Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
Proper 5 / Year A
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called
Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. Matthew
9:9
I suppose with my retirement lurking it is only
natural for me to wonder how I will be remembered. I hope there are many things about me you
will recall and treasure. I know I will
hold dear so many amazing experiences and moments I have been blessed to be a
part of in my time with you. Please,
please, please, do not forget this about me: “Every time someone invited me to
lunch after church, I said ‘No!’” When
my name comes up, when someone remembers me fondly, in the highly unlikely
event you look at a future rector and think, “Why couldn’t he or she be more
like Keith?”, please, either in the silence of your heart or with a booming
voice, say, “Whenever we asked him to join us for lunch, he declined.”
Are you familiar
with the acronym FOMO – Fear of Missing Out?
Social media has made us so aware of what everyone else is doing. FOMO is a state of mind held by a person who
suspects someone out there is having more fun or a better time than you
are. JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) is its
opposite. “I am so relieved I didn’t
have to go to that!”
As a person who is
capable of being alone without being lonely, there are times I am definitely a
JOMO. But, as is the case with the lunch
invites, most often I am a DAIN. What is
a DAIN? Don’t know? Haven’t heard of it before? Feeling left out or left behind on the latest
lingo? Well don’t be because I just made
it up to describe me. DAIN stands for “Default
Answer Is No!”
I first became
aware of my DAINness sometime after I became a single father. My girls where always asking me for things or
to do things with them or to allow them to do things and, at some point, it
occurred to me 99% of the time my answer was No! Now, some of the their requests were absolute
non-starters. “No, we are not going to Lowes at 8:30 on a school night to buy a
can of paint so you can repaint your room.”
Other times, it simply was not the time to say yes… like when my
daughters suggested we spend a quiet night at home watching movies and I said,
“Well, I can’t because its Christmas Eve and I have services to do.” But most often I said “No” just because I
couldn’t be bothered. There was no
reason I couldn’t have said yes, and no reason I shouldn’t, but I am a DAIN and
that put an end to that.
Brené Brown
cautions, “Joy comes to us in moments – ordinary moments. We risk missing out on joy when we get too
busy chasing down the extraordinary.”
While some people need to hear to hear a sermon on the importance of
taking time to stop and smell the roses, not us DAIN types. We need to be reminded – and reminded often –
what the motivational speaker Jim Rohn preached: “Often, the most extraordinary
opportunities are hidden among the seemingly insignificant events of life. If we do not pay attention to these events,”
he said, then “we can easily miss the opportunities.”
In today’s gospel
reading we hear what is known as “The Call to Matthew.” Matthew is sitting at his booth doing his
work when Jesus appears and says, “Follow me.”
You know how the DAIN in me would have responded. Of course, Jesus is not proposing something
as banal as “Wanna take a coffee break?”
His invitation, if excepted, will be life changing.
I’d like to think this
story starts off a little more innocently than this. I’d like to think it is written well after
the fact Matthew has embraced discipleship and, in retelling the story, makes this
moment more dramatic than it is. If I
walked into a bank for the first time, went up to an attractive teller, and
said, “Come with me. Let’s get married”,
most likely she would call the security guard.
We know from human nature Matthew’s experience must be more of a
transition than an instantaneous transformation. Most likely the “call” we read about today
falls somewhere in the midst of transition, somewhere between meeting Jesus for
the first time and becoming a revered Apostle, after the opening scene and well
before the final act.
No matter what transpired on that day Matthew was collecting the taxes, the thing which captures my attentions is he said “Yes” when Jesus invited him to follow. I can’t prove it, but I’d like to think Matthew was a DAIN like me. Every fiber in his being must have been screaming, “We don’t want to be bothered!” If he was not a DAIN, then those same fibers were yelling, “This is not at all a good idea” and “Look before you leap” and “What he is suggesting is really scary.” “No!” would be a perfectly understandable answer, be it out of default or well-reasoned analysis.
But he didn’t say
“No.” He said “Yes” and we might want to
ponder what would have happened if he had said “No.” What would Matthew have missed out on if he
had responded differently? Well, for
sure, he would have missed out on an opportunity to embrace Jesus and
experience him more deeply in his everyday life. That would have been a part of the cost of
saying “No.”
The legendary
actor and comedian Dick Van Dyke said this in an interview: “Anyone who doesn’t
sing and dance at every opportunity is missing out on the joy of life.” He might say to me, “Every time you go into
your DAIN mode you are missing out on something.” Matthew might say to me, “You know, when your
friends went out to lunch, Jesus sat at the table with then, so when you said
“No” you lost out on the privilege and pleasure of being with him.”
So please, down
the road, long after I am gone but before I am forgotten, when someone speaks
of me or askes what I was like, whatever you tell them – the good, the bad, the
ugly, and the embellished – please remember to tell them, “Whenever we invited
him to join us for lunch he said ‘No.’”
