A Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev. Patricia Gillespie

Hosea 5:15-6:6
Psalm 50
Romans 4:13-18
Matthew 9:9-13

Anyone with a computer online these days has seen the warnings. The email arrives labeled "VIRUS WARNING" and continues ominously, "Do not open this file, it contains a new, very malicious virus that will reformat your hard drive and destroy everything in your computer." Most are hoaxes, powerless except where they play on our fears. But still there is that potential, not from reading email but from running a program file, of a virus that not only damages your computer but spreads to others. It's contagious and we're afraid.

It's the same with people viruses. When a particularly nasty flu was making the rounds last winter, the warning signs went up on the nursing homes "Don't come visit if you're not well." People stayed home to avoid catching the flu, or to avoid spreading it. It's contagious and we're afraid.

This is what the pharisees in today's gospel fear: The bad stuff is contagious. The assumption is that if Jesus eats with sinners, Jesus becomes unclean and a sinner too. Eating together is a most intimate action. And here is Jesus being intimate with sinners. Not only that, but if we read what comes in Matthew's gospel before and after what we read today, you find Jesus hanging around with still more unclean sorts: He's going around connecting with bleeding women and dead children. Both of these are dangerously unclean. And their uncleanness should make Jesus unclean too.

We, like the pharisees, tend to attribute great power to the bad stuff: A sick person and a well one eat together, and they both become sick. A bad guy and a good guy hang out together, and they both become bad. Isn't that what parents have said all along?: "The company you keep matters. Don't run with a bad crowd." Good guys keeping bad company are corrupted. But Jesus comes along and turns things upside down. Where Jesus is, it's the healing and goodness that is contagious

When Jesus eats with sinners and tax collectors, contact with Jesus instead of making a mess of Jesus, cleans up those who follow him.. Contact with Jesus overcomes our sins and heals our brokenness. God's love is stronger than sin and brokenness.

The pharisees didn't understand that Jesus is contagious. Christianity is contagious – that's what happens at Pentecost. The Spirit spreads and overcomes our differences, even differences of language so everyone hears the Good News and understands. No one is immune from the action of the Spirit.

Churches should all have big VIRUS WARNING signs: "Caution: If you enter here, you will catch the Spirit. Your life will be completely reformatted." Christianity is contagious. And the virus spreads most quickly among the most vulnerable – those who seem most unworthy of catching the Spirit.

We think we are not worthy of the Spirit. We think we have to make ourselves well before God will come close to us. We try to do something to make ourselves better. Like the pharisees who tried to live lives pleasing to God. Like those who build magnificent temples or maintain beautiful churches. Like those who work to design perfect liturgies and craft wonderful sermons. This is how we make wonderful offerings to God. Yet sometimes it is our involvement with and focus on those things we do for God that keeps us distanced from the intimate, powerful, contagious touch of God. So Jesus says to us "Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice.'" The gift God most wants from us is not the offering of a beautiful church or a perfect liturgy. The offering God wants is our imperfect, unworthy selves.

Jesus has "come to call not the righteous but sinners." Instead of calling a well prepared and holy pharisee, Jesus called a tax collector, lowest of the low, surely unworthy of a rabbi's attention. Jesus called Matthew to share his work, to eat at his table, to catch and spread the Spirit.

And Jesus's contagious Good News is still spreading, even today. Jesus calls you, unworthy and unprepared as you may be. Jesus calls you to share his work, to eat at his table, to catch and spread the Spirit.