Thank God for St. Matthew, the tax collector

Sermon for the Festival of St. Matthew

Ephesians 4:7-14  +  Matthew 9:9-13

Today is the day when St. Matthew is commemorated as Apostle—one of the original Twelve who were sent out by Jesus as His ministers, as His ambassadors in the world, upon whom the Christian Church would be built. As Paul writes to the saints at Ephesus, “You have been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.” Matthew is also commemorated as Evangelist, that is, a writer of one of the four Gospels, the accounts of the life of Christ. His is the first book in the New Testament and likely the first Gospel that was written, written primarily to the Jews of his day, with more Old Testament quotes than any other book of the New Testament, proving that Jesus was indeed the Christ for whom the people of Israel had been waiting since the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

This evening we heard Matthew’s own account of his calling to follow Jesus. He calls himself Matthew, while Mark and Luke call him Levi—another apostle with multiple names. He was a tax collector prior to becoming an apostle, and you know what that entails. Greed. Theft. A love of Mammon. A lack of love for their fellow Jews. Matthew, like all tax collectors, was despised by his own people, and probably rightly so. He was not a “religious” person. He was a sinner. And he knew it.

But the word he had been hearing from Jesus offered hope to sinners, a way out of their justly deserved condemnation, a way into God’s good graces. What was that way? It was Jesus. The Father had sent Jesus into the world, into the midst of sinners, not to condemn sinners, but that they might be saved through Him. He didn’t come accepting their sins or tolerating their sins. He came with mercy, to call them to repent of their sins and to put their trust in the God who had sent His only-begotten Son into the world to bear the sins of sinners, to pay for them, to make atonement for them.

And Matthew believed! So when Jesus approached him, sitting as his tax collection booth, and said to him, “Follow Me!”, Matthew didn’t hesitate. He got up and left that shady career behind and became first a disciple and then, soon afterward, an apostle of Christ. In fact, when the Evangelists list the apostles, Matthew is the only one who refers to himself as “Matthew the tax collector.” That was his testimony to the world that he had been a lost and condemned sinner, that he didn’t deserve to be counted among the saints, much less among the apostles, but that the Lord had shown him mercy.

After Jesus called him to follow, Matthew did. And then Matthew threw a great feast for Jesus. (He doesn’t mention in his Gospel that he was the host of this meal, as if to give himself some sort of credit, but the other Evangelists do.) And, naturally, Matthew invited lots of his friends, who also happened to be tax collectors and other people of ill repute. He wanted his friends to meet the One who was worthy to be followed. And Jesus ate and drank with them, and talked with them, and wasn’t afraid to be seen with them.

When the Pharisees objected, Jesus had a ready answer. Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” Let’s unpack that a little bit.

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Jesus indicates here why He had come into the world: not to praise or congratulate people on what a great job they were doing in this world, not to seek out the good people or to remind the bad people just how bad they were. He came to heal the sick, like Matthew and the other tax collectors and infamous sinners. They weren’t sick physically, but spiritually, and He had come to heal them like a doctor does, first by diagnosing their sin and showing them the results of the tests, that they were sicker than they knew. Dying, in fact. But to those who acknowledged their sin-sickness and that they needed saving, He gave the good news. “Your situation is serious, but it isn’t hopeless. Put your faith in Me, and I will heal you, first by forgiving you your sins, and then by turning you, slowly but surely, into well people, holy people who know how to say no to sin and yes to righteousness.

Then the doctor gave the Pharisees a prescription: But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ You see, the Pharisees thought they were well, thought they were healthy, and so they thought they had no need of Jesus. But He shows them their need. For all the sacrifices that they offered and the offerings they gave, of which they boasted and in which they took such pride, the Pharisees were without the main thing that God was seeking all along: they were without mercy. They looked at their fellow Israelites and didn’t care if they lived or died. In fact, if these sinners died, so much the better! How dare they! God loves those people and wants them to be saved, not condemned.

As Jesus concludes, For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance. In other words, these tax collectors aren’t righteous. They’re sinners. You’re not righteous, either, you Pharisees. You’re sinners, too. I came to call them, as I came to call you to repentance. Not to go on living in sin, not to boast in your fictional righteousness, but to repentance.

And for the penitent, there is forgiveness. For the penitent, there is a home with God. For the penitent, there is even a life of service to which God calls each one. It was Christ who called Matthew the tax collector to be an apostle after he was called away from the tax collector’s booth to leave that life of sin and to follow Christ. The same Christ calls each penitent believer to serve Him, to walk according to His commandments, and to carry out all your vocations for His honor and glory, for the love of your neighbor, and for the building up of His holy Church.

Give thanks to God today for Saint Matthew, the tax collector—for his faithful preaching in the early Church, for his beautiful Gospel that reveals Christ to us to clearly. But above all, give thanks for Saint Matthew, that he was called away from a life of sin to repentance, to faith, and to a life of thankful service to the Lord Jesus. In that way, may he serve as an example to us all! Amen.