Trinity Metropolitan Community Church of Gainesville (Trinity MCC)

Choose Your Character

Rev. Vickie Miller

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Isaiah 40:21-31 & 42:5-9

We can relate to the biblical characters of the Gospel

and let Christ set us free.

I. One thing that I really like about MCC is the wealth of different characters that we are. Whenever I go to General Conference or when I attend MCC churches and meet other MCC’ers, I am fascinated by their stories and I am reminded of why I like our denomination so much. There is room for so many characters. We are practical and we are creative, we are subdued and we are outlandish, we are young and we are old, we are north American, south American, African, Asian and European. We include genders and sexual orientation on both ends of the spectrum and in between. We are forward-thinkers and we are traditionalists.

I imagine that also within this church, Trinity MCC, the character types also range to include a variety of personalities. That’s one thing that I am looking forward to: learning more about each of you are and learning about the wealth of traits and gifts you bring to this congregation.

II. My fascination with diverse people is probably why I also like today’s Gospel reading so much. Matthew’s story has at least 10 different types of characters.

III. What a congregation this would be if after meeting Jesus, they all formed a church. In this mix, you’ve got the Pharisees and the tax collectors, the religious and the “sinners”, the church leaders and the followers, the musicians, the crowds, the outcast, the poor, the terminally ill and the well-to-do. Can you imagine a Sunday morning - different clothing attires, diverse personalities, the various opinions on how worship and church should be run?

This morning, I am going to invite us to explore each of these gospel characters, Even though these are all quite diverse and different, each of them is alike in their dealing with their human struggles, as Jesus describes them, in need of a physician.

1. First, we have Matthew. He had chosen a career as a tax collector. In reality, Matthew was probably not a chief tax collector but worked in a toll booth collecting tolls for the Romans. Even today, no one likes to pay tolls. Carol and I live near the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in south St. Petersburg, where we pay $1 each way. As friendly as they are, it’s hard to hand over that dollar. I imagine Matthew as one of those toll collectors, maybe wearing one of those tourist-like uniform shirts that FL toll collectors wear.

And then there are Matthew’s friends, others called sinners, who had bonded together formed into their own smaller communities because of the discrimination they had received.   Maybe you can relate to Matthew or the tax collectors, wearied by the labels that society had placed on them as an outcast group.

2. Then we have the Pharisees who just do not understand why Jesus hangs out with these tax collector guys. In the Bible, the Pharisees are the bad guys, they are often the villains in the story, like hecklers at a pride march or nay-sayers in the church, but in reality the Pharisees were good and responsible citizens who longed for reform and begged people to return to the Sabbath laws, to tithing, and purity.

However, strong as they appear, surely wearied and enslaved tradition by the belief that God might withhold God’s blessings on them and Israel if everyone did not follow the rules and do the right things. Maybe you can empathize with the Pharisees.

4. The next character is Leader of the Synagogue whose daughter has died– a good man, responsible for making sure the synagogue was repaired, that the bills were paid, that readers of the Torah were lined up for the Sabbath. Powerless now to a sudden and unexpected tragic loss that certainly made him question God and experiencing a situation that reminds us that bad things do happen to good people.

5. On the way to the leader’s house, Jesus is distracted by the woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years who just quietly wants to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment. She is all of the adjectives we can describe from our scripture readings today. Powerless, wearied, faint, and enslaved by an illness that has altered the entire course of her life and plagued her as unclean. Truly, this woman is in need of a physician who can work miracles.

6. Flute players – professional mourners who have come to console the family of the Synagogue Leader. There’s a contemporary band called Wailing Sounds, and believe me their music sounds more like noise than harmony, I imagine like these flute players of Jesus’ day. They were there not to play beautiful, comforting music, but to create wailing sounds that expressed the family’s deep sense of grief.

Flute Players: Enslaved by the weight of the sorrows of the world and called to be a voice of the world’s pain. Maybe you relate to them as one who feels the weight of others’ burdens and feel powerless to relieve them.

7. Crowds –caring people, coming to console this family. Yet, even in the midst of grief, they laugh at Jesus’ diagnosis that the girl is sleeping.

Crowds: Enslaved by a belief in reality and reason and not able to see the possibilities of a miracle that is about to happen.

8. Daughter – Young and innocent and free, yet her life taken from this world at such a young age. Powerless to death itself and enslaved to the vulnerability of the world’s disease and now has no hope for a future in this life.

9. Disciples – then we have the disciples. They are there through the whole story. They encounter great joys at seeing the healings and resurrection, yet also at the same time they have been interrogated by the Pharisees.

