The Call of Matthew

Prayer

Heavenly Father, the entrance of Your Word gives light!

We ask that You will shine the light of Your Word into our hearts,

so that it may be reflected in our lives and illuminate the world around us.

Amen

Greeting

Good Morning! My name is Andrew Daw and I am Efford’s Indigenous Theologian.

Introduction

When Western commentators and preachers read the Gospels they sometimes pass by salient factors that would enable greater understanding. Today I am going to try to fill in some of the gaps.

At the time of Jesus, Israel was an occupied country. Like most occupied peoples they longed for hope and for a deliverer to release them from the cruel Roman occupying force.

Extreme situations often give birth to extreme reactions, both good and bad. These factors go at least part way to explaining some of what we find in the Gospels.

Modern Western Christians often shy away from controversy and side with the establishment or the prevailing standards of the time. But Jesus was often at the centre of controversy. I don’t believe that he set out to be controversial, but perhaps he was prepared to accept risks that others did not.

Jesus looked beyond accepted social norms, and fought for social justice. He gave honour to the lowly, and prioritised the needy.

He recognised the fact that social outcasts are often victims of circumstances beyond their control.

We live in a modern democracy with financial benefits to support us when we are in need and the NHS to help us if we are unwell. Ancient societies rarely had any of the backstops that we take for granted, and so people were a great deal more vulnerable, especially people living under Roman occupation.

As we make our way through this passage we will spend some time looking at this situation through Matthew’s eyes to see what we can learn.

The Characters in the Story

Tax Collectors (Gk. τελώνης), or Publicans (Lat. publicanus) as they as sometimes called, were complete social outcasts in Israel during the New Testament Period. They were seen as collaborators with the Roman enemy. They had purchased from the Romans the right to extract taxes from their own people. In religious terms tax-collectors were at the opposite end of the religious social scale to Rabbis like Jesus. Most people spoke of Tax-Collectors as sinners on a par with prostitutes, robbers, adulterers, and pagans. They were considered ritually unclean because 1) they collected tax for the Romans, 2) they were known to overcharge, and 3) they had regular social contact with pagan gentiles worshipping false Gods [ISBE].

The word Sinners in our reading may be just another reference to tax-collectors or perhaps a reference to other undesirables who lived outside the boundaries of religious and social decency.

Ancient Rabbis often travelled around Israel with their disciples. The disciples were in training to become Torah Teachers in their own right. But the disciples of Jesus were going to teach it in a different way than it had ever been done before. Rabbis in first century Israel might be Torah experts or Charismatic wonder-workers. Jesus had the unique distinction of being both. He travelled with his disciples just like other Rabbis of that period.

The Pharisees aspired to understand and obey all of the commands of the Word of God. But they were not content with this alone, they also sought to build a hedge around the Law to prevent any accidental trespass. They did not go to prophets or priestly intermediaries for their guidance, but directly to the written Word of God.

Jesus was a great teacher and miracle worker, who did not seek power or controversy, but managed to find both. It is wonderful thing when you can do good deeds that have popular support. But it is much more difficult when saying or doing the right thing might be unpopular, and could arouse the attention of hostile authorities. Many Christians in the world today face this challenge and so did Jesus. He did not cut loose his unpopular disciple, but called Matthew from the traitors table to the service of the Great King.

Matthew had been a tax-collector for the Romans. It cannot have been easy for him to admit this in the company of Jewish believers, especially in later life. But he included this fact in his own Gospel. Matthew’s past Roman connection may have been helpful when later followers of Jesus came to the attention of the Roman authorities.

Our passage for today is not just the story of Matthew’s call, it is the story of his transformation, rehabilitation and restoration to God’s good graces. The issue of Matthew, the man with a past, as a Rabbi’s disciple is handled with delicacy in the Gospels, but it is not avoided.

Matthew does not state outright that he was an outcast despised by the religious community, but the message of this account is clear. Matthew was a sinner saved by grace and restored to God’s service.

The Gospels do not tell us this, but I cannot help but wander if the purpose of the gathering at his house was to reveal to his past friends and associates his decision to follow Jesus. This decision would most likely put a permanent barrier between Matthew and those who had previously known him as Levi the tax-collector.

The Call of Matthew

Matthew 9:9 NIV

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

It is difficult to imagine how Matthew must have felt when Rabbi Jesus called him to be a disciple.

He may have wondered how Jesus could call someone like him. But Matthew did not hang around, he got up and followed Jesus and enthusiastically embraced his new role as the disciple of a prominent Rabbi, a disciple of Jesus.

The Gospels do not state that Matthew gave up his role as a tax-collector, but I think that this is a reasonable conclusion. It cannot have been easy for him to give up his sole means of support.

