Who Belongs in the Kingdom? Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
Our Gospel reading today is made up of at least three separate encounters with Jesus. First, Jesus calls Matthew the tax collector. Second, he shares a meal with tax collectors and sinners, provoking criticism from the Pharisees. Third, while on his way to help the dying daughter of a synagogue leader, he encounters a woman who has suffered from a flow of blood for twelve years.
At first glance these stories may seem quite different. Yet Matthew has deliberately placed them together, inviting us to see a common thread running through them. In each case, the focus falls on people who occupy the margins of society. Matthew is a tax collector, a collaborator with Rome, viewed by many as morally compromised and religiously suspect.
The "tax collectors and sinners" gathered around the table are people whose lives place them outside the boundaries of respectable society. The woman suffering from haemorrhages is doubly marginalised. As a woman in a patriarchal society she possesses little status, and her condition would have rendered her perpetually ritually unclean, excluding her from much of normal social and religious life.
Even the synagogue leader who approaches Jesus is, despite his position, utterly powerless before the reality of his daughter's impending death. They are different people in different circumstances and yet all share a common experience of vulnerability. Each stands in a place where the usual structures of status, respectability, power, or religious certainty offer little help. And it is precisely here that Jesus is found.
This should not surprise us, it is one of Matthew's great themes.
At the beginning of the Gospel, Jesus is called Immanuel, God with us. The question throughout Matthew's narrative is: What does "God with us" actually look like?
The answer is found repeatedly in scenes like these. God with us looks like Jesus sitting at a table with people others avoid. God with us looks like Jesus stopping for a woman everyone else overlooks. God with us looks like Jesus responding to those whom society regards as insignificant, unclean, or beyond hope.
One of the most striking features of this passage is the call of Matthew himself. Jesus sees Matthew sitting at the tax booth and simply says, "Follow me." Nothing more. No examination of his beliefs, no demand that he first put his life in order. No requirement to prove his worthiness. Just an invitation. And Matthew responds as he rises and follows.
For Matthew, discipleship is one of the central themes of the Gospel. Yet discipleship always begins not with human achievement but with divine initiative. Jesus calls first, then the response follows. This pattern appears throughout the Gospel: fishermen, tax collectors, women, foreigners, children, the poor, the sick - all are invited into God's kingdom. The kingdom is not built upon human qualifications. It is built upon grace.
This explains the meal that follows. When the Pharisees ask why Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus responds with words that reveal the very heart of Matthew's Gospel "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." The quotation comes from the prophet Hosea, but Matthew gives it special prominence. In fact, Matthew alone among the Gospel writers records Jesus using this text twice. This is significant.
For Matthew, true religion is not primarily about ritual correctness, status, or boundary-keeping. It is about mercy. Not that worship and devotion are unimportant. Matthew values both deeply. But when religious observance becomes disconnected from compassion, something essential has been lost.
And so while the Pharisees see categories, Jesus sees people. While the Pharisees see who belongs and who does not, Jesus sees human beings loved by God. While the Pharisees focus on religious purity Jesus focuses on healing.
The challenge of this passage is not confined to the first century. Every generation creates its own categories of insiders and outsiders. Every society develops subtle ways of deciding who matters and who does not. But Jesus in the Gospel stories continually invites us to examine our own assumptions.
Who are the people we instinctively avoid? Whose stories do we dismiss? Whom do we regard as beyond redemption? The answer to those questions often reveals where we most need to hear Jesus' words: "I desire mercy, not sacrifice."
The story of the woman with the haemorrhage deepens this theme even further. For twelve years she has lived with her condition, meaning twelve years of exclusion, twelve years of disappointment, twelve years of being defined by a problem she cannot solve. Yet in the story she approaches Jesus with remarkable courage (or is it desperation. Or does desperation call forth courage within us?).
