Readings
Genesis 12: 1-9
Writing of this passage Maurice Andrew reminds us of Colin Gibson’s hymn in which Gibson uses the image of the God of Abraham sending us on our way and ‘has called forth a response from many New Zealanders for whom ‘the road runs out.’
We can see plausibility in this saga as we reflect on our own migratory history of island hopping or migration across the globe.
We are told that God told Abram to leave Haran and, if we relate that to our own experience, the fact that migration was divinely inspired is often a hindsight revelation rather than a certainty when the decision is being made.
Furthermore, the journeys we make are often short trips strung together over a lifetime, like my grandfather who said he went to Canada because he was sick of washing his stepmother’s dishes. If he knew he would end up in Auckland, he might have persevered with the dishes.
Matthew 9: 9-13, 18-26
Matthew the tax collector did not work for our IRD and the tax he collected was a toll on transported goods. He would have contracted to collect a certain amount with any surplus belonging to him.
That system encouraged greed and exploited poor peasants and other producers, like fishermen, who transported goods to urban markets. Such taxes served the empire’s ruling elite and secured the infrastructure in conquered areas to consolidate and extend Rome’s power.
To not collect tax was to undermine the empire’s way of life and control. Therefore, the story of Matthew offers the suggestion that even despised tax collectors, can walk away from the oppressive imperial system to find God’s saving presence in Jesus and an empire that is life giving and merciful.[1]
More excluded people are repatriated in the next section we read where Matthew has condensed Mark’s sandwich of the healing of two women.
Sermon
Both our readings are about journeys, one across ancient lands to become a people of God and the other is part of the metaphorical Gospel journey towards becoming a new people of God.
Our Genesis reading is the beginning of the Abraham Saga that moves into the Exodus Saga which is all part of the Hebrew Journey to becoming the People of God.
The journey was started by Abram’s father in the previous chapter where it says that Abram had set out with his father and the rest of family from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan but had stopped at Haran. (Genesis 11:31-32).
These stories are narrowly focussed on the Abraham’s family but like all our own journeys they happen within the ongoing journey of humanity spreading throughout the globe as layer upon layer of peoples and culture evolve into the people of our world. The inclusive challenge the Gospels present is to accept that all those people are potentially the whole people of God.
The Bible doesn’t tell us why Abram and his father left Ur of the Chaldeans or why after settling in Haran with his father Abram decided to continue the journey.
Likewise, my family know that the Perrys came to New Zealand from Plymouth to New Plymouth on the ‘Amelia Thompson’ because they thought they could smelt the Taranaki iron sands. But we can only guess what motivated them to leave a smelting business in England and risk Split Enz’ ‘six months in a leaky boat.’
But like Abram’s journey we know that significant Perrys moved round the North Island because they didn’t have the knowledge to smelt the iron sand and those wilderness wanderings are reasonably well documented.
I came across a later more detailed family journey when I read a friend’s recently published book Resilience: A Story of Persecution, Escape, survival and Triumph by Inge Woolf.
It is the story of a contemporary daughter of Abraham. Part of the reason for writing, like so many similar books was so the horror that began their journey is never forgotten. The Journey began with the confiscation of the family business and the unfurling of swastika banners in Vienna. The book follows the steps Inge’s family took to get to the final triumph.
Old age meant that Inge did not quite survive to finish the book. That was completed by her daughter Deborah who, among other things, is currently chair of the Government-driven independent review of electoral laws and has replaced her mother as chair of the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand.
Deborah’s grandfather took his family from Vienna to Czechoslovakia, then through Berlin to land in Croydon on the 29th March 1939. Just before Britain passed harsher regulations to limit Jewish refugees from Europe.
Inge’s parents were initially not allowed to work in England which made life difficult but later her father joined the Czechoslovak division of the British Army. Inge and her mother moved to be near where her father was training which also moved them away from the bombing in London. But not from all danger and one day Inge and a school friend were walking home from the shop when a German fighter plane tried to machinegun them.
Inge’s father was subsequently sent to fight in Europe but when the war ended the new Czech government would not discharge him. Inge’s mother made endless phone calls to the Czech embassy until finally Inge was dressed in her best clothes and taken to the embassy with the instruction ‘Now when I start shouting, you cry’. It worked and the family were reunited.
The incident that I felt really highlighted the resentment the family experienced in Britain was when, like so many children, Inge was billeted out of London with a woman who she really The incident that I felt really highlighted the resentment the family experienced in Britain was when, like so many children, Inge was billeted out of London with a woman who made her feel really loved and cared for. But one day the woman muttered with deeply ingrained prejudice ‘The trouble is you will grow up and marry a big fat Jew.’