Maybe you are like the disciples: Blessed with a relationship with Christ, but at the same time, in the process of being molded and remade, challenged and transformed, not sure what your next calling is.

IV. It is difficult for me to pick one of these characters that speaks to my situation, because I can relate to many of these, at least some time in my life. From the beginning of time, all of humanity has felt the weight of the world, its burdens, and its enslavements.

It’s fairly easy to recognize the struggles in these Biblical characters. The greater challenge is to recognize the struggles in the characters we encounter every day and to really listen to each others’ stories in the midst of our diversity.

I was especially impacted by this realization, that all people face some kind of trauma or struggle in life, when I was in a ministry class. One of the large components of our course was “group sessions” in which we were encouraged to tell our stories and our life struggles. I dreaded group, and I decided to get my issue out of the way and to tell my spiritual struggle with my sexual orientation and how the labels of society had hurt me.

Initially, I felt that I surely was the most vulnerable, outcast person of the group who had endured the most injustice. But I soon became humbled when over the weeks the other group members shared their pains, and I realized that my pain and my experience of weariness and enslavement was no bigger than the rest of theirs. One was a child of an alcoholic, another experienced the death of a child, another suffered years of sexual abuse, another lived in Europe during Viet Nam and as a child was called a baby killer, on and on, people shared the hurts and discrimination in their lives.

V. Like the stories in this gospel reading, there are many, many different stories of struggle and enslavement that impact everyone.

But what pulls all of the human experiences together is the main character of the story: Jesus.

The hero of this gospel story. The one who has come to set each person free!

VIII.

Matthew, the tax collector, was set free and became one of the most familiar

          apostles today, having the first Gospel named after him.

Matthew’s tax collector friends were accepted and loved by Jesus.

The leader of the synagogue got his daughter back.

The bleeding woman was made whole.

The flute players got to rest from wailing and maybe even played “glory, glory, hallelujah revive us again” for a change.

The mourning crowds turned into party of celebration.

The disciples’ faith was strengthened from all they encountered.

The daughter got her very life back!

VII. What do all of these stories of release teach us today? First, as disciples, we are called to continue to re-tell the stories, to replay them, to proclaim Christ’s love. To do that, we need places of freedom, like this church who accept people, no matter what kind of character they are. A church, that stands for healing and justice and who teaches that Christ has come to set all people free.

There was a place that I recall from my childhood that stood as a wonderful symbol of freedom and diversity in my small community. There was a historical house, and it happens that as a baby, my family had briefly lived in the upstairs apartment right next door to the historical Levi Coffin home as the sign said out front.

For several years my family drove past our previous apartment. My parents would frequently point to the upstairs window that looked down on this historical home and remind me that that is where my bedroom was as a baby. I visited the Levi Coffin house on an elementary school field trip, and I learned that Levi and Catherine Coffin’s house was part of the Underground Railroad, and in their dedication to serving Christ, they helped to free over 2000 slaves.

On that house tour I remember little, except for one thing. The guide, dressed in the attire of that period, lead us to a great room and she pulled away a large rug to reveal a hidden cellar door. I remember standing right on the edge of that opening and peering down into the dark, damp area and thinking how scary it must have been for those runaway slaves to hide down there, trying not to breathe or sneeze or let the baby cry.

As a gay kid growing up in that small community, I realize now how important of a symbol that home was for me - A home that stood for justice and freedom for all. This church, likewise, stands as a symbol of freedom in this community. Unlike the Levi Coffin house, we cannot imagine what living in slavery must have been like, but there are people today who experience some type of emotional or physical enslavement, in dark lonely cellars.

We proclaim from these walls that Christ has set us free.

VI. The second thing we can learn from our Biblical characters today is to ask, what about the characters in this house? How many of us are in this house of freedom, but we’re still hiding in the cellar, feeling wearied and powerless?

And, are you listening to each other like I was required to do in group?

Are you helping each other to climb out & reach for the hem of Jesus’ garment?

I can imagine that if nothing else, many of you as members and church leaders are wearied. You’ve been without a pastor for several months and experienced differences of opinion.

But we must remember that our characters, like the Gospel characters in our lesson today, were brought together to form a story. And we are all drawn together by the main character, Jesus. All of us carry our share of burdens and hurts, but in our diversity we come together.   To Jesus we must reach up, reach out, believe, and accept Jesus’ invitation and claim freedom.

Today wherever you are in your life, may you encounter Jesus.

May you continue to enter into the story with Jesus, and each other and as a result,

may you mount up with wings as eagles,

may you run and not be weary,

may you walk and not faint, and

may you find Jesus, the great physician to heal all of our needs and set you free.

Amen.

Contact: gmail.com@trinitymcc
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