Matthew's account of the story is much shorter than Mark's, but he preserves the heart of the story. She reaches out in faith and touches the fringe of his cloak. And what follows is remarkable. Jesus does not simply heal her, he addresses her as "daughter." In a Gospel where names and titles carry great significance, this is significant. Her illness has isolated her, but Jesus restores not only her health but her dignity and belonging. The healing is not only physical, but it is also relational and spiritual. She is no longer defined by her condition. In the eyes of Jesus she is recognised as a beloved child of God. And even more than that, Jesus affirms her faith – that she has been a participant in her own healing. Jesus has inspired her to find a faith and a strength that she didn’t know she had within her.
There is profound symbolic significance here Within Matthew's world, she represents all those excluded by social, religious, or cultural boundaries. Within our world, she continues to represent all those who feel unseen, unheard, or forgotten. This Gospel story proclaims that no one is invisible to God. No wound is beyond God's compassion. No human being is reducible to a diagnosis, a failure, a label, or a social category.
We should not overlook the third person at the centre of this story: the ruler's daughter. Ironically, although her father occupies a position of status and influence, the girl herself possesses very little status in the eyes of her society. She is both a child and a female, belonging to two groups that held little social power in the ancient world. And now she has died, placing her beyond the reach of all human help.
Just as the woman's condition rendered her ritually unclean, so too contact with a dead body brought ritual impurity. Yet once again Jesus moves towards what others would avoid. He enters the house, takes the girl by the hand, and she rises.
Matthew's account is strikingly brief, but its symbolism is powerful. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus is continually raising people into a new way of life. Tax collectors leave their old identities behind and become disciples. Sinners discover that they are welcomed rather than rejected. The excluded are restored to community, the fearful find courage, the lost are found.
The raising of the girl becomes a vivid picture of what happens whenever a person encounters the life-giving presence of Christ. Something that seemed lifeless comes alive. Something that seemed finished receives a new beginning. Something that appeared beyond hope is touched by grace and transformed.
In Matthew's world, this story points towards the renewing power of God's kingdom – the transforming Presence of the Divine at the heart of life that we are all invited to tap into. In our world, it continues to speak wherever people feel trapped by despair, failure, grief, addiction, loneliness, cynicism, or fear. The Gospel's claim is that God's life-giving power is always greater than the forces that diminish life.
The girl's rising therefore becomes more than a miracle story. It becomes a sign of resurrection in its broadest sense: God's ability to awaken new life where none seems possible.
Seen together, Matthew the tax collector, the woman with the haemorrhage, and the young girl each represent different forms of human brokenness and exclusion. One is morally suspect. One is ritually excluded. One is overcome by death itself. Yet all three are met by the same compassion, the same mercy, and the same life-giving presence.
Nothing - not failure, not exclusion, not suffering, not even death - lies beyond the reach of the Kingdom that Jesus proclaims.
Taken together, these stories also offer a vision of what discipleship looks like To follow Jesus is not simply to believe certain things about him. It is to learn to see as he sees: to notice those whom others overlook, to value those whom society devalues, to practise mercy rather than judgement, to move towards suffering rather than away from it, to recognise the image of God in every person.
And perhaps that is the deepest thread connecting all three encounters. Each person is encountered by a love that sees beyond labels. A love that sees beyond social status. A love that sees beyond failure. A love that sees the possibility of transformation where others see only limitation.
In the end, that is what Matthew's Gospel is about. The Kingdom of Heaven is not reserved for the worthy It is a community of grace where the excluded are welcomed, the wounded are healed, the lost are found, and ordinary people are called to become disciples.
This is why these stories remain so powerful. Matthew the tax collector symbolises those who believe their past disqualifies them. The woman symbolises those who carry wounds, burdens, or exclusions that seem to define their lives. The young girl symbolises all those situations that appear beyond hope, beyond healing, beyond renewal. To each of them, Jesus offers the same thing: presence, mercy, healing, and invitation.
In the end, that is what Matthew's Gospel is about. The Kingdom of Heaven is not reserved for the worthy, it is a community of grace where the excluded are welcomed, the wounded are healed, the lost are found, and ordinary people are called to become disciples.
And the invitation that came to Matthew beside his tax booth is extended to us again: "Follow me." What might it mean for us to respond to that invitation today?
