Sunday Sermon - June 7, 2026

Who does God call? God calls you! But you are not called to be perfect, you are called to trust, to follow, and to walk the road with Jesus. 

Today's Scripture readings:

(Not included in recording - Genesis 12:1-9)

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26 

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Scripture quotations from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. © Copyright 2011 COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

The Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Glory to you, O Lord. As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax collection station. And he said to him, Follow me. And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? But when he heard this, he said, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifices. For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners. While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader came in and knelt before him, saying, My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her and she will live. And Jesus got up and followed him with his disciples. Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak. For she was saying to herself, If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well. Jesus turned and seeing her, he said, Take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well. And the woman was made well from that moment. When Jesus came to the leader's house, he saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion. He said, Go away, for the girl is not dead, but sleeping. And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up, and the report of this spread through all of that district. The gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, O Christ. Would you all please pray with me? Good and gracious God, we pray that you breathe your spirit into and among us, and that we don't just hear words with our ears, but hear in our hearts the message you have for us this day. Amen. So beginning today and for several weeks, we are talking about this guy named Abram, or Abraham, as he will later become, he will later come to be known. And Abram is the epitome. He is the epitome of the generous love that exudes from God. He is the epitome of faithfulness. He is the epitome of trust and abiding deep relationship with God. He is the epitome of righteous faithfulness. Except he comes, if you notice, before the law. So his epitomeness doesn't come from perfectly adhering to all the rules and statutes that are set before him. His epitomeness comes from his deep relationship with God, his love of God, and perhaps more importantly, his trust in God. Later, I think it's maybe September, we'll finally get around to getting the law. When we get there, the law is really just there to basically help us figure out how to live like Abram lived, to help kind of guide the way that we can form ourselves. So today we begin at the beginning of Abram's story. When God calls Abram from basically obscurity into a new future, a new life, and ultimately a new community. Or God says to Abram, pack up and go. I'll tell you where you're going as you go. Just go. I'll deal with the details later. And Abram, what does he do? He packs up and he goes. I don't know about you, but when I move, there is a whole process. I gotta know where I'm going, I gotta have the U-Haul rented, I gotta make sure I've got the keys to the place. Like, there's a whole process. And Abram is going to a land where he knows no one. There is no place for him to go to. He's just going as per God's instructions. Now, if that's not the epitome of trusting and what God says to go do, I don't know what is. And so Abram is celebrated for his generous love, for his faithfulness, for his trust in God. And this is the guy that all three Abrahamic traditions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, all point back to. Now, he is something of a hard act to follow. Because I don't know about you, but if God showed up in my life and said, all right, ready, set, go, go to, I don't know, Idaho, I'd have a few questions. I would want to prepare things a little bit, I would want to take things under my control, I would have a very hard time packing up the dog and saying, off we go to Idaho. So Abram is, I, for me at least, Abram seems like an incredibly difficult act to follow, and someone that it can be a little hard to emulate in our own personal daily lives. And so, in response to that, we get Matthew. We go into the gospel where we have all these disciples that are struggling just as much as we are to figure out what this means to follow Jesus, to follow God. Matthew, in today's gospel, we're told, was a tax collector. Now there was a whole range of different ways people become tax collectors. Some of it's by choice, some of it is not. We don't know where Matthew falls into that grand scheme of things. But what we do know is that regardless of how you got into the position, no one liked the tax collectors. Because oftentimes they were seen as someone who would kind of skim off the top for the purpose of empire and at the cost of the people. And so Matthew is probably not someone the general community viewed as an example to follow, shall we say. They probably didn't like him too terribly much. And yet, God, Jesus, called Matthew. He called him as he was and said, Follow me. Come walk on this journey. We are about to go on together as we minister to the whole area. Come and find this new future, this new life, this new community that is founded in God's mercy in the person Jesus. Come and have a deep and abiding relationship with God and with neighbor. Come and be in a community that is marked by healing, mercy, and love for all. Jesus does not look at Matthew and say, but first we gotta fix a few things. We gotta get you up to snuff of being in the crew before you're allowed to come with me. Jesus looks at Matthew for all of his shortcomings and for all of his gifts and says, Matthew, as you are, you are called to be my disciple. That feels a little more relatable to me because I know that I have fallen short more times than I can count. I have not always loved my neighbor as myself, and I have not always loved God with my heart, soul, and mind, and I do not always feel ready to take on the journey of walking with Jesus full stop. But neither did Matthew, probably. I imagine Matthew is a bit taken aback when they're sitting at their first dinner together, and Jesus up and leaves and is touched by this woman who's bleeding and says, Daughter, your faith has made you well. I doubt Matthew was ready when he followed him to the religious leader's house and raised a girl from the dead. I doubt Matthew was ready to be a part of those scenes. But ready or not, God called him. God said, Matthew, I see you for all of who you are. Yes, I see the times that you have skimmed off the top and cheated your neighbors. Yes, I have seen the times when you have not offered mercy when you should have. But I also see the times where you have loved your neighbor. I see the way that you want to love your neighbor as yourself. I see the way that you want to be in this abiding relationship with God. And Jesus says, Matthew, bring all of who you are, pack up everything of who you are, and walk this road with me. Walk this road of discipleship, of ministry, of community. And with that, Jesus invites Matthew into a new future, a new life, and a new community. And in that we can hear our own call too. We too are called just as we are, wherever we are. Jesus calls us in our youth, Jesus calls us in our old age, as Abram reminds us in the Romans reading that he's nearly dead. He's good for dead when he's 100 years old. I have an issue with that, but we'll go with that another day. God calls you where you are as you are. And like Abram, we can trust that God will handle the rest. God calls us into a new life, a new future, a new community. And hearing that call, we can just trust and walk the road with Jesus. Because we have been washed in these waters at baptism, called and named and claimed by God. We are fed at this table, fed and nourished in body and soul for the road that is ahead of us. And we gather in this community where we find support and care from one another as we all make the road by walking it. And so we are called to follow. We are called when we are in need to dare to reach out and touch just the fringe of Jesus' cloak, knowing that God is handling the rest. God's grace, God's mercy, God's love is enough for the rest. To use a commonly used phrase, God does not call the equipped, God equips the call. And in our baptisms, we have already been called. And at this table and in this community, we are equipped in scripture, in prayer, we are equipped for the journey ahead of us. Now, this is not to say that everything from here on out is all sunshine and daisies and easy peasy lemon squeezy. Because as we will find out, as we continue to follow Abraham and the disciples of Jesus, there are bumps in the road, there are times when it is hard. There are times when we might want to just say, I don't know anymore. But we are promised through all of those times, no matter what bumps and turns and twists come, we are promised that God is with us. God is with us along the way. God is walking the road with us. God has called you where you are as you are. To love and serve God and love and serve neighbor and to be a disciple of Jesus, walking the road with him, learning from him, doing ministry with him this day and every day. Amen.