Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
“God of the Oppressed”
By: Rev. Kenneth Sauer, Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church, Newport News, VA
In our Gospel lesson for this morning we see a beautiful picture of our God.
We see Jesus Christ--God with us-- in the midst of the oppression of sin, the oppression of society, and the
oppression of death and mourning.
We find Jesus in the midst of people who feel unneeded, unloved, and unwanted.
Within the core of every person’s life is a little bit of hell... “for all have sinned and fall short of God’s
glory.”....
....but thanks be to God we have a Savior who gets dirty in the process of making us well.
And this is what ministry is all about....
....It’s about meeting people where they are... and lifting them up....not judging them.
To be a sinner and to be invited into the household of God is a very healing thing....
....and this is something that we need to keep in mind as we go out into the world....
...we are called to make disciples of all nations.....
....we are called to invite everyone in....no matter what their situation in life may be!
We are called to bring hope in the midst of despair, and healing in the face of suffering.
How many invitation cards have we handed out this week?
Jesus “saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. ‘Follow me,’ he told him, and
Matthew got up and followed him.”
Jesus “saw a man named Matthew.”
The rest of the crowd...including the religious leaders saw a tax collector who had denied his Jewish
heritage and betrayed his country.
But Jesus saw a man...
...a human being...
...Jesus saw his heart, his mind, his thoughts, his hurt, his pain, his loneliness, his lack of meaning and
purpose in life.
Jesus saw a life that was being wasted.
Jesus saw a man who needed a Savior.
Is this what we see in the faces of those whom we meet?
And when Jesus told him: “Follow me,” a dramatic change took place in Matthew’s life.
He left everything and committed himself totally to Christ.
It is hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven because they are so attached to the material
world.
And Matthew was rich....
...but Matthew was one of the few who had been willing to give it all up in order to follow Jesus!
Matthew’s conversion shows us that Jesus saves anyone who will truly follow Him:
...the hated....the bitter...the unjust...the non-religious...the traitor...the thief...the immoral....the person without
purpose or meaning.
And what did Matthew do as soon as he was saved?
Well, he held a dinner party, where he invited all his sinful friends to come and meet Jesus.
What a dynamic example in witnessing!
Matthew began to witness immediately upon his conversion.
As soon as I got saved, I called up all my friends and told them about Christ.
Most of them thought I was nuts, but that is what I did.
And at the time I was taking a public speaking class during my freshman year in college.
The first speech I gave in that class had something to do with the difference between good heavy metal
music and bad heavy metal music....the louder and heavier the better.
For our second speech we were asked to pick a hero of ours....and speak from their perspective.
I chose Gene Simmons of KISS. I even put on the KISS make-up, and dressed like him. Then I acted like
Gene as I gave a speech on his life.
The day before my third speech...I had given my life to Christ.
So, the class was quite shocked when I got up and gave my Christian testimony!
Jesus saved Matthew and Jesus even saved me because Jesus goes where the sinners are.
Jesus seeks out those who are lost...who are oppressed by the weight of sin....
...And Jesus enters the lives of those who will accept his invitation and He makes them well.
Now, the Pharisees didn’t like this.
They didn’t understand the concept of the ‘new birth.’
They didn’t believe that people could change.
They prided themselves in being the ones who were right with God, and they felt it was their job to
ostracize and judge those who didn’t live up to their standards.
So they asked Jesus’ disciples: “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”
Those people who are self-disciplined and religious are sometimes the most judgmental...
...and this judgmental spirit does more to hurt people than any other single thing!
The Bible makes it clear that those who judge others are condemning themselves.
It is in showing kindness, tolerance and patience we lead people towards repentance...according to
Romans chapter 2.
So when Jesus heard that the religionists were complaining about Him He said: “It is not the healthy who
need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to
call the righteous, but sinners.”
Sin is a sickness that we all have inherited.
And there is no way that we can make ourselves well...we all need the Great Physician!
But a person must acknowledge their sickness and ask the Physician for healing before they can be made
well.
Jesus came to earth for the same reason that a physician enters a home or sets up a practice....to make those
who realize they are sick.... well!
And we are all spiritually sick.
We all suffer from the fatal disease of sin.
And we will all go to hell if we do not call upon the name of Jesus in order to be healed!
The great thing about the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that there is a cure for this fatal disease!
Because of what Christ did for us on the cross...none of us need to die from it.
But too many people...and the Bible makes it clear that it is the majority of people are walking about with
this fatal disease of sin, but they are....
....ignoring it...
....feeding it...
....denying it...
....and abusing it.
The self-righteous and the self-satisfied are only living under the dilusion that they are A-Okay!
But the call of Jesus is
the call to repentance: to a changed life.
As the Bible says in 2 Corinthians: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has
gone, the new has come!”
This happened to Matthew, and this can happen to anyone of us who heed Christ’s call in our lives!
Jesus has come to save everyone....only if we will believe.
Christ has the power to meet all our desparate and hopeless needs--because Christ goes where the
suffering is.
He is the God of the oppressed.
Just take a look at the woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years....she had been in need of
help for years and years.
She was desperately hopeless, ashamed, and embarrassed.
She was now poor, because she had spent all she had seeking to find a cure.
Every day she had experienced the pit of lonliness, unacceptance, and low self-esteem.
She was nothing--even in her own eyes.
According to the law, she wasn’t supposed to be in the crowd that was surrounding Jesus at all!
She was supposed to be isolated, but her desparation drove her to Jesus.
She probably thought that Jesus wouuld never touch her because she was unclean, but she had heard so
many wonderful things about Him---
---if she could only touch His garment, He would never know, and she would be healed.
Imagine her great faith!
Imagine how liberating Jesus’ response made her feel!
Jesus turned to the woman.
How could Jesus have felt her touching His garment?
He was being pressed and pushed by the crowd, yet when she steped up behind him and touched His
robe--He knew it!
How did He know it?
Because the woman’s faith had touched Him.
It is faith that touchs Jesus and faith never goes unnoticed, it is never ignored by God.
For Jesus, the most important work in all the world is meeting a person’s need!
Nothing can keep Jesus from stopping and turning to a person who comes to Him.
Jesus cares for all people, no matter how rejected, cut off, or ostrazed we may be.
Mother Teresa once said: “Today it is very fashionable to talk about the poor.
Unfortunately, it is not fashionable to talk with them.”
And this woman was poor.
A person may be considered by society as unclean, dirty, polluted, contaminated, and lost forever; but that
person is very precious to our Lord.
“Jesus turned and saw her. ‘Take heart, daughter,’ he said, ‘your faith has healed you.’ And the woman
was healed from that moment.”
Notice that Jesus called her daughter.
Now, that’s pretty heavy stuff.
When Jesus was speaking to the religious leaders in John chapter 8, He called them children of the
devil....because they did not believe.
“Yet to all who recieved him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of
God--children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”
Because of her faith in Christ, God adopted this poor, afflicted, oppressed woman....and made her a
child of God!
He gave her dignity and purpose, he healed her physically, emotionally, and spiritually....
....she was born again into eternal life!
Christ’s power and life was infused into this woman.
She had feared facing Jesus because she had feared that she would be rebuked...after-all... isn’t that how
everyone else in her life had treated her?
But she found an eternal truth!
She found the treasure hidden in a field!
No matter how much the world rejects us, no matter what the world thinks of us, no matter how oppressed
we are...Jesus longs to heal us!
No person is too dirty, no person is too sinful for the God of the oppressed!
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
