Frauds

 

June 7, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

The second Sunday after Pentecost leads us into the very heart of Jesus’s ministry.

The ninth chapter of Matthew has two main themes: the calling of the unlikely, and the power of healing. 

Jesus’ healing miracles in Matthew are among the most moving and dramatic of the gospels. A leader of the Synagogue kneels before him begging him to save his young daughter. A woman with a chronic hemorrhage reaches out to Jesus in faith that she will be cured. Blind men are given sight. Demoniacs are freed from their bondage.

“Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness.” (MT 9:35)

At the same time, Jesus reached out to unsavory and dubious people who were shunned by society and invited them to his ministry.

“These passages show us a Christ who moves toward those in need, who upends social expectations, and who embodies mercy in ways that challenge religious structures,” writes Danny Zacharias, a New Testament scholar from Wolfville, Nova Scotia. “The stories of Matthew’s call and Jesus’s healing acts emphasize restorative mercy. This mercy is not simply words, not just words of forgiveness or absolution, but tangible acts of restoration that show what the kingdom of God ought to be like.”e

This is good news for those of us who doubt our worthiness to serve Jesus. Jesus calls us whether we are worthy or not.

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.” (MT 9:9-13)

This statement is a direct challenge to the religious order. The Pharisees emphasize purity and sacrifice, but Jesus reorients the discussion toward mercy, toward healing, and toward relationship. 

But who can blame the Pharisees? Thieving tax collectors? Prostitutes and unabashed sinners? Are these the kind of people who should be hanging with the Lord of Life? 

We don’t think so.

And probably the persons Jesus called didn’t think so either. Matthew would have been keenly aware that people hated him. As a tax collector he was seen as an opportunistic collaborator with the hated Roman government. No doubt Matthew, like most of his devious associates, enriched himself by skimming shekels off the top of his ill-gotten gains. He was, plainly, a parasite and a rat. And he knew it.

So Matthew must have been incredulous when Jesus looked him in the eye and said, “Follow me.” Jesus knew exactly who Matthew was and didn’t hold it against him. Stunned and uncertain, Matthew abandoned his cash box and followed Jesus.

How did Matthew feel about his sudden elevation from louse to disciple? Did he feel out of place? Did he feel unworthy? Did he doubt he could fill the role to which Jesus had called him?

Probably. Over the last two millennia, millions accepted Jesus’ call. And millions doubted they were up to it.

One does not have to be paranoid to feel like an imposter. It happens to the best of us. “I secretly know that I am not good enough an actor to be as successful as I am,” confessed the late David Niven. “All my life I’ve been waiting for someone else to find that out. Someday, someone will tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘I’m sorry, old boy, but you’ve been found out. You must come with us now.’”

This anxiety is not uncommon within the mainstream of the human race. When Paul said all are sinners, he meant all of us are frauds and all of us will eventually be found out. And Paul could not escape the anguish himself. “I know that nothing good dwells within me,” he confessed to the church in Rome (Romans 7:18ff). “I not the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

I know the feeling. I was the least athletic member of my family and after I grew up I tried to cover up that fact by compulsively jogging. Granted, jogging is a rather talentless process of picking ‘em up and putting ‘em down, but I hoped the grunting and sweating would obscure the fact that I am athletically inept.

Years ago I liked to jog on the track at Philadelphia’s Franklin Field. One morning I was overtaken by the entire University of Pennsylvania Women’s Cross Country Team. Attempting to impress them, I ran on my toes and strained breathlessly to hold my stomach in. I lost my bearings and collided with a tackling dummy. As I lay on the grass examining my attacker it appeared to be a worn, grass-stained piece of second-hand athletic equipment. But I knew better. It was my own personal stalker saying, “I’m sorry, old boy, but you’ve been found out.”

In literary and musical terms, that allegorical stalker who knows we are frauds is Javert, the ruthless pursuer of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. Javert knows there is an open warrant for Valjean, a former prisoner, and he searches for him obsessively. Valjean, who has shed prison rags and has become a wealthy mayor and businessman, knows he’s a fraud. But he knows if Javert sends him back to jail he will not be around to protect his employees or his beloved foster daughter from lives of poverty.

Les Misérables is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg with an English libretto by Herbert Kretzmer. Each production has been distinguished by different musicians, performers, and stage design but they all have two things in common: performances are invariably tear-inducing and they are always sermon inspiring. My eyes overflow each time the chorus sings the words originally penned by Victor Hugo himself: “To love another person is to see the face of God.”

Did Javert ever catch up with Valjean Was Valjean thrown back into a drizzly Parisian prison? You know what happened, of course, and if you don’t, Victor Hugo’s thick volume awaits you at your local library. 

Javert is a haunting figure because he reminds us what our lives would be like if God had not intervened. Without the Cross, all of us would be relentlessly pursued by the truth of our sins, and all of us would be condemned.

Happily, there are no Javerts on our tail. God has sent Jesus to seek us out: a tireless pursuer who knows we are frauds and loves us anyway. 

With Javert there is only punishment. With Jesus, there is the promise that our fraudulence will one day be transformed for the sake of the world.

Jesus dines with tax collectors and sinners. His acceptance of those the world considers frauds is a sign of his radical nature. 

“As an Indigenous Christian,” writes Danny Zacharias, “I see resonance with Indigenous spirituality. Indigenous practice often prioritizes relational healing over ritual correctness. Indigenous ceremony is central in Indigenous spirituality, and many ceremonies are open and welcoming to others. While there are protocols around ceremony, they are often not so rigid that relationship is sacrificed. Laughter brings us together and connects us in these moments. Just as Jesus calls Matthew into a new life, Indigenous traditions recognize that love and restoration happen through inclusion, not exclusion. A person is not cast out for past failures but invited to walk a new path.”

No matter who we are or what we have done or how many weaknesses and sins we have accumulated, Jesus will not cast us out.

Instead, as we sit by the road minding our business, the Son of Man comes to us and says, “Follow me.”

Our prayer is that we, like the nasty tax collector, will shake off our surprise.  And follow. May the Triune God give us faith to follow Jesus wherever he leads.

Selah.