In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
An interesting Grace & St. Stephen’s trivia question is, “Where did I first meet members of the Search Committee?” It wasn’t at the church I was serving in Salisbury or at restaurant, though those would be good guesses. No, it was at a Barenaked Ladies concert. Tanya and Linda came to North Carolina as a part of the search process and the Barenaked Ladies are my favorite band, so of course we had tickets. When Tanya found out they were playing in Charlotte the night of their arrival, they also got tickets and we met up there.
One of the Barenaked Ladies’ songs that resonates deeply with me is called “What a Good Boy.” It opens with, “When I was born, they looked at me and said, ‘What a good boy, what a smart boy, what a strong boy.’ And when you were born, they looked at you and said, ‘What a good girl, what a smart girl, what a pretty girl.’ We’ve got these chains hanging around our necks; people wanna strangle us with them before we take our first breath. This name is the hairshirt I wear.” This is a sermon about the chains hanging around our necks, about the names we carry.
I wonder, what names do you go by? And I don’t really mean the name on your report card or license. No, I’m thinking about those names that someone called you all those years ago on the playground that, somehow, still stings. The names that come into your head when you see yourself in a mirror. The names that you’ve spent hours in therapy trying to forget. Failure, dummy, awkward, fat, ugly, weak, insignificant. Those names.
The passage we heard from chapter 9 of Matthew tells the story of moving from death to life in three different vignettes. The first, and I’ll say a lot more about him later in the sermon, is Matthew who was dead socially. He was a despised tax collector who was brought into the fellowship of Jesus and made alive in that community. The second was a young girl who was physically dead, and Jesus restores her to life and turns her family’s weeping into tears of joy. The third is a woman who was dead existentially; she was alive, but not really living. She had been suffering for twelve years. Even twelve weeks of suffering leads many of us to despair and depression, but she’s endured this hopeless existence for twelve years, and Jesus liberates her of that suffering and heals her.
This is what Jesus does: when we feel like we are as good as dead, at a dead end, or dead in sin, he comes to us as our physician and gives us life. No matter how bleak the situation, how narrow it feels between the rock and the hard place, or how long you’ve been suffering, Jesus comes into that place to make all things well.
And how will Jesus do this, moving us from these places of deadness to abundant life? Well, the call of Matthew to be a disciple of Jesus is where we see how this salvation unfolds. Matthew was a tax-collector. Later the Pharisees question Jesus and ask him why he eats with “tax collectors and sinners,” as if somehow the category of sinner isn’t despicable enough to also include the tax collectors. Now, it’s not as if Matthew worked for the IRS and this is just general frustration about having to pay taxes. No, Israel is the Promised Land. Back in Genesis, God promised to Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation, with numerous people and a prosperous land.
But through a long series of events, the people felt like the promise was dead, as they were enslaved in Egypt. And God did what God so often does – made a way out of no way. God led the people out of slavery by splitting the Red Sea and guiding the people into the Promised Land, in which they settled and built the Temple in Jerusalem. The problem is that Israel is an occupied territory at this point in history. The unclean and pagan Romans are ruling over the land given to the people by God. Paying taxes was a reminder of this occupation, this travesty. Not to mention, tax collectors made their living by add a special “handling fee.” We have no idea if Matthew was one of these unscrupulous tax collectors who charged more than he should of, but they all got lumped in together in terms of being hated.
But Matthew has it worse than the run of the mill tax collector because he had another name. When this story is told in Luke and Mark, he’s named “Levi.” Now Levi is a very interesting name because it the name of one of the twelve tribes of Israel, taking its name, Levi, from the son of Jacob, the grandson of Abraham to whom the Promise was made. The Levites became the priestly tribe, meaning that those called to serve as priests in the Temple were a part of this lineage and often went by the name “Levi.”
So not only is Matthew a tax collector and was probably called a lot of names for that work – pig, scum, and names too vulgar to mention in this sermon, but I bet you can use your imagination – but he was a Jew, and not just a Jew but a set apart Levite, who is collaborating with Rome in the oppression of his own people. The names he must have been called… traitor, sellout. If you’ve watched the television series The Chosen, they do a great job portraying the latent hostility and even hatred that some other disciples have towards Matthew. He would have been an absolute pariah and called some of the worst names out there.