The New Testament indicates that the other apostles continued with their trades, but it is unlikely that Matthew could have done so.

The Gathering

Matthew 9:10 NIV

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples.

Matthew must have felt quite self-conscious as his fellow tax-collectors came and joined Jesus. He probably anticipated criticism from both sides. He probably wondered how his new found friends would react to a reminder that he was from an outcast occupation. He might also have wandered how other tax-collectors would handle the news that he had become a disciple of Israel’s most controversial Rabbi.

Practically everything about him pointed to his former life as a tax-collector.

The first test faced by new or rededicated Christians is that of friends and family who know all of our faults, and may share and defend them, or may point them out.

Perhaps the most important thing that any new follower of Jesus can do is to ‘nail their colours to the mast’ with some form of public declaration of their new found faith so that everybody knows where they stand.

For Matthew this meal may have been it.

The Criticism

Matthew 9:11 NIV

When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

The Pharisees tried to live lives of utmost purity in obedience to God. Their beliefs and aspirations have a much in common with that of practicing Christians down the ages.

I think that in similar circumstances, I could easily see concerned Christians having this kind of conversation. Don’t you know what kind of person it is that you are talking to? How can someone like you be friends with someone like that?

Matthew wants to share his new found desire to put away a sinful past and evangelise his friends and associates. But his past was hanging around his neck and threatening to drag him down. Matthew did not avoid the subject or pretend it never happened. He faced his past head on.

The result of all this was that there was a conflict between the Jewish desire for purity and integrity, and Matthew’s new found call to repentance and restoration from Jesus.

This is the kind of conflict that often takes place within Churches. The conflict between established members who hold on to time honoured standards, and new converts who are going to need patience, forgiveness, and thoughtful guidance.

The Response

Matthew 9:12–13 NIV

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Leadership is key in disputes of this nature. The leader often chooses one side or the other depending upon what he perceives as the greatest priority.

Jesus does not say, ‘I side with this lot because they are right and you are wrong’. What he does say is, ‘The need of these people is greater than yours, so I must devote more time to them.’

Jesus spoke to his critics in terms that they could understand and relate to. He quoted the prophet Hosea (Hosea 6:6). Sometimes we forget the importance of compassion for others. Sometimes we forget the priority of evangelism. In my view, evangelism is more of a lifestyle than a task that we need to add on to what we do already. Matthew had set up the situation for a bit of life-style evangelism.

Evangelism, or spreading the good-news to others, should be part and parcel of our daily interactions as people hear the things we say and see the way we live. Jesus was interacting socially with others who were different to him, but he did not conceal his intended task or its sacred purpose. Nor did he disown his controversial disciple.

I am not sure how I would have felt if I was Matthew when Jesus described him as sick. But Matthew had committed himself to the care of the Great Curer of souls.

The Problem with the Past

The New Testament does not hide from the harsh realities of life. When Matthew wrote his Gospel he did not conceal his previous outcast occupation. He was honest with himself and his community.

Not only does this account in the Gospel of Matthew say something about Matthew for including it, but it says something about Jesus and his followers, who accepted this reformed collaborator as both friend and brother.

Furthermore, it says something about the Early Christians that the work of such a man could be accepted as first among the Gospels.

The transformation was complete. Matthew was a changed man.

Many of the Churches greatest saints were reformed from practices that were not just wrong by normal standards, but may have placed them on the lowest rungs of behaviour within their society.

The first example of this that comes to mind is John Newton. He had been a slave ship captain but his life’s journey led him away from this to become an Anglican Minister and one of the most important anti-slavery campaigners in the history of the world. When William Wilberforce was looking for inside information to expose the horrific brutality of the Atlantic Slave Trade he received a great deal of support from John Newton, who was his family’s chaplain. John Newton was the author of one of the best known hymns in the world, Amazing Grace.

I was looking for the key lesson for us to take away from this passage, and I think that I have found it. Jesus heals sick souls. Jesus receives, forgives, and transforms outcast sinners into holy saints and gives to them a new purpose in life.

What’s in a Name

In Mark’s and Luke’s account of ‘the call of Matthew’, our writer is called Levi, to which Mark adds ‘son of Alphaeus’. One commentator conjectures that after Levi was called, Jesus gave him the name ‘Matthew’ which means ‘a gift from the LORD’ [Wiersbe BEC].

Some people saw him, and those like him, as accursed and cut off from God, but when he abandoned his past life he became known as a blessing from the LORD.

It is a wonderful thing to know that no matter who you are or what you have done, you can know and share the forgiveness of God, and play an important part in God’s plan.

Hosea 6:1 NIV

“Come, let us return to the Lord.

Psalm 32:1–2 NIV

Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord does not count against them and in whose spirit is no deceit.

AMEN