Matthew 9:10-13
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
June 7, 2026
It’s such an unpleasant and humiliating truth that I want to get done with saying it, right from the start: To Jesus, all of us, even the “best” of us, are sick sinners in need of healing from the Great Physician.
If that’s so, it’s wrong to see church as a community that gathers in the together, squeaky clean, good people and excludes the fallen, broken, bad people. Rather it’s right to realize that the only significant difference between people is that some of us are so subtle and sneaky in our sinfulness we can fool others and even ourselves, while others of us are so blatant and obvious in our sinfulness no one can miss it. Matthew belonged to that latter class of sinner.
Matthew was a tax collector. In thinking of a man of his profession in first-century Palestine, we shouldn’t think of a present-day IRS agent who, though they might scare us, is only trying to ensure that everyone pays their fair share in funding a mostly benevolent government. In Jesus’ day, tax collectors were traitors to their own people who extracted money for an evil occupying power and over-charged taxpayers to line their own pockets. They were universally viewed as sell-outs, extortionists and liars – the very epitome of sinners.
Yet, Jesus invited the clearly ethically compromised Matthew to become one of His twelve closest friends!
One evening, Jesus was a guest at a dinner full of tax collectors and other sinners. Seeing the company He was keeping, some religious leaders called Pharisees were appalled at a supposedly holy man being a friend of sinners like that. Was not His accepting and open-hearted fellowship with such disreputable characters a condoning of their immoral lifestyle?
They challenged the disciples about it; but Jesus overheard them and broke into that conversation to make the commonsense observation that “those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” Jesus was of course speaking metaphorically and referring, not to those who have caught the flu or who suffer digestive problems, but to those who are who are spiritually sick – which, in Jesus’ thinking, meant everyone, including His critics. From His perspective everyone needed His doctoring, and the only thing that distinguished the self-righteous was their denial of their own unrighteousness. Even if they suffered physical disease, they felt no emotional dis-ease over how they were or how they stood with God, and thus they felt no need of a spiritual doctor.
By contrast, those they denigrated and dismissed were desperate for a doctor like Jesus: a kind and gracious mender of the soul who could cure spiritual sickness; and their desperation for healing made them open and receptive in a way that enabled Him to give them better spiritual health.
So, even if His critics felt no need themselves for Jesus’ doctoring, they should have been glad for what Jesus was doing for others. That’s why Jesus urged His critics to “go and learn” what God meant when, speaking through the prophet Hosea, He said, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” By that statement, God was not questioning the propriety of making sacrifices but just denying it as a top priority. Though the practice of making sacrifices has always been a part of the life of God’s people (whether in adumbration of Jesus’ self-sacrifice by Abraham and the rest, or in imitation of it by disciples in self-denial and cross-bearing), God values the practice of mercy even more. All of which is to say that while both mercy and sacrifice have a place in the living out of the faith, mercy has the higher priority. In fact, Jesus’ self-sacrifice derived from mercy, and so too the self-sacrifice of those who follow in His steps.
Jesus drew His conversation with His critics to a close with this telling line: “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” What did He mean?
Clearly, Jesus used the term “righteous” here ironically for, as we’ve noted, He saw everyone as a sinner in need of healing. But why would He specifically invite or “call” to Himself only self-identifying sinners? It wouldn’t be His indulging the preference we have for the company of the humble over that of the self-impressed. For, as John 3:16 tells us, He gave up His life for the whole world, which includes both the humble and the self-impressed. It is then, not that He likes self-identifying sinners best, but that He can best help them because they, due to their sense of need, are most open to receiving help. In other words, while Jesus offers His saving grace to everyone, He can only impart it to those who admit they need it and thus want it. If we deny we need mercy, we close the door in the face of grace – in response to which the Lord will respect our freely-chosen decision and turn to work with those who own up to their illness and seek His cure. The healing touch of the Great Physician can only reach those who bow down before Him as their only hope.
That is why those sick with despair over their own sinfulness end up becoming the healthiest of all. They alone believe God’s mercy makes well even the most messed up; and in gratitude they’re happy to become a “friend of sinners” like Jesus, that through them He might befriend still others and heal them.
In his book The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission, Australian pastor John Dickson tells of how he became a friend of sinners through someone who befriended him in his sinfulness: A high school teacher named Brenda invited her entire class to come to her home for weekly discussions about God. Her invitation would have moved no one to show up but for her mentioning she’d be serving hamburgers, milkshakes and home-made desserts. As John thought of his school pals – all as skeptical and degenerate as he – he marveled that she’d open her home (and kitchen!) to them, for they were the worst “sinners” in the whole school. One was a bully; another, a drug user and dealer; and another a petty thief with a string of breaking-and-entering charges to his credit.
Interested at first in only the free food, John couldn’t figure Brenda out. Why was she putting herself out for them? Why was she taking the risk of letting dubious characters like him in her nice home? Why, when an expensive electronic device went missing, she made little of the loss and accused no one though she had good reason to suspect a member of John’s gang. All he knew was that, without being manipulative or pushy, she kept talking about what Jesus did for her and would do for anyone.
For John, her accepting, open-hearted, genuinely caring mercy to students who deserved rejection softened his heart to God. As they continued to eat and drink and talk about God’s grace together, John grew more and more curious about Jesus – and one thing led to another, until at last John struck up his own friendship with the “friend of sinners” and became one himself to others.
May we become sick enough to become healthy enough to become a friend of sinners like Jesus!
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