June 5, 2008
Walking
Pentecost 4/5A Mt 9.9-13,18-36
“As Jesus was walking along… ” (Mt 9.9a)
It’s all in a day’s work.
Enlist a new disciple, one with a shady reputation whom nobody trusts. Take a dinner party for the opportunity to tell people why, that only the sick need care, that mercy trumps sacrifice every time, that it’s the sinners who need attention.
Be interrupted by the local rabbi with the news that his daughter has just died. Make a not altogether graceful exit. On the way, stop long enough to heal a woman ill for years, then go and restore the child midst a mocking, flute-playing audience, wondering, perhaps, how ludicrous things can get. And wondering, as well as some have, that maybe medicine might have been a more rewarding profession than politics and preaching.
“As Jesus was walking along… ”
Might we churchers have it so good. We are so serious about ourselves. Going out for such a stroll in our way never seems to enter our minds. Or maybe it does, and we see what happened to Jesus. And maybe we fail to see how “walking along” turned out to be precisely his occasion for to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. And to see how Matthew’s simple little pericopé, his little summing up reveals the very pattern for our ministry.
This week remembers the fortieth anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s assassination. In a collection of newspaper op-ed pieces, his children reflected on him as their father. One of them remembered that he taught them that we must build a system of justice which enjoys the confidence of all sides. That peace is not just to pray for in some distant time, but something all of us have the responsibility to create in our way every day. And that we must garner the courage to bypass all that impedes us and face the truth about ourselves as well as those we consider our enemies.
As Jesus was walking along, I wonder had he not come to something like these conclusions for his own ministry. He had long since discovered the truth about himself and the courage he needed to implement it. Perhaps the challenges we face as Anglican Christians walking along as we do may bring us to the same realities.
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