Pentecost 2 Year A

Matthew 9:9-13,18-26
St Mary’s Cathedral, Pentecost 2. Year A/2

Well here we are on the other side.

Another year’s journey through Easter, Ascension and Pentecost is stored in our memories. The Big Service of installation of a new bishop, that once in a decade sort of occasion, has been and gone. A Bishop from one of our companion dioceses has visited and preached.
The rich colours of red, gold, purple and bright white for the clergy and the altars to be dressed in have been packed away and green has returned. Here we are deposited on the other side of all the grand stuff, back into the ordinary.

We’ve not been here for so long that one of the chasubles, the thing that the priest who is celebrating the Eucharist wears, has had enough time in the cupboard to get a bit smelly and so has had a little trip to the dry cleaners.

Ahead of us stretches twenty-five weeks of green, of Ordinary Time. Plenty of time then to let the grand and the extraordinary, the surprising and the unsettling, land and settle. Plenty of time for resurrection to work its’ way into the ordinariness of everyday life.
In this part of the world, we have, I think, a particular understanding of green. We know it is never just one colour. It shifts with the light, the weather, the environment, the movement of clouds—still green, yet somehow different each time. I like that as a picture of faith. A life of faith holds a sense of something stable, recognisable and enduring and yet is able to adapt and deepen through all the changing scenes of life, in trouble and in joy.
Perhaps that is what this season is really for. Ordinary Time is not a pause between the important bits. It is the season in which we learn to be bedded in, to take root, and also to adapt, to turn and turn again as we grow towards the light. Because faith rarely becomes beautiful and flowers in the dramatic moments. Faith becomes the glorious thing it was planted in our souls to become through thousands of small turnings.
And that is exactly what we discover in Jesus. When Matthew tells us about Jesus, he is not interested in what Jesus was wearing, what He was eating, or where He was staying, as modern day influencers would be. He is interested in telling us about the people Jesus met. Ordinary people living ordinary lives. Starting in our passage today with the most stereotypically boring, a civil servant, A tax collector at work. Religious leaders. Disciples. A sick woman. Curious neighbours. A little girl. And what is remarkable is how often Jesus isn’t directing the show, but He is turning towards people, He responds to them, He is attentive to them. The striking thing about Jesus in these stories is not that He is always directing events. More often than not, He is responding to people. Jesus is always turning towards people.
Matthew captures that beautifully in one simple sentence: "Jesus turned, and seeing her, he said..."
Jesus turned.

Before He speaks. Before He heals. Before He does anything else, He turns.
It sounds so simple we might miss it. But this is one of the deepest truths Matthew tells us about Jesus.
He turns towards Matthew at his tax desk. He turns towards a synagogue leader in his grief. He turns towards a woman hidden in the crowd. He turns towards a child everyone else believes is beyond help.
Again and again, Jesus re-orients Himself towards the person in front of Him. He gives them attention. He refuses to let them remain anonymous. And whenever He does, something shifts.
When Jesus turns towards Matthew and his friends, the religious leaders for the first time in Matthew’s gospel find their voice. They begin to question and challenge Him. When Jesus turns towards the woman who touches His cloak, the hurried journey to the synagogue leader's house comes to a complete stop. The crowd's momentum is interrupted. The urgent gives way to the important.
Real attentiveness, real turning towards other people has a habit of doing that. It brings the powers that shape our lives to a standstill. It stops that powerful drive to be right and certain, to preserve the systems and stories that reassure us. It challenges the assumptions we carry, both conscious and unconscious, about who matters and who does not, about who is in and who is out. It slows the panicking march of us all and of leaders and communities to defy and overcome loss, suffering, and death. Real turning towards another person weakens the power of the crowd. It loosens the grip of convention, prejudice, and groupthink. It exposes the ways we and our communities can become trapped in our own narratives, circling endlessly around fears, self-interest, and the need to protect ourselves.

"She is not dead but sleeping," says Jesus, and the crowd laughs. Real turning towards the other helps a community recognise where healing is needed and what it really looks like—not simply in individuals, but in the habits, assumptions, and structures that shape our common life. It gives us the courage to speak the gentle truth about a situation, resisting the temptation to exaggerate, to sensationalise, or to bend the story to the advantage of a group or an individual.

Turning and facing people is one of the most distinctive things about Jesus. Others see categories; Jesus sees people. Others see sinners, outsiders, nuisances, crowds. Jesus sees beloved children of God.
His attentiveness creates space for people to become fully themselves. The woman is no longer simply "the haemorrhaging woman." Matthew is no longer simply "the tax collector." The little girl is no longer simply "the dead child." With Jesus, people become more than the stories that have trapped them. With Jesus people become fellow bearers of God’s divine image, they become beloved children of God.

In the church where I grew up there was a small plaque in the pulpit. As a child I would see it whenever I climbed up there with my Gran and the hoover and polish. It simply said: "Sir, we would see Jesus." It’s from the story of when some strangers, some outsiders, asked one of Jesus’ followers, Philip if they could meet Jesus.

It was there to remind the preacher where to look. Not somewhere far away. Not in grand occasions and in the extraordinary alone. Not to look for the red and the purple, the gold and the bright white. But to look for the green. To turn and really look at the people in front of you. Turn and really look at all the ordinary lives gathered here. Turn towards friends and strangers, the people who’ve come here for years, the tourists hovering at the back, turn and face people, face the stuff of life, including the stuff you don’t want to face because that’s where Jesus is. That’s where the divine is found, that’s where God is at work, in the ordinariness of lives lived, faithfully, unfaithfully, successfully and disastrously, peacefully, chaotically and everything in between and around.

We are called to pay attention to the mystery of the divine already in our midst; to allow it to draw us, unsettle us, delight us, challenge us, and love us into new life. To discover that we are already seen more deeply than we can imagine and loved more completely than we dare hope. The Word became flesh and lived among us, in us, with us. Not somewhere else. with the sorted, the successful, the certain. Not hidden away on the margins or reserved for those in the big houses on the hill. Not with us in the future when we finally get ourselves sorted or just stop hurting quite so much. Among us. Here. Now. In the ordinary stuff of ordinary lives. To put it another way, living with Jesus, as Diana Butler Bass says, is where things become messy.

So in this green season, this greening season, may you recognise Jesus in the people you meet, and the situations you face up to and in to. And may others recognise Jesus when they turn to face you. May you find life and resurrection when the ordinary becomes toil and routine. May you find mystery and joy in the familiar and places you have forgotten to look. And in whatever lies ahead, may you find a peace beyond all imagination in the God who sees you, turns towards you, knows you, calls you a child and whispers to you “take heart”.