“Do You Need a Physician?”
Matthew 9:9-13
6/8/08
When it comes to sickness and disease people have
different attitudes. Some live in denial of their illness; these
I would label the “I’m not sick at all” crowd.
Others concede that they are in fact ill, but that it’s really
not that bad; they’re the “I’m sick but it’s
okay” crowd. Still others acknowledge the fact that
they’re ill, and they go to see a doctor; these are the
“I’m sick; find me a cure” crowd. I had a
grandmother on my dad’s side, who suffered from diabetes.
She would take her insulin daily, but she thought this meant that she
could then eat anything she wanted; she could eat the cake and have the
ice cream, and one cookie wouldn’t hurt. I would have
classified her in the “I’m sick but it’s okay;
it’s not that bad” category.
When it comes to sin, we tend to have the same kinds
of attitudes. Sometimes we put ourselves in the “I’m
not sick at all” category. Other times we put ourselves in
the “I’m just a little bit sick; it’s not that
bad” category, while other times we confess “I’m
sick; I need the Great Physician.” Unlike physical
ailments, however, which can be of lesser or greater degrees, there are
no degrees when it comes to the sickness of sin. It’s like
being partially pregnant. A woman either is pregnant or she
isn’t; she isn’t “sort of” pregnant;
she’s not half pregnant. You and I are completely infected
with sin. We’re not sort of sinful; we’re not just a
little bit sinful. We are sinners through and through, with no
part of our being that hasn’t been corrupted by sin. Death
is the sign that we are infected with the disease of sin, because death
is sin’s wages. And though when we are physically ill we
might be able to help ourselves to some extent by taking some
over-the-counter medication, drinking lots of liquids, and staying in
bed, when it comes to the sickness of sin there is nothing that we can
do to help ourselves get better. We are suffering from a terminal
illness, which none of the medications of this world can cure. We
must rely solely and completely on our Great Physician, Jesus Christ.
Unfortunately, one of the symptoms of this sickness
of sin is the refusal to acknowledge that we are as bad off as the
Scriptures say we are. When we either deny our sinfulness or
downplay it by saying we’re not really that big of a sinner, we
put ourselves in the same category as the Pharisees in today’s
Gospel text, who classified others as sinners, but not
themselves. When we do this, we maintain that we are better,
healthier than others, just as the Pharisees did towards those they
called “tax-collectors and sinners.”
The trouble with this attitude towards sin is that
it hinders you both from receiving God’s mercy in Christ and from
giving mercy to your neighbors. Think about it in terms of a
physical ailment again. If you deny that you’re sick, you
won’t go see a doctor, and if you don’t go see the doctor
you won’t get the cure for your ailment, and if you don’t
get the cure for your ailment, your ability to work and serve your
neighbor will suffer. Similarly with sin... If you deny
that you’re a sinner, you won’t see any need for Jesus, and
if you reject Him, you won’t receive the mercy that God gives you
in Him, which takes care of your sin, and if you are not mercied by the
Lord, you will show no mercy towards your neighbors; your work of love
and service towards them will suffer.
So, since by nature we refuse to acknowledge
sin’s severity, Jesus has to touch us where it hurts. He
has to put His fingers in our wound and expose it, so that He can then
bring healing to it. He did it here with the Pharisees in a
rather odd way. Instead of telling them outright that they
suffered from the same sickness as those whom they called
tax-collectors and sinners, He granted their self-deluded notion that
they were righteous, but then said that He only came for sinners.
If you’re not a sinner, Jesus is not for you. If
you’re not sick, you don’t need the Physician. But
then, Jesus exposed their wound by showing them that were not as
righteous as they supposed they were, that they did in fact suffer from
the same sickness as the tax-collectors and sinners. By telling
them to go and learn what the Scripture means when God says, “I
desire mercy and not sacrifice,” Jesus exposed their sin against
both God and their fellow man. Their sin against God was that
they believed that God could be bought with their sacrifices, that
their righteousness before God depended on what they did for Him.
As long as they went through all the right religious rituals and
offered up all the right sacrifices that God had commanded, they
thought God should accept them. But God doesn’t want this
kind of sacrifice; He doesn’t want people just going through the
religious motions; He doesn’t want to be treated like an idol,
which is supposed to give you what you want if you just rub it the
right way. God wants a change of heart, which He alone can
give. That change comes about when God’s mercy for
Christ’s sake takes hold of you. It causes you to recognize
that it’s not by your works or your sacrifices that you become
righteous before God, but that it’s purely by God’s grace
for Christ’s sake, who’s done all the work for you.
