The Calling of Matthew
and our Post Human Future
Hosea 5:15-6:6
Psalm 50
Romans 4:13-18
Matthew 9:9-13
Tim
Christoffersen
St. Anselm’s
June 9, 2002
Good
morning. Do you think there is a connection between Dolly the cloned sheep
and designer babies, on the one hand, and the calling of Matthew, on the other
hand?
I would like to try to connect them this morning. Some of the thoughts on
the biotechnology side come from a book called Our Post Human Future: The
Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. The book is by Francis Fukuyama
and was published quite recently. The story of the calling of Matthew was
written a long time ago.
The principal scene in the calling of Matthew is a great banquet or party
with tax collectors, publicans and probably a number of other undesirables.
The natural question for many is "how could Jesus allow himself to be
seen in the company of such people!" The Pharisees asked the disciples
of Jesus the same question. "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors
and sinners?" they asked.
On the surface they had points in their favor. The tax collectors were disreputable
on two counts. They made their living by charging as much as the traffic would
bear. They paid a fixed amount for their position and then put into their
own pocket the excess of whatever they could charge. They also were Jews who
were employees of the Roman governing authorities so they were viewed as traitors
as well.
The ‘sinners’ were undoubtedly thieves, prostitutes and others who
had ‘strayed from the path of the righteous.’ To the righteous like
the Pharisees, these folks were ritually impure. They were the losers…the
lost.
When the Pharisees pose the question to the disciples, it appears that Jesus
comes out of the party and responds to them. It may be that some of the disciples
stayed outside and so were approachable by the Pharisees. The Pharisees would
certainly have not been caught dead in the banquet. Jesus says, "It
is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. Go and learn what this
means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call
the righteous, but sinners."
There are some wonderful ironies in this interchange with the Pharisees. There
is a parallel between ‘sinners’ and ‘the righteous’ and
between the ‘lost’ and the ‘found.’ At one level Jesus
is implying ‘you guys are ok, you are the righteous, the ‘found’,
you don’t need a doctor. But at another level, Jesus is saying ‘you
are lost, but you just don’t understand it. You are focused on sacrifice
and burnt offerings and not on the knowledge of God’s ways.’
There is another irony in Jesus saying to them from Hosea "I desire
mercy, not sacrifice." (The Greek word translated here as ‘mercy’
is most often translated as compassion. While it is the same word in Greek,
we have a clearer sense of what Jesus is saying when we translate it as compassion.)
The irony is that Hosea was the prophet to whom God said, "Go, take
to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the
land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord."
Hosea showed compassion in taking a prostitute as a wife and Jesus is showing
compassion in eating and partying with the tax collectors and other sinners.
I believe the core message in this wonderful story of the calling of Matthew
is that God calls us on the basis of who we can become and not on the basis
of who we are today. More often than not we are probably hurting in some way
that makes us open hearing that call. Matthew drops all including a way of
life that was probably relatively affluent to follow Jesus.
So what is the connection to Dolly the cloned sheep and designer babies? Two
of the themes Fukuyama develops in Our Post Human Future are designer
babies and unintended consequences of seemingly simple procedures.
He cites some statistics from Asia. In Korea, there are 122 boys born for
every 100 girls. In China, the ratio is 117 to 100. There are parts of northern
India where the ratio is even higher. A simple procedure allows the parents
to check the sex of the fetus and abort it if it is a girl. These are simple
procedures that do not even affect the genes of future generations but certainly
will have population level impacts that are still hard to foresee clearly.
Designer babies are still a little way into our future. But the issues of
whether and how nations regulate the process of human genetic engineering
are issues today. Is there any connection between the affluent who will in
the future be able to improve, for example, the intelligence or height of
their offspring and the ‘righteous ones’ or the Pharisees of Jesus’
day? How does compassion and knowledge of God’s ways fit into this picture?
The optimists argue that natural population increases will overwhelm the changes
in the human gene pool (and the unknown unintended consequences) brought about
by the relatively small number of affluent humans. The pessimists said right
up until Dolly, the cloned sheep showed up, that it was impossible to clone
a mammal from a regular cell of an adult.
A compromise being investigated is adding an extra chromosome to the 46 natural
ones that could only be turned on or activated by the recipient when he or
she was old enough to give informed consent. Who is in charge here? How does
the knowledge of God’s ways fit into this picture?
When we reach the point where the human gene pool is being modified, it affects
all the future generations from that point forward. Are we righteous enough
to make choices for what it means to be human for all future generations?
God created us in freedom and in his image. Does it follow that we become
co-creators of future generations of humans?
I come back to that party that Matthew threw for his friends before he went
off to follow Jesus. Jesus called Matthew for what he could become. He like
the others who followed Jesus stepped forward in faith. They were no different
than Abraham who also stepped forward in faith. They did not know where the
commitment would lead them when they made it.
Today, 2000 years later we make the same commitment in faith to an uncertain
future. And part of that future is trying to discern God’s ways and how
they intersect with the looming prospect of becoming co creators of mankind’s
future.
AMEN.
