More Matthew

Rev. Jerry Tubach offered the following thoughts in staff chapel this week.

In Matthew 9: 9-12 we read about Jesus calling Matthew to be His disciple. Matthew invited Jesus to his house for dinner. I assume to talk about what he would be doing as a disciple. The people who gathered for dinner that night were called tax collectors and sinners, a very specific term for people who were not allowed in the temple because they had violated the Jewish law. The custom in those days was to shun those people so they could repent and correct their behavior and get back to keeping the law and be allowed to come back to the temple and back into the social mainstream of life again.

When the Pharisees criticized Jesus for eating with people who were outcast, he responded by saying that well people don't need healing, but those who are sick. In other words, if these people are going to be healed by God's love, then someone has to show it to them so they can experience it.

Remember when you were in school eating in the lunch room? At which table did you sit? Was it the cool kid's table? Was it the nerd's table? Was it the misfit's table? Where did you sit? What did it feel like to sit at that table?

Whose table do we sit at today? Is it only the people who are like us and are the "best" people? Or do we make the effort, as Jesus did, to sit at some other tables so others can experience God's love through us? What might happen to our church if we invited some people to sit with us who have never been invited to sit at the church table before? Would it transform their life? Would it transform our life?