Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
11^th of June, 2023

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

I was ten the first time I read Charlotte Bronte’s 1847 novel, Jane Eyre, and it traumatised me for life. It was not the madwoman in the attic who horrified me, but Jane’s life at the Lowood Institution, based on Bronte’s own experience at a Clergy Daughters’ School. I hated the Reverend Brocklehurst who oversaw the school and I have never forgotten the outrage I felt at his addresses to the teachers and his labelling of Jane as a liar. Upon discovering that ‘a lunch, consisting of bread and cheese’ has twice been served to the inmates of the Institution by a teacher because the breakfast was inedible, Brocklehurst intones:

You are aware that my plan in bringing up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying. Should any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the spoiling of a meal, the under or over dressing of a dish, the incident ought not to be neutralised by replacing with something more delicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body and obviating the aim of this institution; it ought to be improved to the spiritual edification of the pupils, by encouraging them to evince fortitude under the temporary privation. A brief address on those occasions would not be mistimed, wherein a judicial instructor would take the opportunity of referring to the sufferings of the primitive Christians; to the torments of the martyrs; to the exhortations of our blessed Lord himself, calling upon his disciples to take up their cross and follow him; to his warnings that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; to his divine consolations, ‘if ye suffer hunger or thirst for my sake, happy are ye’. Oh, madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge into these children’s mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls![1]

Luckily my utter abhorrence of both Brocklehurst and his version of Christianity, though I did encounter them at an impressionable age, did not influence my later life choices.

Amelia Clarkson as young Jane, and Simon McBurney as Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre (2011)

Initial impressions of the Gospel according to Matthew can be equally off-putting. The Jesuit Brendan Byrne, who taught me New Testament at Theological College, says that initially to him ‘the First Gospel appeared moralizing and didactic, with rather too much talk of punishment and hellfire’.[2] It is one in which ‘invitations of welcome into the final kingdom are matched by threats of hellfire and castings out into exterior darkness where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth’”.[3] Matthew’s version is certainly my least favourite of the four canonical gospels, because of Matthew’s emphasis on the law. It is only in this gospel that Jesus says, ‘Do not think I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil,’ (Matt 5:17) and tells his disciples, ‘Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’ (Matt 5:20)

Brendan Byrne says of this gospel, ‘late have I loved thee,’ and as a diligent student I have followed his example into loving it, too. Twice in this gospel Jesus is heard to quote the prophet Hosea, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’. We hear one of those occasions today, when Jesus tells the Pharisees complaining that he eats with tax-collectors and sinners, ‘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 sacrifice.” For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’ Mercy, not sacrifice, is the key to this gospel, which is why it is love-worthy despite the talk of hellfire and gnashing of teeth.

All three of the synoptic gospels tell of the calling of the tax-collector, although in both Mark and Luke the tax-collector is called Levi. It is only in Matthew that the tax-collector is named Matthew, which may explain why this gospel was given the title ‘according to Matthew’ in the first place. As a tax-collector, Matthew is a collaborator with the forces occupying Israel and quite probably someone who makes his money by demanding more in taxes from his fellow Jews than he has promised to the Romans. The identification of him as a sinner is completely justified. But Jesus calls him, and the power of the call is such that Matthew immediately gets up and follows. He then finds himself at a dinner, and he is not the only tax-collector or sinner dining with Jesus. Sinners are sharing table fellowship with Jesus, and we know how important such fellowship was to the Jews. No wonder the Pharisees are puzzled. For them, the only way that the nation of Israel could be a holy nation was by the righteous shunning sinners. For Jesus, such shunning is like a doctor avoiding sick people rather than seeking to heal them.

