Our Scripture for this Sunday is Matthew 9:35-10:8. Jesus is sending out his disciples for their first foray into carrying forth the Word of the Lord in their turn.
This Sunday is our Family Service and we shall be sharing this lesson for our Young People and families to hear together, to know what we too are called to do in the Name of Jesus.
Peace,
Pastor Pete
Our Neighborhood in the Kingdom of God is an earthly beginning to the perfect Kingdom completed at Jesus' return. But what does it look like in earthly terms?
Because attempts to portray the 'ideal' Neighborhood are made in the popular culture and media. It is all over Children's programming. The one that set the pattern for me growing us was Sesame Street. I will confess that I am not of the "Elmo" generation and never really got the popularity of "Elmo's World" (but for some reason, I love the extended "Noodle" family).
I grew up when Mr. Hooper was the shopkeeper. And it still brings a hollowness of heart to me in remembering how they had to share the news of Mr. Hooper's death with Big Bird. But that was what the Neighborhood was about, people caring for one another in community. It was done in a way that sought to protect kids growing up in a dangerous world. Monsters weren't bad, people cooperated with each other. Cookie Monster was my favorite. Grover was my voice.
Not all children's programming is this way. Most "children's" programming is not for children except to turn them into consumers. How many shows are just there to sell the merchandise? Even Sesame Street has its share of that. "Tickle Me Elmo" comes to mind (and not as a fond recollection).
It is even proper to be looking into the world for hints of the Kingdom of God? I think it is more than proper, it is necessary. But with discernment. God is the Creator of all. The good things of faith, love and grace and caring, they continue to exist in the world, all tangled up with sin and evil and greed.
Our Neighborhood in the Kingdom of God also exists in the World. We are not called upon to withdraw to a mountain stronghold and defend Jesus against all comers. It is just the opposite, in the Name of Jesus, we are called to invite the world in. It is a line that we, as a church, have sought to discern since the first disciples of Jesus, how do we live "in" the world while seeking not to be "of" the sinfulness of the world?
The good things of God continue to exist in the world, even in the presence of sin that, if it cannot undermine them, will twist and tweak them. We know this is the same for the Church. The good things of God exist in the church, but even here, the presence of sin seeks to undermine and to tweak and to twist what is good.
This is God's world. We know God is here for us. We know God is here for the world, despite sin. So, all around us there are hints and clues of what our Neighborhood could be, should be in our world.
Pastor Pete
Our passages for this Sunday include Joshua 20 and Romans 6: 1-11. As always, we share them in the KJV, the Pirate's Bible, the NRSV, and the Message.
May the hearing of God's Word provide guidance and clarity in the week ahead.
Pastor Pete
To You Who Are Beloved of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Matthew 9: 9 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.
10 And as he sat at dinner in the house,
many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his
disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to
his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and
sinners?” 12 But when he heard this, he said, “Those who
are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go
and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come
to call the righteous but sinners.”
The
promise in Genesis is made to Abram (even before God changed his name to
Abraham). The piece we hang our presence
on is at the conclusion of verse 3, “…in you all the families of the earth
shall be blessed.” That is us, among
others.
Our
passage in Matthew shows Jesus doing that work.
His work began among His people, God’s Chosen. It is something that the leadership in
Jerusalem is watching. And then Jesus
makes a point.
“Tax
collectors and sinners”, Bible-speak for ‘riff-raff’, for the unwelcome, those
who have made bad life decisions, the people on the other side of the tracks, those
people who, in the eyes of the Pharisees, are unworthy.
Apparently,
theirs was an early version of “See Something, Say Something”, because these
are not the sort of people that Jesus ‘ought’ to be caught having dinner
with. They are sinners. And tax collectors (a special brand of
treacherous in occupied Israel).
Jesus’
response is cutting, to say the least. “Those
who are well have no need of a physician…”
In other words, “I am not here for YOU.”
Jesus is here for those who are not well, who, in the eyes of God, are “ill”
with sin.
But
Jesus is not done. The Pharisees, the
teachers of the Bible of Jesus (alongside Jesus), they would recognize Jesus’
work in fulfillment of the promise to Abram.