God is merciful towards you, forgiving you all your sins and granting
you eternal life with Him in heaven, because Jesus gave Himself as the
sacrifice for your sins on the cross. When this mercy takes hold
of you, your heart is changed, and you are then able to offer God true
sacrifices, the sacrifice of thanks and praise given to Him and the
sacrifice of love and mercy given to your neighbor. These are the
sacrifices that God wants from us. With them we don’t hope
to earn the forgiveness of our sins. Only Christ’s
sacrifice on the cross has earned us that. Our sacrifices are
simply given in response to all the mercy God has shown towards us in
Jesus.
The Pharisees thought they were doing something for
God with their animal sacrifices, their payment of tithes, their not
working on the Sabbath, and their eating only Kosher foods. But
God doesn’t need those kinds of sacrifices. In fact, God
doesn’t need anything. What He wants is that you trust in
His mercy for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, and then that you
serve Him by serving your neighbor. Having shown His mercy
towards you in forgiving you all your sins, He wants you to show mercy
towards your neighbors in forgiving them their sins against you and
serving them in their need. With such sacrifices God is pleased.
So, Jesus exposed the sin that lived in the
Pharisees by subtly pointing out that they neither loved God nor their
fellow man as they should. They were just as much in need of Him,
the Great Physician, as were the tax-collectors and sinners, even
though they didn’t realize it. Jesus did this, so that
they, too, might receive the healing that He had to give them.
Once the Lord reveals our sickness to us, He then
applies the healing balm of the Gospel. Apart from Jesus and this
medication that He brings, there is nothing in heaven or on earth that
can cure the disease of sin and the death that it causes. The
Gospel cure for sin is that first, Jesus allowed Himself to become
infected with our sin. We saw this happen at the Jordan River,
where He received a Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of
sins. There, Jesus identified Himself with sinners, becoming one
with us, though He had no sin of His own. Here in today’s
Gospel text, He again shows His oneness with sinners when He sits and
eats with them, a way of showing one’s acceptance of another in
those days. This does not mean that Jesus accepted people’s
sin. Sin is the disease Jesus came to destroy. But He did
not come to destroy people. And so, He went to the cross, taking
our sin with Him, and there He spilled His blood, the blood with which
He cleanses us from all sin. And now that blood, the cure for
sin, is delivered to us every time we hear our sins forgiven for
Christ’s sake, every time the Lord has table fellowship with us
sinners at His Holy Supper, and daily as He applies His blood to us
through the waters of our Baptism, washing away our sins, giving us
life and salvation.
And so, the bigger a sinner you are, the bigger a
Savior you have in Jesus. If you confess yourself to be the chief
of sinners, you have the Chief of saviors. If you confess you
have the big sickness, you have the big cure. How long do you
need the cure? For as long as you’ve got the disease.
How long is that? Until the day you die. There will never
come a time in this life when you can say, “I don’t need
any more Jesus,” or “I don’t need as much forgiveness
now as I did before.” The Lord will never stop showing
mercy towards you any more than you may stop showing mercy towards
others. In this life we will always be in need of God’s
mercy towards us in Christ; we will always need to put ourselves where
He’s giving out the cure for our sin - where His Word is being
proclaimed and His Sacraments are being administered.
But that Christians lie alongside non-Christians in
the cemeteries of this world seems to suggest that the cure
doesn’t take. We still get physically ill, we grow old, and
then we die. “Warning: the cure for sin may not take
care of the little death. It does, however, take care of the big
death.” In many cases, the cure for sin actually hastens
the little death, as many Christians have been martyred for confessing
Jesus. The Lord doesn’t promise that we won’t die
physically. In fact, He says that those who would be His
disciples must deny themselves, pick up their cross, and follow
Him. Death to ourselves is actually part of the cure delivered to
us in our Baptism, where we are crucified with Christ. But
it’s the big death, the second death, the
eternal-separation-from-God-in-hell death, that Jesus has taken care
of. This also is given us in our Baptism, where we are raised
with Christ. The cure of God’s mercy towards us, forgiving
us all our sins, gives us eternal life even now, while we are on our
way to the little death. But it assures us of the resurrection of
our bodies and the life of the world to come. On that day the
cure will have its final way with us, when we rise from our graves just
as Jesus did. Only then will we be able to say that we no longer
need the cure for sin. Only then will we be able to see with our
eyes the complete healing of both body and soul that we have now by
faith.
For now, we must confess that we are sick and in
need of the Great Physician, Jesus Christ. The cure He gives is
free. It costs us nothing; it cost Him everything. That
cure is God’s mercy towards us in forgiving us our sins and
granting us life and salvation. Here where we’re gathered
around His Word and Sacraments is where that mercy is being given
out. Here our Lord invites us sinners to His Table, to eat and to
drink of His body and blood, which brings healing to our body and
blood. And as we are on the receiving end of that mercy, let us
show mercy towards one another, and in so doing we will offer up
acceptable sacrifices to God in thanks for all He’s done for us
in Christ. If you’re a sinner, Jesus is for you.
Receive His healing for your sickness again today and live. Amen.