No one puts new wine into old wineskins.  When we planned this series on the book of Matthew, that is what I thought I would be focusing on this week.  Jesus’ words have become a common expression in church culture, and I have always wondered what that really means—how can we put new wine into new wineskins while preserving the old wine in the old wineskins?  But as I started working on this week’s sermon, I got stuck on verse 9.  Jesus saw a man named Matthew, sitting in the tax collector’s booth.  “Follow me,” Jesus told him.  And Matthew got up and followed him.

Right away we have to wonder, why Matthew?  What was wrong with the teacher of the law we talked about two weeks ago, who told Jesus he would follow him wherever he led, to which Jesus basically said, I don’t think so.  That man was an upstanding citizen, and from what we could see, very earnest in his desire to be a disciple, yet instead of embracing him, Jesus seemed to discourage him.  But in our text today, Jesus focuses in on a very NOT upstanding individual, a tax collector and says, “Follow me.”  Why?

You may ask, how do we know Matthew was a very NOT upstanding individual?  Maybe he was the one honest tax collector in all of Galilee.  Maybe.  But in that day, becoming a tax collector was like getting excommunicated from the church.  He was automatically disbarred from the synagogue.  He was considered unclean.  The book of Leviticus categorizes robbers, murderers and tax collectors all in the same group!  By choosing to become a tax collector, Matthew would have been considered a traitor for choosing the enemy—the Roman occupiers—over his own people.  We can assume Matthew’s own family wanted nothing more to do with him.  They thought him a disgrace.  But Jesus?  Jesus wanted Matthew for a disciple and friend.

From disgraced, to re-graced.  That was Matthew’s story in a nutshell.  When Matthew reported for work that morning, Matthew knew himself to be disowned by his family, disbarred from the synagogue, disconnected from God, disgraced.  But when Jesus saw him in his tollbooth, called him by name and said, “Follow me!”, a whole new world opened up to Matthew.  He would come to know himself as claimed by God, connected to a new family, part of the body of Christ even!  Matthew went from disgraced, to re-graced.

Talk about something to celebrate!  So naturally, they had a party.  Jesus and the other disciples went to Matthew’s house for dinner, and many other guests came, too—guests who were known to be tax collectors and “sinners”.  I like how my Bible puts the word “sinners” in quotes—to make it clear, that is how the dinner guests were perceived by religious people.  It reminds me of that old Garth Brooks song, “I’ve got Friends in Low Places.”  Of course Matthew had friends in low places.  No one in the high places wanted to be his friend!  They didn’t even want to be his acquaintance!  As a tax collector, Matthew was considered unclean, so his fellow Jews could not eat with him.  He was a disgrace!  But Jesus came to re-grace the disgraced.  The dinner table at Matthew’s house was nothing short of an altar, where the sacrament of communion was celebrated long before the Last Supper.  With that meal, Matthew’s new identity began to take hold.  He was no longer Matthew, disgraced.  Now he was Matthew, re-graced, claimed and befriended by God.

From disgraced, to re-graced.   Historians believe Matthew went on to travel to Ethiopia as a missionary, where he died.  When Jesus called him, Matthew left behind his lucrative job as a tax collector, gave his life to following Christ, and eventually journeyed 1500 miles to Ethiopia.  1500 miles is a long way!  That’s how far it is from here to Dallas, Texas.  Phil and I were there last weekend to visit wedding venues with our son Wes and his fiancé Jenn.  It was a long trip by plane.  Can you imagine going that far by foot, or maybe if you’re lucky, by horse? It just goes to show, when people meet Jesus, and they go from disgraced to re-graced, they become willing to go to great lengths to share that grace with others.

But our scripture lesson today reminds us that people will also go to great lengths to resist that grace.  The Pharisees wanted to know, why would Jesus, who was a rabbi and therefore supposedly a faithful Jew, intentionally break the Jewish law by eating with unclean people?  It doesn’t surprise us to see Jesus criticized by the Pharisees—that seemed to happen a lot.  But then he took heat from John the Baptist’s disciples!  Usually we think of John the Baptist’s values lining right up with Jesus’.  After all, John and Jesus were not only cousins, they were from birth part of the same mission from God.  John the Baptist’s role was to prepare the way for Jesus’ ministry.  Shouldn’t John’s disciples have been people who understood that Jesus came to re-grace the disgraced?

Perhaps they did understand that at one point, but by this time, John the Baptist was in prison.  John’s disciples were left without their teacher, doing the best they could to figure out how to carry on the mission without him.  That must have been stressful.  And one thing we know about stress is, “under stress we regress”.  Do you like that line?  Under stress we regress.  I paid a therapist $140 an hour for that quotable quote!  Under stress we regress, which means that when life is chaotic, confusing, or scary, many of us become more rigid in our thinking.  We want things to be predictable, black and white, easily understood.  We want concrete rules to follow.  We want control.

When we think about it that way, it’s no surprise to see John the Baptist’s disciples criticizing Jesus.  They were bereaved and lost without their leader—but Jesus’ and his disciples were having dinner parties with tax collectors and sinners!  Why weren’t they fasting?  Why weren’t they upholding the Jewish traditions?  We can imagine that what John’s disciples really wanted to know is, “Why can you guys have so much fun when here we are, your cousins in the faith, disgraced because our leader has been arrested and jailed?”

