The Sinners' Hospital

In Nomine Iesu
St. Matthew 9:9-13
September 21, 2017
St. Matthew, Apostle & Evangelist

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~

Do you ever dream about the ideal church? Or wish that your church could at least be more ideal? When I dream about the ideal church, I dream that all the members always attend every service—and that those faithful members always bring along with them some unchurched friends and neighbors. In the ideal church the Bible studies would always be well-attended, lively affairs that dig down deep into the Word of God. The people are super-friendly, caring, always praying for one another and serving one another. The services are reverent and meaningful, with music that always touches the heart. And, of course, when you dream of the ideal church, it always has an ideal pastor—a young man, of course, yet with 40 years of ministry experience under his belt. And children, too—lots and lots of children in the ideal church. It’s okay to dream, right?

Well, actually, no, it’s not. It’s wrong. It’s wrong to dream about the ideal church because it leads us to despise the real

church—the actual church—the church that Jesus Christ founded—and the church that St. Matthew wrote about and proclaimed. God hates our dreaming about the ideal church. For such dreaming either makes us despondent and discouraged, or else it makes us proud and pretentious and judgmental—demanding that everybody else get their act together and get in line with my concept of the ideal church.

The Pharisees dreamed about and demanded a perfect religious community—an exclusive community of respectable commandment-keepers. Tax collectors and prostitutes and others who failed to keep the Law in spectacular ways—well, they need not apply.

Tax collectors like Matthew were considered the worst of the worst—notoriously dishonest and greedy. Bribery, extortion, money-laundering, and outright theft were all part of the typical tax collector’s tool box. And there’s no reason to presume that Matthew was any different from all the rest. Matthew was a sinner—the ideal sinner—who had no place in the ideal religious community of the Pharisees.

But as it turns out, Matthew did have a place with Jesus, and in the church Jesus came to build. And this church—to which you yourselves also belong—it isn’t built around some ideal concept of perfection. No, the church of Jesus begins with two little words: “Follow me.” Notice that Matthew didn’t record for us a single one of his own words. If Matthew gave some speech about leaving behind the tax collectors’ booth and pledging his sacred honor to following the Savior, he left us no record of that. Because it doesn’t matter. What mattered was the grace-filled invitation spoken by the Savior: “Follow me.” Those same words were spoken to you—combined with the water of your baptism. Jesus wants you—along with Matthew—to follow Him in faith.

And then—then we learn just what kind of a church the church really is. It happened at a meal at Matthew’s house, where Jesus and his disciples were on the guest list, along with a bunch of other tax collectors and sinners. The Pharisees, of course, objected to this less-than-ideal gathering: Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? Jesus Himself provides the answer. And in His answer we learn that His church is not some ideal religious community. But rather, it’s a community of sinners, a hospital for those in need of healing for their sin-infected souls. Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. . . . I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

This means that the church is, properly speaking, a hospital—a hospital for people who are sick with sin—a place where diagnoses are made and where healing is applied. Now, I get to hospitals with some regularity as part of my job. And the kind of people you find in hospitals are—how shall I put this—less-than-ideal. They are hurting. They are scared. They are angry sometimes. They are confused. Their carefully crafted routine has come crashing down around them and they are helpless—utterly helpless to do anything about it—completely dependent on others. It’s not ideal.

Welcome to the church—the real church—the church Jesus Christ came to build and the church about which Matthew wrote. There is no ideal church. There’s just a place for people who recognize their need and their helplessness—for patients (if you will) whose lives are diseased and disordered by sin. In the church of Jesus—in this hospital for sinners—you’ll find people who are hurting, scared, angry and helpless—sinners with messy, conflicted lives who know that the wages of sin is death.

This is the church—a hospital for sinners—and only for sinners. Here we have the physician—the Great Physician, Jesus, who suffered and died so that you might have healing. By His wounds we are healed. And even at a simplified, streamlined service like this, we have the healing medicine that Jesus Christ died to secure for you. Tonight, here in this hospital, you get to receive medicine that money can’t buy—that insurance will not cover—medicine that heals you in body and soul. In fact, in the early church, the Lord’s Supper was known as the medicine of immortality—food and drink for this life, and for the life of the world to come.

Don’t dream about an ideal church; give thanks for the real church—the church into which Jesus has called you—the church that welcomes sinners and provides the healing of Jesus in Word and Sacrament. It’s all here for you. Amen.