Year A Proper 5 Genesis 12:1-9 Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”

Just like that – God tells Abram to pack up his household and his belongings, pull up stakes, and, with the promise that sometime in the future his descendants will be a great nation, go somewhere that only God knows about, but that He will disclose to Abram at a later date.

Certainly, today’s first reading poses some interesting questions. They are the sort of questions a child might immediately ask – remember Sunday school days? They are the sort of questions we adults, when asked, struggle to answer.

How did God speak to Abram? Why did God choose him? And if the child has ever helped pack for short family trip, he or she might wonder how Abraham could, at a time when travel was so terribly difficult (camels – really? – camels), take his whole family and his animals to cross to another land without knowing what he would find there? The man didn’t even know where they were all going. If it happened that we were to be asked these questions, we could only guess at the answers, but of one thing we would be certain: Abram was convinced that God called him, that God made promises to him, and that God would keep these promises even when it seemed that it was utterly impossible that they would be fulfilled.

St. Paul tells us why Abram obeyed God’s command. The promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. And faith, we know, is trust in action.

As Jesus was walking along, He saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and He said to him, “Follow me.”

In all the several stories contained in today’s Gospel, it is trust that is the dominant factor. Here is Matthew, a tax collector, who obeys the call and becomes a disciple. The tax collectors were despised in the day of Jesus because they collected taxes for the enemy, who in this case was Herod Antipas. The tax collectors were lumped together with the sinners by the Pharisees, in that same suspect category that they placed the other people who were attracted to and were welcomed by Jesus’ love. It is most probable that Matthew and Jesus had seen each other as the Rabbi passed by the market place of Capernaum, there by the Sea of Galilee.

On this day, Jesus utters an invitation to the tax collector who sits alone in the booth, despised and avoided by the other citizens. “Follow me,” Jesus tells him, and without any recorded question or hesitation, Matthew gets up and does just that. But he doesn’t stop there; he invites Jesus to eat with him.

The houses in Capernaum were open during the day, and anyone could look into the main rooms. So the passers-by and all the curious who heard the exchange between Jesus and Matthew gathered outside or in the courtyard to watch them eating while reclining around a low table. Some of the Pharisees got close enough to talk to one of the disciples, men who were also there, reclining and picking up the offered food with their fingers. The Pharisees asked what they will repeat on many other occasions: “Why does your teacher do this? Why does he eat with sinners and tax collectors?”

A Pharisee, conscious of his moral superiority and high position in the community, would never do this. Eating with someone meant acknowledging that the person is not inferior to you. Of course, Jesus heard the question; He was meant to hear it. He offers an answer that comes from well-known prophetic Scriptures, something the Pharisees knew well, not something that tradition dictated. “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” It is how you treat one another that matters to God, not the rituals that you keep, He tells them.

The conversation continues, but is interrupted by a man who has an urgent need. This is not one of the despised; this man has authority and is respected. But he kneels before Jesus to ask Him a favor, not for himself but for his beloved daughter. The request to follow is now reversed. Jesus doesn’t ask the man, whom we know from the other evangelists is Jairus, to follow Him. It is Jairus who begs Jesus to come to his home – not to cure the sick child, but to bring her back from the dead!

Jesus immediately responds to the pain and trust of this father and starts on the way to Jairus’ house. All three of the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) tell this story: Jesus is once again interrupted by a woman who, in her turn, is following Him. When she touches His cloak He feels power leaving His own body to heal her. By touching His garment, she is cured of a long-term illness. Jairus, the father, has an astounding amount of trust in this teacher and healer he has just met, and the woman with the hemorrhage has an enormous amount of faith that this holy man can help her if she can only get close to Him. What an astonishing trust these two people show. And they are not disappointed.

Both the woman and the girl are given new life. Jesus rescues them from sickness and death.

Abram, Matthew, Jairus, and the woman who touched Jesus’ cloak show profound trust in someone beyond themselves, in the Creator of life.

Despite the taunts of his neighbors and maybe the complaints of his relatives, Abram abandons everything that is familiar in order to obey a God who calls him to a new place.

Despite the derision and dislike of those who know him as a sinner, Matthew obeys the call of the Teacher he had heard from afar and changes his life forever.

Despite her despair and shame, a woman ventures into the public in order to touch the man from whom love and power emanate and heal.

Despite his religious position and respectability, a distraught father approaches a man who eats with sinners and begs for the life of his child.

Jesus responds to all of them because He is of the Father. He knows that He has come for the sick, not the healthy; for those who recognize that He is filled with mercy, a power much more compelling than external sacrifice, adherence to empty religious ritual, and mere tradition for the sake of tradition. Always going to the heart of every problem that is brought before Him, Jesus sees what is in people’s hearts and responds with mercy and wholeness.

Here we are Sunday morning. Jesus has called us, “Follow me”, and we have responded in the affirmative. But now – we have questions. How can we tell when Jesus is speaking to us? What is He calling us to do? Where are we going? Is there anything in this for me?

When John Kavanaugh, the noted and famous ethicist, went to Calcutta, he was seeking Mother Teresa … and more. He went for three months to work at “the house of the dying” to find out how best he could spend the rest of his life.

When he met Mother Teresa, he asked her to pray for him. “What do you want me to pray for?” she replied. He then uttered the request he had carried thousands of miles: “Clarity. Pray that I have clarity.”

“No,” Mother Teresa answered, “I will not do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Kavanaugh said that she always seemed to have clarity, the very kind of clarity he was looking for, Mother Teresa laughed and said: “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus, silence our minds, calm our hearts, center us in You. Help us always to remember that in every moment the greatest prayer of all is not for clarity, but simply, “Thy will be done”. We ask for Your Love and mercy’s sake, Amen.