In today’s gospel reading Jesus crosses numerous social and physical boundaries. There is the boundary between sinners and the righteous. Jesus smashes this with his feasting. Next, there is the boundary between the powerful and outsiders. A leader of the synagogue comes and kneels before this itinerant preacher and miracle worker. In his time of greatest need this father seeks out not a community leader like himself, but a disreputable prophet. His request then provides Jesus with an opportunity to cross the boundary between the living and the dead long before his own resurrection. In the versions of this story told by Mark and Luke the man’s daughter is only at the point of death when he approaches Jesus; (Mark 5:23; Luke 10:42) she dies as they are on their way to her. But here she is already dead, and the leader is demanding that Jesus raise the dead: ‘come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.’ Jesus is willing to do so; he immediately gets up to follow the bereaved father. On the way, another boundary is destroyed when a woman who has been bleeding for twelve years touches the fringe of Jesus’ cloak. Rather than Jesus being made ritually unclean by the contact, the woman is ritually cleansed by her faith. Jesus addresses her as ‘daughter,’ reintegrating her into the holy nation and making her well. At the house of the leader Jesus touches his daughter’s corpse and again, rather than Jesus being made ritually unclean, a daughter is welcomed back into the community – in this case a community that has been making a considerable commotion around her house.

In all these encounters mercy is prioritised over religious ritual or ‘sacrifice’. Jesus has come to bring healing and wholeness to all those who are sick, whether sick with sin, like Matthew the tax collector, or physically sick, like the woman suffering from haemorrhages. This is one reason that I think Reverend Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre is such a bad clergyperson. How could he possibly have read the gospels and concluded that caring for people’s bodies would starve their immortal souls? How could he ignore the many examples of Jesus feeding the hungry and healing physical illness by fabricating a Bible verse, ‘if ye suffer hunger or thirst for my sake, happy are ye’? God created us as embodied beings; of course God cares about our bodies!

As we hear today’s stories our place is among both the disciples and the ‘tax-collectors and sinners’. Like Matthew himself, we are always both. We are the insiders, sitting at the table as of right, who are to imitate Jesus by welcoming the outcast and sharing fellowship with those on the margins. We are also the sinners and those who are sick, needing to be welcomed and healed by Jesus, those who have faith that we will be made well if we can just touch the fringe of his cloak. The church is a community of saints who are also forgiven sinners. We need never be afraid that our need for healing and forgiveness will exclude us from God’s community because, to again quote Brendan Byrne, ‘Far from distancing [church] members from God, sinfulness is actually a guarantee of the presence of Emmanuel, the embodiment of mercy’.[4] As those to whom God has shown mercy, we are called to show mercy to all those who need it, in imitation of our Lord.

As insiders, the only way in which we cannot imitate Jesus is in raising the dead. The story of the little girl brought back to life when Jesus takes her hand is one we can only read with longing, because we will not see our beloved dead alive among us again. The authors of the gospels tell this story as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ own resurrection and, while Jesus’ rising from the dead has not ended death, it does mean that death no longer has the last word. At every funeral I say that we are giving those we love into the loving hands of God, and that does not mean that death is not real, and dreadful, and sad, but it does mean that death is not the end.

‘Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”’ When Jesus says, ‘Do not think I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil,’ the fulfilment is mercy, loving-kindness, not sacrifice. The fulfilment is a celebratory banquet to which everyone is invited, not a meal determined by ritual in which only the righteous can participate. It is a table at which all of us, we who are both saints and sinners, are welcome. As we just sang:

I came to call sinners, not just the righteous.
I came to bring peace, not to condemn.
Each time you fail to live by my promise,
why do you think, I’d love you the less?[5]

When we accept our invitation, and cross social and physical boundaries to invite others, we are rejecting the punitive, exclusionary faith of ‘Reverend Brocklehurst’ and all his ilk. So, let us do that!

[1] Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (Oxford: World’s Classics, 2000), p. 63.

[2] Brendan Byrne, Lifting the Burden: Reading Matthew’s Gospel in the Church Today (Strathfield: St Paul’s, 2004), p. vii.

[3] Lifting the Burden, p. x.

[4] Lifting the Burden, p. 81.

[5] Together in Song 693, Deirdre Browne.