Making Room for Grace

I wonder, how you are when it comes to making decisions? Are you someone who finds it easy, or do you often find yourself ‘umming and ahhing’ over which choice to make? Especially if you’re put on the spot for an immediate answer.

I’m a bit of a mixed bag, personally. There are some circumstances in which I can be pretty decisive, but other times I really struggle.

I do remember watching an episode of the TV show, QI, though, where decision-making was discussed. According to that programme, the best decisions actually are the split-second ones. The more we’re put on the spot, the sharper our brain is in weighing up the options available to us. Apparently, at least according to the show, the best time to make a decision is when we’re desperate for a ‘wee’!

In today’s Gospel, the future apostle Matthew has his own split-second decision to make — whether or not to follow Jesus. An invitation, and a challenge, which comes completely out of the blue as he’s sat one day doing his work as a tax collector.

He must have imagined that he was the last possible person Jesus would pick to be a disciple. Especially given tax collectors were not well respected at all, in first century Roman-occupied Palestine. They were considered the lowest of the low, given they had agreed to become tools for the oppression of their own fellow Jews by the occupying Roman power. And worse than that, or perhaps as a result, they were often selfish, corrupt and immoral.

And yet, as he walks by the tax booth, Jesus chooses Matthew. And Matthew, put on the spot, responds instantly and follows.

Hearing the call of Jesus, Matthew acts on faith. He can’t have had any idea what following Christ’s call would mean for him. Or where he might end up as a result. But he must have known the grace underlying the invitation. An invitation that no other Rabbi or teacher would make. And one he could not possibly deserve.

This grace is central to our understanding of who Christ is, and it’s what makes Christianity distinctive. Jesus consistently makes time for the kinds of people everyone else has written off. Those who are open to receiving him, because they realise deep within their need for help. Who recognise the grace being offered to them.

This is contrasted with the Pharisees in the passage, who rebuke Jesus for eating with ‘tax collectors and sinners’. Spending time with the wrong kinds of people.

These Pharisees have no time for sinners, because they are so focussed on keeping themselves free from the ‘taint’ of sin. They have taken something good — the desire to be holy — and taken it to such an extreme that it has pushed out any room for mercy. Any time for love and compassion. Any space for forgiveness.

Into this impasse, Christ makes room for grace. He makes time for tax collectors and sinners, like Matthew. ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ he tells the Pharisees questioning him, quoting the Old Testament prophet Hosea. ‘For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’

And he offers his healing power freely, to both the daughter of the reputable leader of the local Synagogue, and the woman marginalised by her chronic condition. ‘Take heart, daughter,’ he tells her, ‘your faith has made you well.’

We do not need to jump through any hoops to access the grace Christ offers. There are no qualifying conditions that we first need to satisfy, or pre-requisite checks we need to pass. All that is needed is faith. The faith to hear his call, and respond.

The same faith as the woman. The same faith as Matthew. And the same faith that Paul attributes to Abraham, who followed God’s call even when the odds were stacked against him. ‘Therefore his faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness,”’ writes Paul.

Paul’s argument is that, ultimately, when it comes to salvation, the way to life is not through the rightness of our own actions, but through our openness to receive God’s grace.

Do we believe we should gain access to heaven through our own merits? Or do we have the faith to recognise our faults, trusting in Christ’s promise of mercy and the grace which has been revealed to us at the Cross?

Because at the Cross, we see the culmination of all Christ’s earthly ministry. Just as he opened his arms to Matthew, and to other tax collectors and sinners, at the cross he opens wide his arms of mercy to all. Reaching out with a love wide enough to encompass the whole of humanity. And paying the price for sin once and for all.

The late Pope Francis’ spoke on a number of occasions about how the Church should be a ‘field hospital’. A place ‘with doors wide open to whoever knocks in search of help.’1

Sadly, in the life of the Church today, this is not always the case. People sometimes have the impression that this is a place for people who have it all together, rather than those who are in need of help.

But this could not be further from the truth. Christians are not those who have figured it all out, but sick people who realise they need a physician. Fellow pilgrims who are walking in faith, ‘hoping against hope’ in God’s promises.

Our role is to gather all, shelter all, welcome all. Sharing with the world Christ’s promise of mercy. Inviting all to respond in faith to his extravagant grace.

May God give us that grace today — strengthening us in faith, building us up in hope, and growing us in love.

Amen.

Sermon preached at Holy Trinity Pontnewydd in the Cwmbran Ministry Area on Sunday 07 June 2026.