Still feeling ‘other’ the family moved across the world to Auckland where the then 23-year-old Inge wanted to make her own decisions about her future. She resented family members trying to introduce her to nice young Jewish men. She therefore got a job at the DIC in Wellington. Alone in a new city she accepted a dinner invitation from a Jewish woman on the very night that the woman’s son came around to show his mum his brand-new camera.
So after a suitable courtship Inge married Ron Woolf a delightful and talented skinny Jew.
That was where our journeys intersected because when I first met Ron he told me that he once worked for my Dad.
Migration is part of the human condition so it not surprising that, as people of faith we read the grounding myth of three of the world’s major faiths. Like our own journeys it is family journey, the journey of Abraham. A journey that interacts with peoples who have already journeyed and settled, and the metaphorical significance of that journey is a parallel to humanities faith journey towards a better understanding of a spiritual reality beyond our individual selves, our family and our tribal loyalty.
In fact, it is humanity’s migratory journeys that have helped develop our faith journeys, as different cultures have interacted and borrowed religious concepts from each other. Religious scholars can point to these changes in the Hebrew scripture. Following Abrahams journey there is slavery in Egypt and the Exodus from Egypt. That is followed by Israel’s leadership exiled in Babylon. Then after the return there is the influence of the other empires that ruled up until the time of Jesus.
Understanding humanities restless wandering is vitally important because, just like Abraham, our journeys bring us into contact with people we do not immediately recognise as also us. That makes us anxious so we seek to strengthen our own identity by despising and excluding others.
Ram raiding teenagers, gang members and sex offenders are the major villains in our world but in Jesus’ culture ‘sinners’ where the people that contaminated a just and decent society.
We have recently experienced a worldwide pandemic and the Covid virus is still a worry along with the conspiracy theories that grew out of the efforts to save lives. We also have concern about the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria. But in Jesus’ day sin was what made people ill and folk worried about catching ‘sin’.
Our society is often wary of tax collectors but Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said ‘taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society’ So it’s not surprising that a headline in the Press on the 23rd of May was ‘Company Director Jailed for Tax Crimes’ Our society sees tax dodgers as sinners and the Roman Empire would have agreed. But the Jews of Jesus time were a subject people and saw anyone who helped Rome to collect tax as sinners.
Furthermore, not only did the system allow Matthew to put his own mark-up on the toll he collected, but he was seen a collaborator with the imperial power—Rome. The tax Matthew collected was like the tax on tea that started the American Revolution and founded a nation of coffee drinkers.
But the extraordinary message that Matthew the gospel writer brings is firstly, that Jesus accepted Matthew’s changed perspective, and secondly that acceptance brought an instant response from Matthew. Jesus’ subversion was not a Boston Tea Party leading to a violent revolution. Jesus simply called out people from an oppressive regime to become a new people of God.
Jesus says follow me, and people are transformed—their lives are better and different from that point on.
This story of Matthew the tax collector also shows that Jesus accepts even a sinner, someone who Jesus’ society, for good reason, despises. Such a person can be transformed, therefore whatever part of us conspires with dehumanising practices can also be transformed. Transformation is also the divine option for those we would exclude.
Matthew, like all of us do from time to time, made bad choices but the presence of Christ offered the possibility of new beginnings and Matthew accepted by sharing hospitality with Christ.
Hospitality is a core value in the Christian faith, it is highlighted in Luke’s Emmaus Road incident and if we read on from today’s Genesis episode we will find Abraham sharing hospitality with strangers that becomes a meeting with God.
It is in sharing hospitality with others on the journey that we both meet the Christ in each of us, and are transformed by Christ.
The lesson for all Christian communities from the Matthew incident is firstly that Jesus was prepared to accept Matthew despite his past. So it is not the task of the Christian community to decide who is acceptable to God or to advise God on who is acceptable. God in Christ accepts us all as members of the human family. Travellers on parallel journeys and journeys we make together.
In Jesus time there was no test for sin like a covid test. So the two women in our gospel reading were separated by superstition from their society, by the contamination, they were suspected of carrying.
In the belief of the time not only was the woman with the haemorrhage seen as unclean but anyone she came in contact with would also be seen as unclean. Yet her touching Jesus heals her and without any purification ritual, Jesus was able to raise the younger woman from the dead—a divine act. Even though the book of Leviticus tells us that touching a dead body separated people from God
In the fear generated superstition of the day the touch of both women should have separated Jesus from God but instead his touch transformed them and gave them life, just as Christ’s call brought transformation and new life to Matthew.
Creative journeys, for whatever reason, are about leaving what we know and growing through interaction with new places and new people.
As our journeys spread and mingle with the journeys of others all humanity can become ‘the total people of God.’ That is the challenge to us of the Inclusive Christ.
[1] Warren Carter Mathew and the Margins: A Socio-Political and Religious Reading, (London/New York: T&T Clark International 2004) p.218,219
Rev Hugh Perry