Our Gospel reading today is made up of at least three separate encounters with Jesus. First, Jesus calls Matthew the tax collector. Second, he shares a meal with tax collectors and sinners, provoking criticism from the Pharisees. Third, while on his way to help the dying daughter of a synagogue leader, he encounters a woman who has suffered from a flow of blood for twelve years.
At first glance these stories may seem quite different. Yet Matthew has deliberately placed them together, inviting us to see a common thread running through them. In each case, the focus falls on people who occupy the margins of society. Matthew is a tax collector, a collaborator with Rome, viewed by many as morally compromised and religiously suspect.
The "tax collectors and sinners" gathered around the table are people whose lives place them outside the boundaries of respectable society. The woman suffering from haemorrhages is doubly marginalised. As a woman in a patriarchal society she possesses little status, and her condition would have rendered her perpetually ritually unclean, excluding her from much of normal social and religious life.
Even the synagogue leader who approaches Jesus is, despite his position, utterly powerless before the reality of his daughter's impending death. They are different people in different circumstances and yet all share a common experience of vulnerability. Each stands in a place where the usual structures of status, respectability, power, or religious certainty offer little help. And it is precisely here that Jesus is found.
This should not surprise us, it is one of Matthew's great themes.
At the beginning of the Gospel, Jesus is called Immanuel, God with us. The question throughout Matthew's narrative is: What does "God with us" actually look like?
The answer is found repeatedly in scenes like these. God with us looks like Jesus sitting at a table with people others avoid. God with us looks like Jesus stopping for a woman everyone else overlooks. God with us looks like Jesus responding to those whom society regards as insignificant, unclean, or beyond hope.
One of the most striking features of this passage is the call of Matthew himself. Jesus sees Matthew sitting at the tax booth and simply says, "Follow me." Nothing more. No examination of his beliefs, no demand that he first put his life in order. No requirement to prove his worthiness. Just an invitation. And Matthew responds as he rises and follows.
For Matthew, discipleship is one of the central themes of the Gospel. Yet discipleship always begins not with human achievement but with divine initiative. Jesus calls first, then the response follows. This pattern appears throughout the Gospel: fishermen, tax collectors, women, foreigners, children, the poor, the sick - all are invited into God's kingdom. The kingdom is not built upon human qualifications. It is built upon grace.
This explains the meal that follows. When the Pharisees ask why Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus responds with words that reveal the very heart of Matthew's Gospel "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." The quotation comes from the prophet Hosea, but Matthew gives it special prominence. In fact, Matthew alone among the Gospel writers records Jesus using this text twice. This is significant.
For Matthew, true religion is not primarily about ritual correctness, status, or boundary-keeping. It is about mercy. Not that worship and devotion are unimportant. Matthew values both deeply. But when religious observance becomes disconnected from compassion, something essential has been lost.
And so while the Pharisees see categories, Jesus sees people. While the Pharisees see who belongs and who does not, Jesus sees human beings loved by God. While the Pharisees focus on religious purity Jesus focuses on healing.
The challenge of this passage is not confined to the first century. Every generation creates its own categories of insiders and outsiders. Every society develops subtle ways of deciding who matters and who does not. But Jesus in the Gospel stories continually invites us to examine our own assumptions.
Who are the people we instinctively avoid? Whose stories do we dismiss? Whom do we regard as beyond redemption? The answer to those questions often reveals where we most need to hear Jesus' words: "I desire mercy, not sacrifice."
The story of the woman with the haemorrhage deepens this theme even further. For twelve years she has lived with her condition, meaning twelve years of exclusion, twelve years of disappointment, twelve years of being defined by a problem she cannot solve. Yet in the story she approaches Jesus with remarkable courage (or is it desperation. Or does desperation call forth courage within us?).
