St. Matthew, 2025

Text: Matthew 9:9-12

Title: Seeing the Doctor

+ INI +

How often do you go to the doctor?

You might be thinking to yourself, “I’ve got three appointments coming up just this week.  My whole life seems to be nothing but going to the doctor.”

Or, you might be thinking to yourself, “I just went for my annual physical, five years ago.  I’m good.”

In today’s gospel, Jesus compares Himself to a medical doctor.  And He compares sin to sickness.  And so, we’re going to explore this metaphor a bit deeper here today.

Your attitude towards going to the doctor is probably influenced by two factors:

First, how sick do you think you are?

Second, what can the doctor actually do to help you?

So, first, how sick do you think you are?

Perhaps you’re someone who runs to urgent care or the emergency room every time you’re feeling under the weather.

That’s not me.  If I’m not feeling well, I’ll try everything possible to avoid going to the doctor. 

Part of it is just the hassle, the inconvenience. I don’t want to have to go to the trouble of making an appointment and taking time out of my busy schedule to sit around in a waiting room.

But more than anything else, I think it’s the fear. I’m afraid to hear that there’s something seriously wrong with me.  I’m afraid to hear that I might have take some medicine or have a procedure.  I’m afraid of what it might cost.  And I’m afraid that I might have to change my life, to stop certain unhealthy behaviors or to do things I don’t want to do.

But, if I recognize that I’m seriously sick, and that I can’t just tough it out on my own, that’s when I’m most likely to seek out a doctor, despite the inconvenience, despite the cost, despite the consequences, because I finally admit that I need help.

That was the case with Matthew.

Matthew was a tax collector.  In Matthew’s day, that was not like working for the IRS today. When you paid your taxes, they went to a foreign, occupying power, the Romans. 

The Romans didn’t collect taxes themselves. They didn’t have the manpower to devote to it.  So they hired the locals.

The way it normally worked was that you would bid for the contract to collect taxes in a certain area.  The contract went to the highest bidder.  And if you were awarded the contract, then it was up to you to collect these taxes.  And if you wanted to make any money on the deal, you had to collect more money than what you bid, and that was your profit.  And if you needed to employ other guys to help collect, then you needed to collect even more to pay them, too.

Tax collection was more of an extortion racket than a legitimate government job.  It was a form of theft.  And it made you extremely unpopular, especially with the religious types, because it meant that you supported the Romans, who worshipped false gods.

But Jesus came to Matthew.  And He called Matthew to leave this life of crime behind. And not only that, He called Matthew to be one of His disciples.

Matthew was sick with the sin of greed.  And it took Jesus, coming to him and calling Him out of that life for Matthew to follow Him.

Here’s where the analogy breaks down a bit. I’ve never had a doctor come to my home or show up at work and tell me that I need to change my life.

But that’s what needs to happen for us with Jesus. 

On our own, we’d never simply decide that we needed to repent and follow Him.  It takes Him coming to us and calling us out of our sin for us to recognize how much we need Him.

There were certainly folks in Jesus day who didn’t think they needed to change, who saw themselves as perfectly healthy.

These folks thought they were doing just fine, that they were keeping the law and the traditions of the elders and didn’t need to repent and be forgiven.  They rejected Jesus as a Savior.

To them, Jesus pointed them back to words of the Prophet Hosea.  He reminded them that God did not care if they kept the law, if they made all the right sacrifices, if they did not have mercy, love for other people.

The Pharisees were truly sick.  You can see this in the way that they treated Matthew and his friends as somehow untouchable and unclean.  But they didn’t recognize it, and so they didn’t see their need to repent, or their need for Jesus’ forgiveness.

So, the first factor in whether or not you see a doctor is whether you recognize yourself as sick.

No matter what your occupation, you should be able to look inside yourself and see your sinfulness, to recognize all the times when you’ve loved yourself more than God and other people, and most of all to recognize that this is something you can’t just fix on your own. When it comes to sin, you can’t just tough it out, because sin is fatal, and eternally so.

The second factor in whether or not you see a doctor is whether you think the doctor can do you any good.

You’ve probably known people who were so sick, or so advanced in years, that they have not sought treatment for their illnesses. They’ve recognized that the chances of a cure, of healing were so remote, that it wasn’t worth it, and they’ve opted for hospice care or other ways to just manage their pain.

And that’s certainly an acceptable choice when modern medicine doesn’t seem to offer any hope.

And you might be tempted to think the same way about Jesus.  That somehow you’re so sick, so corrupted by sin, so far gone that there’s no hope for you.

The good news is that there’s no sinners who are so far gone that they cannot be healed, be forgiven, be saved by Jesus Christ. No one is beyond His power to save.

Jesus bore the infirmities of the whole world by His death on the cross.  He died for the sins of Matthew and all his tax-collector friends.  He died for the sins of the Pharisees and all their holier-than-thou friends.  He died for every murderer and gangbanger and the worst criminals you can imagine.  He died for the folks who will never spend a day in jail, but still find a way to hurt their friends and family.

Everyone has their own batch of sins, but Jesus has died for them all.

And here is where you receive treatment. Here is where the medicine is given out. The medicine of Holy Baptism washes away your sins and makes you a new person.  The medicine of Holy Absolution continues to forgive every sin of thought, word, and deed.  The medicine of the Holy Supper joins you to the death and resurrection of Christ and gives you life forever.

The church is not for the health, but for the sick, those who recognize their need for Jesus and have come here for healing.

Sometimes folks tell me that they need to get their life in order before they come back to church.  That’s exactly backwards.  That’s like saying that you need to get healthy before you can see a doctor.

The church is a hospital for sinners.  And everyone who is sick is welcome here to receive the life-giving medicine that Jesus offers.

Jesus came to Matthew’s tax booth that day, offering healing to Matthew and his buddies.  And Jesus has come here today, offering you that same healing as He forgives you your sins and gives you everlasting life.

+ INI +