As always, please acknowledge that Pastor Chris from Jersey wrote the skit if you use or modify it. Sunday June 7th 2026 is the next time this particular reading will be coming around in the lectionary.
Three Actors (Matthew, Woman, Child)
The Call of Matthew (Matthew steps forward)
I didn’t
know it, until I met him, but I was unwell, and I needed a physician.
It was so
simple, how it happened. The famed Rabbi was rambling along with his followers,
and he turned to me and said, “Follow me.”
And I
did. But that mere act of tromping after him, walking down the street with them,
the same streets I so often marched down, to shake down my neighbors on behalf
of Rome. The looks people gave me, as we headed to dinner.
It
changed me, seeing them all from his perspective, and also being seen with him.
Both shifted something in my core. I would give back all that I took, all that
went beyond the awful task at hand—(smash fist) "indirect” tax collection.
My success was built on them and their suffering, my time of ease on the awful
extra I charged, and upcharged… my service fee was a sickness; the “one for
Rome, one for me” method of extraction I’d perfected, was wrong, full stop. The
occupation was too much, the rough blood money, was a wasting disease infecting
my fellows.
All that
I thought, even before I sat down at Jesus’ strange table, the rowdy
band of brothers, the sisters bankrolling the whole thing, nare-do-wells and
the down-and-out—I was sitting at their table. The very people I’d bankrupted…
if I was to sit at Jesus’ table, they were my people now. I needed to be
healed to live with such a reality. I needed a good doctor.
“Why do
you eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
“Because
they need to be seated with me. They need mercy, healing, health.”
There was
more talk—why do you go around feasting not fasting—“because it’s a bachelor
party, a wedding feast, a joyous celebration.” And so on... Eventually Jesus
left us to make a house call, but wow. I’d been found by the Good Physician.
The Call of the Woman (The Woman steps forward)
Unlike
him, I long knew I was unwell. I desperately needed a physician… for 12 years.
12 long and bloody, stigmatizing, years… 12 lonely, years. 12 years as practically
untouchable.
And after
12 years, I saw him heading into that house with The Tax Collector. If he was
comfortable cozying up to a collaborator… what other boundaries would he cross?
Would he allow me to cross? What if I was welcome at his table too?
When he
came back out, I knew what I needed to do, I needed to be healed by a good
doctor. I thought to myself, “Just a touch… even the fringes—his tzitzit—or
just his outer cloak, just a touch. I will be made well. I knew it, I trusted
it, to be true.”
So
carefully I weaved through the crowd, and my hands touched… brushed… the barest
grazing of his outer garment.
He turned, and I explained what I
sought, and he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.”
And I could feel it. Wholeness
knitted my insides together. I was made well, I would be welcomed back into
community. Surely, I’d been found by the Good Physician.
The Call of the Child (The Child steps forward)
How
unwell was I, sleeping the sleep of death. It seemed I needed a mortician, but
perhaps there was still time—as long as my dad acted quickly—to find a
physician, to pull me back from the grave’s grievous grasp.
So he
left me, and rushed out to find the Rabbi who would make a most excellent
doctor—but Jesus was waylaid. A woman long sick, stole my miracle, at least
that was my father’s fear. But the good doctor, he was sent to heal man. Jesus,
arrived at my house—just as the funeral band and neighbors in mourning poured
in.
From that
spooky space between death and life I heard them, offering my mother kind words
and casseroles. Flutes playing their distinctive mourning notes—all in the
minor key.
“You all
can leave. She’s not dead, just resting there.”
Broken
laughs broke out. This was no time to offer false hope, false comfort. No time
to let religious ken trump reality. But, my mother, God bless her, she shooed
them out of the house, and Jesus reached down to me, took me by the hand, and drew
me out of death’s foul grip, and I got up. I was alive! I’d been found by the
Good Physician.
All Three
(The
Child) Our stories spread, like a virtuous contagion.
(The Woman) Our testimony to the
good things Jesus did rippled out into the community.
(Matthew) Our three voices
amplified and built on one another.
(All Together)
We were unwell. We needed a
physician. We needed a good doctor to be healed. We were found by the
Good Physician.
Amen.