Matthew's account of the story is much shorter than Mark's, but he preserves the heart of the story. She reaches out in faith and touches the fringe of his cloak. And what follows is remarkable. Jesus does not simply heal her, he addresses her as "daughter." In a Gospel where names and titles carry great significance, this is significant. Her illness has isolated her, but Jesus restores not only her health but her dignity and belonging. The healing is not only physical, but it is also relational and spiritual. She is no longer defined by her condition. In the eyes of Jesus she is recognised as a beloved child of God. And even more than that, Jesus affirms her faith – that she has been a participant in her own healing. Jesus has inspired her to find a faith and a strength that she didn’t know she had within her.
There is profound symbolic significance here Within Matthew's world, she represents all those excluded by social, religious, or cultural boundaries. Within our world, she continues to represent all those who feel unseen, unheard, or forgotten. This Gospel story proclaims that no one is invisible to God. No wound is beyond God's compassion. No human being is reducible to a diagnosis, a failure, a label, or a social category.
We should not overlook the third person at the centre of this story: the ruler's daughter. Ironically, although her father occupies a position of status and influence, the girl herself possesses very little status in the eyes of her society. She is both a child and a female, belonging to two groups that held little social power in the ancient world. And now she has died, placing her beyond the reach of all human help.
Just as the woman's condition rendered her ritually unclean, so too contact with a dead body brought ritual impurity. Yet once again Jesus moves towards what others would avoid. He enters the house, takes the girl by the hand, and she rises.
Matthew's account is strikingly brief, but its symbolism is powerful. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus is continually raising people into a new way of life. Tax collectors leave their old identities behind and become disciples. Sinners discover that they are welcomed rather than rejected. The excluded are restored to community, the fearful find courage, the lost are found.
The raising of the girl becomes a vivid picture of what happens whenever a person encounters the life-giving presence of Christ. Something that seemed lifeless comes alive. Something that seemed finished receives a new beginning. Something that appeared beyond hope is touched by grace and transformed.
In Matthew's world, this story points towards the renewing power of God's kingdom – the transforming Presence of the Divine at the heart of life that we are all invited to tap into. In our world, it continues to speak wherever people feel trapped by despair, failure, grief, addiction, loneliness, cynicism, or fear. The Gospel's claim is that God's life-giving power is always greater than the forces that diminish life.
The girl's rising therefore becomes more than a miracle story. It becomes a sign of resurrection in its broadest sense: God's ability to awaken new life where none seems possible.
Seen together, Matthew the tax collector, the woman with the haemorrhage, and the young girl each represent different forms of human brokenness and exclusion. One is morally suspect. One is ritually excluded. One is overcome by death itself. Yet all three are met by the same compassion, the same mercy, and the same life-giving presence.
Nothing - not failure, not exclusion, not suffering, not even death - lies beyond the reach of the Kingdom that Jesus proclaims.
Taken together, these stories also offer a vision of what discipleship looks like To follow Jesus is not simply to believe certain things about him. It is to learn to see as he sees: to notice those whom others overlook, to value those whom society devalues, to practise mercy rather than judgement, to move towards suffering rather than away from it, to recognise the image of God in every person.
And perhaps that is the deepest thread connecting all three encounters. Each person is encountered by a love that sees beyond labels. A love that sees beyond social status. A love that sees beyond failure. A love that sees the possibility of transformation where others see only limitation.
In the end, that is what Matthew's Gospel is about. The Kingdom of Heaven is not reserved for the worthy It is a community of grace where the excluded are welcomed, the wounded are healed, the lost are found, and ordinary people are called to become disciples.
This is why these stories remain so powerful. Matthew the tax collector symbolises those who believe their past disqualifies them. The woman symbolises those who carry wounds, burdens, or exclusions that seem to define their lives. The young girl symbolises all those situations that appear beyond hope, beyond healing, beyond renewal. To each of them, Jesus offers the same thing: presence, mercy, healing, and invitation.
In the end, that is what Matthew's Gospel is about. The Kingdom of Heaven is not reserved for the worthy, it is a community of grace where the excluded are welcomed, the wounded are healed, the lost are found, and ordinary people are called to become disciples.
And the invitation that came to Matthew beside his tax booth is extended to us again: "Follow me." What might it mean for us to respond to that invitation today?
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