One of the greatest lies any of us has ever been told comes from a nursery rhyme: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” It’s preposterous – of course words hurt. Words are how fights start, how wars begin, how marriages fall apart, and how friendships end. Think about those names that you wear around your neck, they are heavy and they hurt.
Now, this is an obvious point, but I’m going somewhere, I promise. The four Gospels are what? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Not, Levi, Mark, Luke, and John. Later in the New Testament, we find a series of books called First and Second Peter. Peter is the new name that Jesus gave to Simon. Peter took that name as his new identity, it’s how he saw himself and he proudly went by that name. Well, it seems like the same thing happened with Levi. His name was painful and gave him a sense of shame about the calling he rejected. He probably didn’t feel worthy of that name. I know I’ve felt that before – when I receive a compliment, if one of those names of shame has been recently triggered, I have trouble believing it. It’s far too easy to wear those names as a hairshirt.
But we don’t have the Gospel according to Levi, we have the Gospel according to Matthew. And while it’s not directly in the text, we know that Jesus often gave people nicknames and new names. At some point, Jesus looked Levi in the eye and spoke into his heart – your name is Matthew. It gives me chills just imagining that moment because Matthew means “gift of God.”
Replacing the insults, the names, the shame that he had been wearing, Jesus tells him, “You are a gift of God, Matthew.” And Jesus says the same to you. You are God’s beloved child. Jesus rejoices in you not because of what you accomplish, but because at the deepest part of your being, you are awesome and worthy of love. No matter what flaws you have, what mistakes and regrets you carry, what oddities and quirks are a part of your personality, you belong and are valued.
This month, we celebrate Pride – a reminder that diversity is a gift from the Holy Trinity, not an obstacle to overcome. For those who have been denied a sense of pride in who you are, Jesus says to you, “You are a part of me, you belong, and you are loved.” And regardless of your gender identity, you can always be proud of who you are because you are a gift that God has given to this world.
And to be very clear about this, this is true about you because Jesus, the Word of God, has said so, not because you’ve done the right things, thought the right thoughts, or prayed the right prayers. Your belovedness is a pre-existing condition. Jesus says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” meaning it’s not about what we bring to the table, but rather that Jesus brings us to his Table. This new name made all the difference for Matthew – it moved him from being as good as dead, to being truly alive. And we know this is the case because of the word that Matthew chooses to use to describe this life-changing moment. There’s a standard word that Matthew uses throughout his writing for when someone goes from the position of sitting to standing, for getting up. But that’s not the word he uses here. And this is so good. Instead of that regular word, he uses another word: anastas. That word doesn’t mean “get up” in any usual sense – it’s word we translate as “Resurrection”!
Matthew is saying “Jesus raised me to new life in him when he named me as God’s gift and called me to follow him.” And at this point in the story Matthew had done nothing to deserve it – he hadn’t decided to stop being a tax collector, he hadn’t repented, nothing. It’s all God’s amazing grace, how sweet the sound, when God gives us a name that reminds us that we are God’s beloved. St. Paul, who also had a transformational experience of Jesus that led to a new name, put it this way in the reading from Romans: “it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” That word “reckoned” means it was given, not earned. And this is what’s so amazing about grace, not only do we receive it without it being something we have to earn, but because we don’t earn our belovedness and belonging, it means we can never un-earn it, we can never lose it. As Jesus says elsewhere, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”
Notice that Jesus then tells Matthew to follow him – in other words, to move on. It’s the invitation to leave behind those old names and ways of being. So whatever names you carry around, whatever sicknesses you might have – perfectionism, fears of being unwanted, worthless, insignificant, being alone, or not having enough, if you feel overwhelmed by life, by situations beyond your control, or by conflicts you cannot manage – whatever you are dealing with, our Great Physician comes to us and gives us a name that raises us to new life, allowing us to leave those names and afflictions behind.
Listen deeply, for Jesus is calling you by a name that frees you from the burdens and shames you’ve been carrying. I can’t tell you what that name is exactly, but I promise, Jesus is calling you a name that rhymes with “beloved,” sounds a bit like “delight,” and is grounded in a sense of relief. If you need help listening, let me know and we can listen together. Jesus has named you and claimed you as his beloved and assures us all that we are precious gifts in the eyes of God. Amen.
