06/07/2026
“The Sick and the Healthy”
A Message on Matthew 9:9-13
June 7, 2026
For Woodville Methodist Church, Woodville, TX
By Doug Wintermute
[email protected]
Matthew 9:9-13 (NIV)
As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
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Today’s message might be kind of like going to the dentist: you know it’s the right thing to do, but it can also be painful.
First let’s talk about the people in the scripture I just read. Jesus walks up to a tax collector’s booth, and without any greeting, introduction or pleasantries tells the guy in the booth, Matthew, to “Follow me.” That’s it. Two words.
Matthew was indeed a tax collector. We still have tax collectors today that collect taxes from us. But because so much of it is done by mail and now even electronically it has diminished the human aspect of it.
Not so in the first century. Tax collectors had booths in marketplaces and along roads. Taxes were paid in person and in cash (usually coins) or products. The occupying Roman forces levied taxes, and that was in addition to the Jewish taxes like the temple tax.
The Romans often recruited Jewish men to collect the taxes. These tax collectors were shunned by the Jewish community. They considered them as traitors who had gone to the “dark side,” working for the evil Romans.
Another reason the Jewish people didn’t like tax collectors, as if that wasn’t enough, was that many of the tax collectors would charge more than was actually required and pocketing the surplus. Yeah, they were corrupt. Double whammy.
That’s why when Jesus, a Jew, called Matthew, a tax collector, to follow him, the crowd would have let out a loud “GASP!!!” It was shocking! Tax collectors were traitors who worked for the enemy, who cheated people out of their money! Next to the Romans, they were the last people that should ever be considered to do anything for the Jewish faith. They were lower than the lowest layer of whale… well, you get the idea.
So Jesus definitely ruffled some feathers by calling Matthew to follow him, especially among the big dogs of the Jewish faith: the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the Scribes.
Then he does something even more shocking: he has dinner at Matthew’s house with a bunch of what society considered ne’re-do-wells: tax collectors and known sinners. Horrors!
The top Jewish religious leaders, the Pharisees, thought among themselves, “Who does he think he is? And why is he not only hanging out with these yucky people but even eating with them?”
But they don’t go directly to Jesus. Oh no. In a great example of triangulation they go to his disciples and ask them, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
Jesus hears about this and says, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”
What a great answer!
Of course, Jesus is not talking about medicine, he’s talking about salvation. In the opposite of the Van Halen song, “Ain’t talking Bout Love,” Jesus IS talking about love!
See the Pharisees and religious leaders of the day fell into the human sin of pride. They developed a belief that that the people who did all the “religiousy” things were better than those who didn’t.
There was a kind of a pecking order, a caste system of sorts, in which people were considered to be part of specific groups, and the value of a person depended on which group they belonged to. And of course, the top level group consisted of the Pharisees and Sadducees and Scribes. (Of course it did.)
So Jesus’ comment that he didn’t come for the healthy but for the sick was a direct insult to that top-tier group.
There was a belief at the time that the way to holiness was through strict adherence to the Torah, the written law given to Moses. The better you kept the law, the more God loved you. And too bad for those who didn’t follow the law. And this included those who really were sick, as that was considered to be God punishing them for their sins.
And then Jesus shows up and says that he came for those kinds of folks! He didn’t just come for the “good” people. Jesus came for everyone, not just some.
Now I think it’s time we had a little talk about the topic of predestination. This is the belief that God has already selected the people who will go to heaven and those who will not.
There are some people, and some denominations, that believe in predestination. God has already tagged each person for either smoking or non-smoking, and there’s nothing that can be done to change that. According to this belief, people are “predestined” for their home in the afterlife.
It’s kind of like in the movie “Toy Story” where Buzz Lightyear is in the claw vending machine for the little three-eyed alien squeeze toys. Buzz gets in the machine and says, “This is an intergalactic emergency! I need to commandeer your vessel to Sector 12. Who's in charge here?"
All the aliens point straight up and say, “The Claaaaawwww!"
One says, “The claw is our master,” while another says “The claw chooses who will go and who will stay.”
Soon after that the claw comes down and picks up one of the aliens. As it is taken up by the claw the selected alien says “I have been chosen! Farewell, my friends. I go on to a better place.”
Predestination says that [in alien voice] “God chooses.” In other words, God picks and chooses who goes up, and who goes down. Not a very loving God if you ask me.
As Methodists we don’t believe in predestination. And boy, am I glad! I think the scriptures overwhelmingly contradict predestination and that everyone has the grace of Jesus Christ extended to them. Now we have free will, so we can choose to accept that grace or not, but it is available regardless of social status, religious knowledge, or any other human classification.
Now when we read this scripture we often see ourselves as being compassionate for the least and the lost and get upset with the Pharisees. But what we need to wrestle with is this: What if we are the Pharisees?
Now I know what you’re thinking, but hear me out. If a homeless person who hadn’t bathed in weeks walked in here this morning, what would you do? And especially what would you do if they were committing the horrendous sin of sitting in your spot in your pew? (I told you it was going to be painful…)
As a church we say we are warm and welcoming to visitors, and I think for the most part we are. But there’s always room for improvement.
At a previous church we participated in a process where a company was hired to send “mystery shoppers” to our worship services who then filled out extensive surveys about their experience. The results were indeed surprising. While church members thought they were doing a good job, the reality was that they were pretty cliquish and weren’t very friendly to new folks visiting. Ouch.
In another church I served there were two very elderly ladies that sat on the back row. One day we had a visitor, a middle-aged woman, who visited. I was at the very front of the sanctuary near the altar, and as she was walking down the aisle toward the front the two ladies in the back started talking about her. They thought they were whispering, of course, but I could clearly hear them, which meant that the woman could also hear them.
“Who is that?”
“Oh, that’s ‘So-and-so.’”
Well who is she?
Don’t you remember? She used to be married to ‘So-and-So’ but he ran around on her so they got divorced.”
Oy vey. So, raise your hand if you think that woman ever came back to that church. Nope. Not a chance.
As Christians, we have to be very careful and conscious of how we view others. We need to be sure and view everyone through Jesus’ eyes, especially those that are different from us. Every person is valuable to Jesus.
Now please note that Jesus didn’t say that he didn’t like the righteous. He did and he still does. He loves the people who pray everyday, who read the Bible daily, who attend church every Sunday, who tithe regularly, and who seek to walk in his footsteps. He rejoices in that! But the lesson from today’s scripture is that we need to be careful not to become Pharisees and think of ourselves as better than others. We need to always remember–and reach out to–people that are different from us, the metaphorical tax collectors and sinners of our day.
Jesus didn’t shed his blood on the cross just for the “nice” or “pretty” people, but for every person. We need to always remember that!
So that’s my challenge to you today. Remember that Jesus didn’t come for the healthy but for the sick. And our job is to be the hands and feet of Christ in our world and reach out to the “sick,” those who don’t have a relationship with Jesus Christ. And we need to especially reach out to those different from us. It’s not comfortable, it's not easy, but it is holy work. Let’s get to it.
“The Claw” picks and chooses. Thank God Jesus doesn’t.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
