Sermon for Third Sunday after Trinity Year A

Three people for God's kingdom

Sermons year A

Christopher Harrison home page

There are three key characters in today’s reading, not including Jesus:

• Matthew, the tax collector
• The leader of the synagogue, called Jairus (in the version by St. Luke)
• The woman who had suffered from bleeding for 12 years.

Jesus changes the life of each one of them:

• He calls Matthew to be a disciple
• He raises Jairus’ dead daughter to life
• He heals the woman with bleeding.

There are three key messages at the heart of this reading:

• God wants us to take risks in faith, even at personal cost to ourselves
• God invites people of all kinds into his kingdom
• There is a particular welcome in God’s kingdom for sinners who repent.

Looking at these in turn:

1.        God wants us to take risks in faith, even at personal cost to ourselves

• The leader of the synagogue was an important person.    He put his credibility on the line by trusting that Jesus could bring his daughter back to life.   People laughed when Jesus told them that his daughter was not dead but sleeping.   Jairus risked losing face in a major way.   But he still had faith in Jesus.  
• Similarly with the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years.   She risked the anger of Jesus, going up behind him and hoping to draw some of his power from him, without him knowing.   But she still had faith in Jesus.
• Faith today is not a fashionable thing in some quarters. Faith, though, involves going beyond the boundaries of what is conventional and comfortable.    It is less and less easy to have faith in God in today’s society.   Will you take the risk of being a Christian in a largely secular society?    Are there ways in which your Christian faith can lead you to take risks for God – not to put those who depend on you at risk, but to achieve something you passionately believe in, and do it for God?
• Describe the ‘walk of suffering’ of Emmanuel Neba Fuh, the Cameroonian refugee who is walking barefoot from Derby to Downing Street to try to make more people ready to stand up against abuses of political power in Africa.    See the Derby for Africa website

2.        God invites people of all kinds into his kingdom

Each of the three events described in today’s reading involves someone coming to a deeper relationship with God.    But these are three people from very different backgrounds:  

• Matthew would have been a Jew, but one who was prepared to collaborate with the Romans, the occupying power – and who would have therefore been seen as a traitor by some Jews.   But still Jesus wanted him to be a disciple – and had faith in him.
• The leader of the synagogue would have been quite important in the Jewish religious establishment.    He would have had to be seen as ‘respectable’.    Jesus had compassion on him, and on his daughter – because this man had faith in Jesus.
• The woman with the flow of blood, by contrast, would have been on the very edge of society.    She would have been ‘unclean’ throughout the time of her bleeding – 12 years – and so would have been very limited in the part she could play in society.   But Jesus still had faith in her.

You don’t have to be respectable to be invited by God into his kingdom.   You can be anyone – as long as you have even the beginnings of faith.    And all these people cannot have had any more than the beginnings of faith – yet this was enough.

3.        There is a particular welcome in God’s kingdom for sinners who repent .

• Jesus was criticised for associating with people like Matthew.   “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”   they asked his disciples.   Jesus replied, however, by saying that he came to call not the righteous but sinners.
• So often it is thought that you have to be a good person to come to Church.   That God is just for people who are in some way holy.    But this is not the teaching of Christ.   Remember the rejoicing over the return of the prodigal Son, and over the finding of the lost sheep.   God searches out the lost, the sinful, those who have strayed, just like the woman in the parable searched for the lost coin until she found it.
• If you have sinned greatly, the turnaround towards faith in Christ can therefore be correspondingly great.   This is why there is greater joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine who have no need of repentance.
• So never write anyone off just because they seem to have strayed a long way from the path of Christ.   It is not for us to judge the reasons for why they have strayed, or how near they might be to that dramatic turnaround which will bring them into God’s kingdom.

There is something for everyone in the stories of three people. Are you like Matthew, leading a complex life based on a delicate balance of allegiances to different people?  Or like the ruler of the synagogue, and important person in the eyes of the world but having endured great personal suffering, and needing to throw all caution and respectability aside in his plea to Christ for help with his dead daughter?    Or are you more like the woman with bleeding, rejected by society through no fault of your own, needing to summon up all the courage you can manage in the hope that God will accept you, even though most people around you don’t?

So I urge you to reflect on these three people today .. and through the week.   Let their stories become part of your story.   Let their faith inspire your faith; and remember that even if our faith in God is sometimes weak, his faith in us never fails.  

Sermons year A

Christopher Harrison home page