Voices from the fringe: Matthew Christmas Eve 2018 First UMC Carroll

Voices from the fringe: Matthew

Christmas Eve 2018 First UMC Carroll

Did you hear that story? I can’t believe I missed it! They were right there in front of me and I didn’t even realize it.

Every time I hear that story from Luke, I could kick myself. I was right there in Bethlehem. I saw the couple from Nazareth. I remember them because she looked like she could give birth about any minute. And when they came to the table to enroll and pay their taxes, they asked if there was anywhere they might stay because the inns were full. I felt sorry for them but just said, “No I don’t. Keep moving please.”

It was my first assignment as a new tax collector. I was sent from my home territory of Galilee to learn from the best how to get just a little more money out of each person. The more I could get, the more I could keep. Even though we were hated by most of the people, it was profitable, IF you were an effective persuader. We called it “persuasion.” Others called it thievery, lying, or even extortion. They weren’t wrong and they hated us for it. No matter what we called it.

Getting back to the story. Had I known who they were, I would have gladly given them MY room. …Well, to tell the truth, I probably would still have sent them on their way because that is the kind of person I was. I’m not like that anymore. Now… I’m different. At that time, I had no idea who was right in front of me. Honestly, even after following Jesus for 3 years I didn’t put it all together until I heard Luke’s version of the gospel. Jesus didn’t talk about his birth, that’s why I didn’t record these events in my gospel that you call the gospel of Matthew. Now that I know the rest of the story as Luke tells it, I understand a lot better.

That is only one example of not seeing what was right in front of my eyes.

As I said, I was from Galilee and that is where I spent most of my career.  As it turns out Jesus’ path and my path crossed several times through the years. I didn’t see anything special about him.

Then he started his ministry. I spent a lot of my time collecting tolls on the roads, some would say committing highway robbery. I went wherever there was a big crowd because that’s where the profit was.  Jesus tended to gather huge crowds. Therefore, I often set up my tollbooth near where Jesus was teaching to collect from his followers. I heard him day after day, but I still didn’t see what was right before my eyes.

I heard him teach the sermon on the mount. How else do you think I was able to record it word for word in my gospel?

When Jesus said, “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely. I started to listen more closely.

Because it was profitable, I kept going back.  He started healing folks. Not just religious folks, but lepers the possessed, the crippled, and blind. He didn’t care if they were Samaritans, slaves, Greeks, Romans, women, children, clean and unclean, unrighteous or righteous. I wondered what he thought of a Levite like me.

Then it happened… one day… out of the clear blue sky, he walked past my booth and called me by name. “Matthew, come follow me.”

My first thought should have been to blow him off, but it wasn’t.

I can’t explain it, but suddenly all my priorities were turned upside down. The money I wanted so much didn’t seem as important. The three shiny new chariots on which I was making payments, suddenly that didn’t mean anything. I always dreamed of a big house in the best part of Jerusalem, suddenly I didn’t care where I lived. I didn’t even care if I got that big screen TV…. (I wasn’t sure what a TV was, but whatever it was, if no one else had one, I wanted it.)

When Jesus said, “follow me” all that I wanted was to get up and follow him. Sudeenly the money in front of mew didn’t mean so much as the life ahead of me. Could it be that Jesus, who accepted everybody else, would want a tax collector as a disciple? I never thought it possible, because I had been blind to God’s love which was right in front of me.

I could not see it because I shut myself away so I wouldn’t have to hear the names they called me, or see the looks of hatred that shot through my heart. But the man in front of me was different. Suddenly I saw God’s love that had been there all the time.

Don’t make the same mistake I did.  I wasted so much of my life looking meaning in all the wrong places when it lived just in the next town the whole time.

Don’t make the same mistake I did; searching for love or trying to buy love, when God’s love was available just for the accepting.

Don’t make the same mistake I did; trying to be so important, that I missed seeing what was really important.

Don’t make the same mistake I did; thinking that you don’t deserve love, or are never good enough because God’s love is not based on whether we deserve it.

God doesn’t come to the high and mighty, or the respectful, or the accepted.

God doesn’t come wrapped in shiny paper, or in a checkbook register.

God’s love came in a manger, in a baby, in a humble teacher, in a man on a cross.

Where is God coming to you? In the simple act of giving a gift to someone who didn’t expect it? In the prayers for peace contained on the Christmas cards you receive. In the music of the holidays? In church? God is in all those places.

Where is God coming to you? In the encouraging words of a coworker, in the helping hand of a neighbor, in the stranger who says Merry Christmas. Sitting by a hospital bed?

Where is God coming to you? In the hustle and bustle of life or in the quiet stillness of the night.

Where is God coming to you? In beautiful, shiny wrapping paper, or wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper.

How is God coming to you? In the messy craft project gift that you receive from a child. In a child’s excitement for Christmas morning?

How is God coming to you ? In tears shed in the middle of the night? In the flickering of a single candle lighting a room?

How is God coming to you, as a nosy neighbor, a depressed single mother? In the grieving widower next door.

Maybe, just maybe, God coming in the person sitting next to you right now… and you didn’t even notice it.

Just open your eyes and you just might find God in the most unexpected place.

In my day. God did not come just to the high and mighty, to kings and emperors, to captains of business and 1%ers, preachers, and Sunday school teachers. No, God came to a teenage mom, a carpenter, some shepherds, a Samaritan, and some Greeks. God came to the lame, the blind, the possessed… and God came to tax collectors.

God comes to everyone who will open their hearts and their lives to receive the miracle of God’s love in Jesus Christ.

Slow down. Be quiet. Stop worrying. Stop searching high and low for God. Just open your eyes and look right in front of you, or beside you, or inside of you, and see the miracle of Christmas.