The Rev’d Jacky Sewell

Sunday, 7 June 2026, Ordinary 10

Readings: Hosea 5:15-6:6, Romans 4: 13-end, Matthew 9: 9-13; 18-26

“A man called Matthew was sitting at the tax booth”.
It’s a poignent moment in the gospel. Matthew writes himself into the text as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world for everyday workers to suddenly abandon their jobs and livelihood and embark on a life of uncertainty. Its the most ordinary thing in the world. An everyday occurance.
Certainly for Jesus it was ‘just another day at the office’. He’s walking the roads and towns and villages around his homeland of Lake Galilee, responding to ordinary human need in the most extra-ordinary manner, doing the seemingly impossible, restoring life and hope and healing.
The ordinary everyday-ness of loneliness and grief and wounded bodies and social exclusion. The stuff that you and I still shoulder everyday, sometimes without anybody noticing or seeming to care.
But then there’s Jesus.
We are torn, but God will heal. We are struck down, but God will bind us up.
And God’s coming into our ordinary lives will be as sure as the dawn; like cooling showers upon the dry, parched earth. (Hosea 6:1-3)

It’s the 10th Sunday in Ordinary time today. That’s what it’s officially called in the Common Lectionary used by churches all over the world. All over the world, thanks to the Pentecostal fire that drove the disciples out likes sparks to preach the Good News.
All over the world today, congregations are hearing how Matthew left his tax booth and followed Jesus, his ordinary life suddenly becoming uncertain and extra-ordinary.
Ordinary? It is a rather strange word that has become used for our weekly cycle of readings. What it means is that we are now entering the long stretch of the church year where there are no Great Feast Days to celebrate.
We’ve travelled through Easter and Ascension and Pentecost and now we’re going to pootle along until Advent at the end of November, with only the Feasts of Transfiguration and All Saints Day to add their festive bling to to liturgy.
The first few Ordinary Sundays were after Epiphany and before Lent. And we started hearing from the gospel according to Matthew who’s our Gospeller for the year.
Today we’re picking up the thread, and applying ourselves to pay closer attention to Matthew’s gospel as the story of Jesus unfolds. And we have picked it up right at the spot where Matthew himself becomes one of the 12.
As if it were the most ordinary thing in the world for someone to abandon their livelihood and embark on a life of uncertainty.
Let’s take a second, closer look at the Gospel reading.
As I said, Jesus is having just another ordinary day of bringing hope and life and healing. He’s in his home town of Nazareth. Everybody there knows about him and there is no shortage of ordinary local people with their griefs and needs.
If we look closer, however, it is an extra-ordinary cross-section of people who find their way into Matthew’s account, sick, in one way or another, and in need of healing.
There is Matthew himself. A tax collector. Except you can’t say that word without linking it to the word ‘sinner’. How is that fair? It seems a sweeping judgment upon an entire profession, until you remember who is taking the taxes – the Roman occupying forces not known for mercy and compassion.
Matthew and all his tax collector colleagues were collaborators and loathed for it by the ordinary people. And Matthew is sick. Sick of being maligned. Sick of being treated like an outcast. Sick of social exclusion.
Next on the scene are the Pharisees, a religious group who are meticulous about sticking to the religious rules. They are not sick! Jesus himself tells them that he’s not interested in their complaints against him. “I’m not here for the righteous”. You are well; you don’t need me.
But even as Jesus says this, we can catch the faint strain of irony in his voice. You think you are well; OK then, chew on this piece of scripture. It’s the prophet Hosea – surely you know the passage! “I desire mercy, not religious ritual”. Ouch. Bet that hurt.
It’s a brave soul who comes into the story next. It’s one of the leaders of the synagogue in Nazareth. Maybe not a Pharisee, but still a respected religious leader who’s come to beg Jesus to help his family – to heal his little daughter who has died. And he’s come in broad daylight, not proud but humbled by his grief. Sick with grief. Without a second thought Jesus immediately gets up to go with him.
And as he goes, a hand reaches out, throught the crowd, and touches – ever so lightly – the tassel, the fringe of Jesus cloak.
In Mark’s gospel and Luke’s gospel they report that Jesus felt the power go out from him, and he stops and asks” “who touched me?”. Matthew simply says “Jesus turned and saw her”.
What did he see in that moment?
A woman whose womb had caused her to be sick with exhausting, debilitating bleeding and pain for thirteen years?
A woman who therefore had been ritually unclean – impure – and unable to take her ordinary, everyday place in society?
A woman without dignity, without the ability to go far from her home, without a life?
That’s a whole lot of healing that’s needed in one ordinary woman’s life.
Finally Jesus reaches the home where the dead girl is lying. But before he can get to here he has to carve his way through another crowd – this time the professional musicians who played their flutes and cried out their chants at a time of death.
Did they lose their fee – their livelihood – that day? They certainly lost their place at the center of attention. And they were about to witness the true meaning of life and death and life, as the little girl herself feels the life flood through her and is restored to her parents.
it is an extra-ordinary cross-section of people. And not many of them come within the ambit of Jesus’ healing power with a clear idea of the full extent of what they are asking for, or indeed what it is that they will actually receive.
In these few verses, Jesus heals via miraculous restoration of life. Via moral challenge. Via physical healing. Via social inclusion. Via dignity restored. Via true purpose in life.
Through it all, Jesus moves with compassion and care to attend to the stuff that really needs attending to.
Sometimes, that isn’t what we thought we were asking for. Sometimes, Jesus’ healing grace comes with an additional blessing on the faith of the person in need.
In this story, Jesus responds to the faith of the leader of the synagogue and the faith of the woman whose womb is bleeding. Faith, highlighted by Paul as he writes about the faith of Abraham and of Sarah whose womb is barren.
Faith, not righteousness, brings the blessing of God.
Sometimes, however, Jesus heals almost despite a sure faith.
John’s Gospel and Lukes Gospel both tell of healing that come without asking. (John 5:1-9 The Man at the Pool of Bethesda; John 9:1-7 The Man Born Blind; Luke 22:50-51 Jesus restored the ear of Malchus; Luke 17:11-19 The 10 Lepers)
Sometimes Jesus responds to the mixture of doubt and faith as in Mark’s story of the father who wanted healing for his son: “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief’”. (Mark 9:24).

What are we to make of this, we whose faith can run hot and can run cold; whose ordinary everyday lives are a mixture of faith and doubt; whose love for God is “as ephemeral as the morning mist” that evaporates so quickly? (Hosea 6:4)
Is there any hope for us? Any response from Jesus who feels us reach tentatively torwards him; whose healing presence in our ordinary, everyday lives is so desperately yearned for?
What is it that you yearn for?
Relief and healing for your body? For your soul? For your mind? For your courage? For your relationships? For your purpose in life?
If you’re anything like me, you are slowly grasping the awesome reality of a God who attends, with compassion and care, to the stuff that really needs attending to. And sometimes that isn’t what I thought I was asking for.
Mostly, God pours out this healing grace despite my feeble mixture of doubt and faith. And all I can cling to is my love for God, a love that survives the everyday woundings of body and soul.
We are torn, but God will heal. We are struck down, but God will bind us up.
And God’s coming into our ordinary lives will be as sure as the dawn; like cooling showers upon the dry, parched earth. (Hosea 6:1-3)
Amen.