So they’d recognize Jesus’ second cut, one that runs deeper. “Go and
learn what this means, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”
It
is from Hosea, the prophet who calls “BS” on the practices of ancient Israel when
they turned away from God for their own benefit. The second part of the verse in Hosea goes,
“(For I desire)…the knowledge of God rather than burnt sacrifices.”
Israel,
blessed by God and in a good economic situation in the time of Hosea, has
gotten very good at following the letter of the law for their own desire and
benefit. Because they forgot they needed
God, the Giver of all. They’d forgotten the spirit of that law, the knowledge
of God. What is the knowledge of
God? Most basically, that God is love.
Jesus
has not come to call the righteous, but the sinner. In speaking to the Pharisees, Jesus is not
telling them something new, but reminding them.
They are the ‘righteous’ and they should know better. More than knowing better, as leaders of the
people, as those who claim to be scholars of the bible they share with Jesus,
they should be doing this work. Most
especially INSTEAD of critiquing Jesus for it.
While
this will not endear Jesus to the leadership of the people, it is the people,
not their leadership, that Jesus has come to serve.
Pastor Pete
This week, we share Genesis 12: 1-3 and Matthew 9: 9-13 in the KJV, the Pirate Bible, the NRSV, and the Message.
We begin at the promise made to Abram and how Jesus took that promise and made it real.
Pastor Pete
To You Who Are Beloved of our Lord Jesus Christ,
So why
insert this little hiccup in the grand finale of the Gospel of Matthew? Is it simply a nod, an homage, or is it
something else?
Is it a
reminder? Is it a reminder that, as the
grand sweeping vision is laid out by Jesus in these few verses, that we are
still human? And it is a grand, sweeping
vision.
Baptize them in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!!
Teach them to obey everything I have commanded you!!
And, you are not alone, for I am with you always, to the end…
But,
what if it gets hard? What if I don’t
know what I am doing? I got love and I
got faithfulness but… What if the going
gets tough? Because it does. Here’s an excerpt from Paul’s Resume of
Suffering from 2 Corinthians 11:24-25: “Five times I received at the
hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I
was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned...” (I have
never heard this called a Resume of Suffering but it powerfully fits).
So,
maybe these three little words are included as more than a nod or an
homage. Maybe they are included as an
“Easter egg”, like in the movies. In the
movies, an ‘Easter egg’ is a reference to another movie or scene or something
that the director is honoring. One of my
favorites is in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where R2D2 and C3PO from Star
Wars are hieroglyphics in the underground temple in Egypt.
So,
maybe, when someone is living into the Great Commission and things have gotten
tough, when there are serious bumps in the road, nothing seems to be going
right, disappointment and doubt have settled in… Remember this Easter egg. It takes us to the Supreme Doubter. And it walks us through how Jesus worked with
him.
It
is a visual of Easter. Jesus’
resurrection body, wounds healed BUT present.
Jesus present and transformed.
Jesus up from the grave, in fulfillment of all the promises made about
grace and salvation and forgiveness and eternity. But, more profoundly, THE reminder that even
death was overcome by our Lord. All to
remind poor Thomas to believe.
The
work is getting hard? The Great
Commission feels more like a Great Weight around the neck? Go back to the Doubter, who had to see and
touch to confess, “My Lord and My God!”
Read
again what Jesus said to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen
Me? Blessed are those who have not seen
and yet have come to believe.”
That’s
us. Reminded of where the blessings
truly come from. Where the strength
truly comes from. Where the renewal
truly comes from. In the Triune God.
God
the Father and Creator, who is not just THE power in the Universe, but THE
Maker of the Universe. In Jesus Christ
who did the work we are not able to, in perfect obedience, dying and rising
again to fulfill the promise of a gift given to us all. In the Holy Spirit, who is Jesus in our
hearts. As Jesus says to conclude the
Commission, “and I am with you, till the end of the age.”
Pastor Pete
May 31, 2026 is Trinity Sunday on the Church Calendar and is our monthly Healing Service at First Presbyterian Church of Merchantville. Our Scripture Lesson is the Great Commission from the very end of Matthew. It is the command of Jesus to go out into the world and, by making disciples of all peoples, they bring God's healing to all peoples.
Pastor Pete
