The Flight Attendant

June 5, 2005 (Third Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 5)

by The Rev. Bryan England, Deacon

- Hosea 5:15-6:6
- Psalm 50 or 50:7-15
- Romans 4:13-18
- Matthew 9:9-13

Today's Gospel lesson depicts one of the events in Jesus’ life and ministry which resulted in him being accused by the Pharisees of being a first-century party animal. In this case, he actually got down and ate and drank with hard core sinners. This story of Matthew's calling as a disciple appears in all three of the synoptic gospels, but interestingly, Matthew's recounting of his own calling to discipleship is particularly sparse.

As Jesus walked along, we are told, he saw Matthew sitting at his tax booth, and Jesus told him to "follow me." It was an outrageous demand for Jesus to make. Of all the Jews in Roman-occupied Palestine, tax collectors were social pariahs, and while Matthew doesn't specifically identify himself as being a tax collector, he just says he was sitting at the booth, Luke fingers him as being one. Tax collectors were reviled because they not only aided the Roman occupying forces by collecting taxes for them, but they also further oppressed their neighbors by adding their own salaries and maybe a little incentive bonus onto the taxes they collected. Yet here is Jesus calling one of these outcasts to follow him.

Matthew’s response was just as outrageous as Jesus’ call. He was being asked to abandon his source of wealth. Indeed, he was being asked to abandon his only safety from retribution from his neighbors as an employee of the Roman Empire. He was being asked to leave all he had and become the disciple of an itinerant Rabbi. “Enjoy sleeping in the great outdoors. Follow me.” Incomprehensibly, Matthew got up, and he followed Jesus.

That night, Matthew gave a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and he invited all his friends to come and dine with them. And who were his friends? Tax collectors and sinners, of course. No one else would defile himself or herself by going to the house of such a one. That was the reasoning of the Pharisees, who began to whisper to Jesus' disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"

Jesus overheard them, and responded with an admonition. "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick," he said. Then Matthew's account adds a sentence that does not appear in the other gospels. In Matthew's account, Jesus tells the Pharisees, "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'" To understand Jesus’ admonition, we have to go to today's Old Testament reading, from the prophet Hosea.

Hosea was a prophet for the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the eighth century before Jesus. In his prophecy, Hosea used his relationship with his wife, Gomer, as an analogy for the relationship between God and Israel. Hosea's marriage was ill-fated for two reasons. First and foremost, the woman was named “Gomer,” for pity’s sake. That alone would destroy any relationship. Secondly, Gomer was a prostitute, and, not surprisingly, she proved to be adulterous. Israel, like Gomer, continually strayed from its devotion to God and prostituted itself through idolatry. "Your love is like a morning cloud," Hosea lamented, both for Gomer and for Israel, "like the dew that goes away early." Not much long lasting there.

One verse later, Hosea quotes God as saying "For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings." This is the same verse that Jesus quoted to the Pharisees in today's Gospel lesson. The only difference is that the Hebrew word chesed, which is translated as “steadfast love” in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, was translated as “mercy” in the Greek translation of Hosea available to the author of Matthew.

Despite the literal meaning of the word chesed, the Hebrew Christians reading Matthew's Gospel, to which this verse was directed, knew what Jesus was saying. God is steadfast in faithfulness to us, and in return, God wants us to be steadfast in our faithfulness to God. Like Hosea who takes Gomer back again and again after she has committed adultery, God's steadfast love reaches out to us even as we stray and fall into sin, and calls us back into a right relationship with our creator.

I know almost all of you have seen flight attendants at the beginning of every commercial flight, going over that litany of things they are required by the FAA to go over. They tell us that the captain has lit the “no smoking” sign, but then take the onus off him or her by saying it's against the law to smoke on domestic airline flights. They show us how to fasten the seat belts. They point out the emergency exits over the wings and in the front and rear of the plane. They remind us that our seat cushions can be used as flotation devices if we should be forced down over water. In the unlikely event the cabin should lose pressure, they show us how to activate and put on the oxygen mask that will magically descend from the overhead, and remind us to put on our own mask before we help anyone else put on theirs. Really important stuff: information that is vital to our survival.

But of course very few people are listening. We're all checking out the free magazines, making sure the little airsickness bags haven't been used by someone on the previous flight, pretending to work on our laptop computers so everyone will think we're really important executives. We're busy doing anything we can do to avoid listening to the flight attendant. Why? Because it's not cool to listen to the flight attendant. The only people listening are the ones who haven't flown before, or the ones who are afraid to fly, or, more accurately, who are afraid to crash. The nerds are the only ones who listen to the flight attendant. But the flight attendant continues the litany, time after time, flight after flight, even though no one appears to be listening.

Jesus is like that flight attendant. He continues to hold out the promise of God's redemptive love to each of us, calling for us to persevere in resisting evil, and whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord. Remember that from our Baptismal Covenant? For God does not desire sacrifice, God does not want our slavish devotion the rules of our religion like the Pharisees tried to present, but God wants us to remain steadfast in our love for God.

The really good news of today's gospel lesson is that Jesus calls to us not in our righteousness, but in our sinfulness. "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick," he says. "For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners." Like Matthew before us, like all the apostles, saints and martyrs, he knows who we are, and what we are, yet he still reaches out to us. All we have to do is get up and follow him.