I speak in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
So all this week I will be serving on staff for a week-long camp session for adults with
physical and mental disabilities at Camp McDowell.
I actually got up at 5.30 this morning from Camp McDowell to be here and right as this
service ends I will head back.
My husband and I have been staffing special session together for roughly 12 or 13 years
and he's been a counselor for even longer than that since he was about 16 years old.
Special session has always been for me the thinnest of thin spaces between heaven and
earth.
A glimpse of what earth could be like and what I'm quite hopeful heaven will be like.
Special session is a week where people are loved and cherished for who they are, where
you can lay down the oh-so-heavy burden of pretense and pretending the exhausting pull
to be better, to do more, to produce, to achieve, where we can simply enjoy being ourselves
together for a stretch of time.
It's a week where people are reminded that we, all of us, are bearers of the image of
God made in the very likeness of our Creator, that we all reflect the infinite facets of
God that God thought needed to be shared with the world.
And that's a powerful message for all of us, especially those of us who have never
been told that we hold such a precious gift.
Treating people with dignity, seeking and serving Christ and others, and having absolutely
a wonderful time while doing so are the hallmarks of special session.
It is not always glamorous, it's not always easy, and it's usually pretty sticky and sweaty
and chaotic.
But it has been, and I'm certain will be this year, a highlight of my month, of my year,
of my life.
The best part of special session, it's actually our motto, is that everyone belongs here,
absolutely everyone.
And it's not just our campers who need to hear that.
We are, all of us, constantly searching for the people and the spaces in which we feel
like we can truly be ourselves, with all of our idiosyncrasies and our quirks and our
faults and our flaws.
And to have someone tell us that we are good and welcome just the way that we are, and
to have them truly and deeply mean that.
It is in these spaces where we can finally rest and renew, where we can share even the
most vulnerable parts of who we are and learn to fully appreciate others, with all of their
quirks and their flaws as well.
This is the kind of community that Jesus invites his followers into.
This is the kind of community that God would have us inhabit now and for all eternity.
But as we know too well, the world can be so very unkind, and people can get stuck in
their own way, and we all fall just a little bit short of the people that God created us
to be.
Today's Gospel reading is absolutely full.
It's a blockbuster set of uns-stories for us to unpack.
And in each one of them, Jesus goes about the work of restoration, of bringing people
back into the community of God.
In the first of our three stories, Jesus encounters Matthew the tax collector.
Tax collectors were a notorious group of individuals known for preying upon their neighbors, their
own people in order to make money for themselves, and not just for themselves, but also for
the Roman government, which was brutally oppressing the Jewish people.
Tax collectors were despised.
They were appored.
They were ostracized.
And yet in this scene, it is Jesus who initiates the conversation with Matthew.
It is Jesus who initiates Matthew's repentance with a simple invitation, follow me.
If Jesus said more, our Gospel does not reflect it.
Just two words are enough.
Matthew goes.
And not just Matthew, our Gospel tells us, but a whole host of tax collectors and sinners,
people who have spent their lives preying upon others.
They too accept the invitation to follow.
They share a meal with Jesus and his disciples.
A scene, one of the commentaries I read this week, says, points to the coming kingdom of
heaven, where all of us will find a place at the banquet table with God.
Jesus's choice of dinner companions scandalizes the religious leaders of the day, those who
are so assured of their own goodness and righteousness.
This first of our three Gospel stories invites us to consider who we might be scandalized
to find sitting at the heavenly table with Jesus.
Who might we be shocked to see eating?
Who might we be shocked to see sitting there?
And how can we begin to more fully imagine a bigger table with enough seats, with enough
food for everyone?
And how can we in this lifetime start inviting people to that table now?
Our Gospel moves on.
The next story is a two-for-one miracle.
Jesus has been approached by a man whose daughter has died.
His desperation and his heartache are clear.
But it is his hope that speaks most powerfully in this story.
He has heard enough about Jesus to think that if anyone can help, he can.
So he approaches Jesus with the most outrageous of requests, come and bring my daughter back
from the dead.
In a turnabout from the scene we just saw with the tax collector, Jesus is the one who
gets up and follows the bereaved father.
But before he can arrive at the man's home, Jesus has another encounter, this time with
a woman sick and suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years, over a decade.
She touches the hem of Jesus' garment and is healed.
She like the grieving father is driven by despair, but also by intrepid hope and daring
courage as she approaches Jesus in the belief that he can heal and fix what nothing else
in the world has been able to.
Jesus' compassion is on full display here as he tenderly acknowledges the woman, calling
her daughter.
To be sure, Jesus does the healing, but it is this woman's faith that puts her in the
path of Jesus and Jesus commends her for it.
Jesus then continues on in his original purpose to the home of the man who has lost his daughter.
When Jesus does arrive, the funeral is already in progress with the customary musicians and
the mourners assembled.
This father seeks no mere healing.
This father approaches Jesus to bring his daughter back.
He has the faith to believe that Jesus can do it, so much faith that he risks missing
his own daughter's funeral to bring Jesus to her.
His faith in Jesus is of course well founded and Jesus does bring his daughter back.
All of these stories showcase Jesus' power, his mercy, his kindness, his compassion.
In this series of events, Matthew begins to unravel for us the mysteries of heaven and
points us toward a better, fuller understanding of God's coming kingdom.
Jesus teaches and heals, Jesus calls and people respond, and so importantly, Jesus restores.
He brings people outside of the community back into it and gives them a place to belong.
He invites them to come to the banquet table.
In these stories in our gospel today, nothing, no one is too far outside of the community
that they cannot be reached.
The tax collectors and the sinners, people who have chosen paths that hurt others, they
too can be and are redeemed by interacting with Jesus.
The woman, ritually unclean for 12 years, over a decade, living what we can only assume
was a difficult and solitary life, unable to be with friends or family.
She too is restored in her encounter with Jesus.
She is healed, but more importantly, our gospel says that she is made well, she is made whole,
she is brought back, restored and renewed.
And finally, and perhaps most importantly, not even death can separate us from God's
great community, the family of believers stretching throughout human history.
Even in death, God will find us.
Even in death, God will restore us and bring us more fully into relationship with God and
with each other, into the community of God's beloved people.
This is the community we are promised a place in.
This is the community that Jesus will spare no expense to make sure that you and I and
all people are invited to be a part of.
And we are so very fortunate to have glimpses of that community here on earth.
A foretaste of what it will be like when all people belong, when they are welcome and cherish
and appreciated for showing up simply as they are.
Where they are reminded that they are created wonderfully in the image of God, full of dignity
and worth.
My hope is that your life is full of these spaces with your friends and your family,
perhaps even at camp.
My hope is that we take the task of creating these spaces seriously, that we work diligently
to create and maintain those thin spaces here and now.
May we go about the work of pointing others to the coming heavenly banquet and assuring
them that they too have a seat at that blessed table.
Amen.