Stopping a Moral Panic

060726 SermonDownload Biblical Text: Matthew 9:9-13 We live in a world that attempts to start moral cascades or moral panics all the time. The sermon hopefully demonstrates that and how they have sped up with social media. What the text does is both expose that this mechanism of the world has always been with us. And then it shows us what stops them. Or maybe if not stops them, it shows us how the gospel addresses them. Jesus turns their logic inside out. First, because the logic of a moral panic is the logic of contagion. We think we can stay righteous by excluding “sinners.” The gospel is only for sinners. Jesus came not for the righteous, but for sinners. Which we all are. The second way that Jesus and the gospel flips the world’s logic is that it is not the contagion that spread, but the healing. Christ eats with tax collectors and sinners. In Christ we have nothing to fear from the world. We are called like Matthew to follow Christ which is a dramatic change. But the gospel sends us out to offer the balm – the blood of Christ.