then you’re swept off your feet into his rhythm, and the next thing you know, you’re in the big middle of things. I call this by the innocuous term “nurture.” You’ve heard me say it. We’re called by love and nurtured in love.
But nurture sometimes means decalcification -- just like it did for Cassie’s view of God. You wind up in Matthew’s dining room with all his buddies, and you may have to expand your understanding of what God wants to do in your life. You can take the Pharisees’ approach and distance yourself from everyone who’s not like you -- and feel justified in doing it -- or you can begin to feel the rhythm. As I said in Gary Minchew’s service the other day, the church is not a museum for saints; it’s a hospital for sinners. And you’re one of them. No better than anybody else, but no worse, either.
But you’ve got to unlearn some things. Christianity is so counter-cultural, and we don’t always realize it. If somebody slaps you in the face, the culture you and I live in says, slap ‘em back. Jesus says, “Turn the other cheek.”
See, you’re not sure you can buy that. Your calcification is showing! This dance has some difficult steps. Jesus says, “the first shall be last, unless you become as children you shall not enter the kingdom, do not return evil for evil, do not hate your enemies but rather pray for them, bless those who wrong you, yes, bless and do not curse.” Oh, it goes way beyond what we have ever imagined! But, if you and I are going to dance with Jesus, we have got to let him lead. It’s his beat. It’s his rhythm. It’s not ours.
And you know where it will eventually take us? You’re right: to some form of servanthood. We’re called by love. We’re nurtured in love. Then, we’re sent to love. That’s the rhythm.
Imagine how surprising Matthew’s life was to him. One day he’s sitting at the tax collector’s booth, busily engaged in taking whatever he can get from people. That night he’s got Jesus in his house, throwing a dance party. And the next day -- the very next day -- he’s in the house of the ruler of the synagogue, a place he never imagined he would be. And he’s sharing in Jesus’ great joy -- not in taking what he can get for himself -- but in giving what he has for others.
That’s the beat. Do you hear it? Can you catch the rhythm? Come on, let’s dance.
