Introduction
After months of moving through Lent, Easter, and the major festivals of the church year, it is easy to forget exactly where we are in Matthew’s Gospel. The lectionary now returns us to Ordinary Time and, with it, returns us to the narrative flow of Matthew. Yet we do not ease our way back into the story. Instead, we are dropped directly into the middle of a section that is already in motion.
Our reading begins with the call of Matthew and concludes with the healing of a woman suffering from hemorrhages and the raising of a leader’s daughter. On the surface, these may appear to be unrelated stories stitched together by the lectionary. In Matthew’s Gospel, however, they are part of a much larger movement. Following the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew presents a rapid succession of encounters that reveal what the kingdom of heaven looks like when it moves from teaching into practice.
The Sermon on the Mount describes life in the kingdom. Chapters 8 and 9 show us that kingdom breaking into the world.
Narrative Context
One of the challenges of preaching this text is that we only hear a small portion of what Matthew is doing. Between the end of the Sermon on the Mount and the conclusion of chapter nine, Jesus encounters a remarkable variety of people. He heals a man with a skin disease, responds to the request of a Roman centurion, restores Peter’s mother-in-law, calms a storm, frees demoniacs, heals a paralytic, calls Matthew, eats with tax collectors and sinners, debates questions of fasting, heals the woman suffering from hemorrhages, raises the leader’s daughter, restores sight to the blind, and heals a man who cannot speak.
The pace is relentless. Matthew moves rapidly from one encounter to the next with little pause for reflection.
The effect is intentional. These chapters demonstrate that there is no corner of life beyond the reach of Jesus’ ministry. Social status, physical condition, ritual purity, ethnicity, occupation, reputation, and even death itself prove incapable of limiting the work of God’s kingdom. This week’s reading sits squarely in the middle of this section.
The call of Matthew immediately leads to a meal with tax collectors and sinners. When questioned by the Pharisees, Jesus responds with words that serve as a lens for everything that follows: “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” The quotation from Hosea 6:6 is not simply a defense of table fellowship. It is a declaration about the character of God’s reign. Mercy takes precedence over the boundaries that people construct around worthiness and belonging.
That theme continues. A leader approaches Jesus and asks him to come because his daughter has died. While Jesus is on the way, another person interrupts the journey. A woman who has suffered from hemorrhages for twelve years. The leader receives Jesus’ attention, but so does the woman. The leader approaches publicly, while the woman comes quietly from behind. One possesses status and influence within the community. The other appears entirely alone. Yet both receive the same thing: the attention of Jesus.
One interesting change in the NRSV Updated Edition is the removal of the phrase “leader of the synagogue,” which was grafted in from Mark’s version of the story but doesn’t exist in the Greek. Matthew’s text simply identifies him as a “leader.” While we may still imagine a religious figure, the title is broader and less specific. The contrast between the woman and the leader remains, but it is no longer primarily a contrast between religious authority and ritual impurity. Instead, Matthew presents two people from very different places within society whose lives have both reached a point of desperation.
Power, Urgency, and Deservingness
The juxtaposition of the leader and the woman creates an interesting tension for us. Both are desperate. Both need help. Yet they occupy completely different places within society.
The leader possesses status and influence. Matthew identifies him simply as an ἄρχων, a leader. The woman appears to possess neither status nor influence, though Matthew does not emphasize her financial destitution as Mark does. Whatever her economic circumstances, twelve years of hemorrhaging would have left her isolated, vulnerable, and largely invisible. One arrives with the social capital that comes with leadership. The other arrives carrying the weight of long-term suffering. Yet both find themselves standing before Jesus in desperate need. “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest (Matt 11:28).”
If we were asked to determine who should receive attention first, we would likely begin making arguments on behalf of one or the other.
Perhaps the woman should come first because she has spent twelve years suffering while others overlooked her. Her need has been ignored for far too long.
Or perhaps the leader’s daughter should come first because the situation is impossibly urgent. After all, Matthew’s version of the story begins not with illness but with death itself.
The temptation is to decide which claim is stronger.
Who deserves help most?
Who has waited longest?
Whose need is most urgent?
Who has been overlooked?
Who possesses too much privilege already?
Yet Jesus refuses to enter that way of calculation.
This is one of the subtle ways Matthew continues to illustrate the kingdom of heaven throughout chapters eight and nine. Again and again, Jesus encounters people who should not belong in the same category. A Roman centurion. A man with a skin disease. Tax collectors. Sinners. A leader. A woman suffering from hemorrhages. The blind. The mute. Each encounter raises questions about who should receive God’s attention and mercy.
Jesus consistently refuses to answer those questions on our terms.
The kingdom is not organized around deservingness. Nor is it organized around status. Nor even around urgency.
Instead, Matthew presents a Messiah whose mercy is abundant enough to encompass both the leader and the woman, both the powerful and the powerless, both the crisis that emerged today and the suffering that has lingered for years.
The challenge for us this week may be less about identifying with one character than recognizing our tendency to rank human need. Matthew repeatedly confronts readers with people who make competing claims on compassion and asks us to consider whether God’s mercy might be larger than the categories we use to distribute it.
Preaching Possibilities
Upsetting the Rankings
One possible avenue for preaching this week is to explore the ways that we rank need.
Most of our communities, organizations, and even families develop systems for determining whose concerns receive attention first. Some needs appear more urgent than others. Some people are more visible than others. Some crises demand immediate action while other forms of suffering quietly linger in the background.
In many ways, these calculations are unavoidable. Unlike Jesus, the church does not possess unlimited time, resources, or capacity. We cannot solve every problem. We cannot meet every need. We cannot heal every illness or remove every burden.
Yet this text invites us to question the assumptions that often shape our attention.
The leader’s daughter has died. The situation is urgent. The woman’s suffering has lasted twelve years. It is chronic. If we were forced to choose between them, we could construct compelling arguments for either one. The leader’s need is immediate. The woman’s need has been overlooked for far too long. But Jesus refuses to enter that debate.
The kingdom he reveals is not governed by the same hierarchy of deservingness that often governs human communities. The woman is not forgotten because someone else’s crisis appears more pressing. Neither is the leader dismissed because others have suffered longer or have less social standing.
For the church, this may not mean attempting to respond to every need equally. Rather, it means resisting the temptation to ignore certain forms of suffering simply because they have become familiar or common.
It means seeing the person who has just received a cancer diagnosis while also remembering the widow whose grief remains years after the funeral of their beloved. It means feeding the hungry while also noticing the person whose spiritual exhaustion is hidden behind a smile. It means advocating for those who are unemployed or underemployed while also listening compassionately to the business owner facing impossible decisions about layoffs and livelihoods.
The point is not that every situation is identical. They are not. Nor is the point that the church always possesses the answer, the resource, or the ability to fix what is broken. Often we do not.
Sometimes the most faithful response is not a solution but presence. Sometimes it is prayer. Sometimes it is refusing to let another person suffer alone.
Matthew’s Gospel presents a Messiah who consistently notices people whom others might overlook. The challenge for the church is not to replicate Jesus’ miraculous power, but to embody the mercy that shaped his ministry. In a world that constantly ranks people according to urgency, usefulness, influence, or visibility, the church is called to bear witness to a kingdom where no one is forgotten and no suffering is invisible to God.
Leader or outcast. Rich or poor. Healthy or sick. Urgent or overlooked. Public or hidden. Influential or invisible. The mercy of God is not a scarce resource to be rationed, but a gift poured out upon all who come seeking Christ.
Micah Krey 
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