We know that Jesus came to re-grace the disgraced.  If I were teaching this scripture at a youth gathering, I would put everyone into teams of two or three and have a contest:  in two minutes, write down as many examples as you can think of from the Bible that show how Jesus came to re-grace the disgraced!  How many can you think of?  Healing the lepers.  Driving out demons from the demon-possessed.  Honoring the woman who anointed his feet with her hair.  Praising a Roman centurion for his faith.  Lifting up a Samaritan as a model of righteousness.  Restoring the woman with the flow of blood.  Time and time again in the gospels, we see Jesus re-gracing the disgraced!

I think ultimately, this is why I became a Christian, because I experienced Jesus’ re-grace when I felt disgraced.  Growing up, I never seemed to get it right with my family.  And I struggled in school.  But at church?  I was accepted.  I was beyond accepted.  I was told I had gifts God could use.  I was shown I could make a positive contribution.  I felt as if the people in my church could see things in me that no one else did.  I felt like I mattered a lot to them, even though our only family connection was God’s love.  Talk about life-changing!  I have never been to Ethiopia, but I totally get why Matthew went there.  People who have been re-graced by Jesus will go to great lengths to serve him.

My guess is, everyone hearing this sermon today, knows first-hand that Jesus came to re-grace the disgraced.  But I think we all need reminding, because under stress, we regress.  We need continual re-gracing, so we don’t become rigid in our thinking.  The bad news is, it’s part of the human condition to be vulnerable to this.  And especially as we get older!  Brain research has shown that as we age, our frontal cortex weakens.  That means we lose our filter, and are more prone to saying whatever pops into our heads, rather than thinking things through.  We are also more likely to reject new ideas without thinking them through fully.  We have trouble “switching sets”.  Once we make up our minds about something, as we age we are more likely to double down on that way of thinking than we are willing to be open to new ideas.  This is true for all people, not just Christians.  But as Christians, we want to be especially watchful for this, because we know God’s mercies are new every morning.  God is always doing a new thing.  God is always making new wine.  We don’t want to get so hung up on “the rules” that we miss out on the party that always happens when new grace comes to the disgraced.

This week I was looking at the leadership page of our church website, because we need to do a few updates.  I decided my bio could be a little more descriptive, so I’m going to change it to read, “If there’s a chart or diagram that can explain things, Dorry wants to see it!”  So imagine how excited I was to find this book, “The Sacred Overlap” by J. R. Briggs.  It’s a whole book about how the Venn Diagram applies to faith!  Did you know there was a man whose name was John Venn?  He was born in England in 1823.  He didn’t invent the shape we call the Venn Diagram, but he popularized it.  He also lived it!  He was a priest and a philosopher, and his life was a remarkable combination of those two callings!

This week I was thinking about how we see two distinct circles in Jesus’ teaching.  In our scripture lesson today, he tells his critics, “Go home and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’”  Jesus not only healed the sick, he forgave their sins.  He forgave the thief on the cross next to him.  He taught us that forgiveness is an absolute to our faith.  We accept as foundational that it is by grace that we are saved.  So we could label the first circle “Mercy”.  But Jesus also cared about right living.  His raised the bar on morality, teaching us that even to call our neighbor “fool” or “dumb head” was akin to committing murder, and looking at a person with lust in our hearts was akin to committing adultery.  He overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple courts as a protest against how they exploited the poor.  He expects his followers to speak out against sin, and be willing to remove from the fellowship anyone who is blatantly sinning and not willing to repent.  We might call this second circle “Righteousness.”

Both mercy and justice matter to Jesus.  Good grace is the basis of our salvation, but good deeds should be an outflowing of it.  It is impossible to say which of these two circles is more important.  What is exciting, though, is to think about what happens when the two are brought together.  When Jesus re-graces those in need of mercy, new life happens!  And, it’s worth noting that when Jesus re-graces those who are from time to time too rigid, new life happens!  We are people in need of both kinds of re-gracing!

One of my favorite things about Lima is how we long to be a church that lives out of this middle ground.  Here would be another great place for a contest.  Quick, name as many ways as you can how Lima Church embodies mercy and justice!  Name as many ways as you can how Lima Church embodies both being true to what we believe, while respecting those whose beliefs differ.  Name as many ways as you can that Lima Church seeks to show all people that they matter and are loved by God by both accepting people as they are, and by supporting limits around harmful behavior. Pick up our newsletter, check out our website, attend any committee meeting.  From A to Z—from our annual All Saints Sunday celebration, to Zoe Empowers, Lima Church is doing its best to live from this humble place in the middle.  We are dependent on God’s grace.  We admit we don’t have all the answers or a corner on the truth.  We will not regress to rigid thinking.  But we are committed to action and making a difference however we can.  We are doing our best to stay open to the winds of the Spirit, so that both the old and the new may be preserved.

Turns out, I already knew the answer to my question about how a church could put new wine into new wineskins while preserving the old wine in the wineskins.  What I needed to hear, and what I hope you needed to hear too, is that Jesus came to re-grace the disgraced.  Jesus took one look at Matthew and said, “Follow me,” and a whole new world opened up to Matthew.  May we be people moved to new and everlasting life by the incredible re-gracing of God.  Amen.