READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Ezekiel 1:10-14
Ephesians 4:7-16
- St. Matthew 9:9-13
Grace to you all and peace from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ. (Phile 1:3)
Who, once again speaks to you today, saying:
“Those who are
well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”
In the first place, you shall have no other gods (Ex
20:3).
What does this mean? You should fear, love, and trust in God
above all things.
In the second place, in this house, St. Matthew is a hero
and not just because he followed Jesus. He is a hero, because the true Hero,
Jesus, called out to him and made him one. And at the Word the heavens were
made and all the host of them and St. Matthew was called out from the receipt
of custom.
In the third place, those who are well have no need for a
physician, but those who are sick, and St. Matthew is sick. Although he
presents himself as being pretty healthy, wealthy, and wise, we know he is
sick, because the Word of God has come for him and calls to him. Jesus would
not, otherwise.
Tax Collectors. Do you know why we have ridges on the rims
of our coins? Tax collectors would shave off the edges of the gold and silver
coins to make new ones, all the while making the old ones worth less. The
official name for that practice is inflation.
Tax Collectors.
When we ask chatGPT about the ancient practices of tax
collectors during St. Matthew’s time, it tells us that Publicans actually bid
against each other for the right to collect taxes and paid a fee to Rome to do
so. They were not paid by the Empire, so their paycheck came from whatever
amount above the regular tax they could get from the people.
The collectors had the backing of the military and so were
able to threaten, coerce, and assess the value of private property, income, and
traded goods on the spot. If one could not afford the taxes, you could take out
a high-interest loan to cover it, trapping families in debt, which is why usury
is a sin against God. Yes, we’re still talking about ancient practices…
Thus, one reason they were seen as traitors is because their
wealth went back to Rome, not to their own community. They were considered most
unclean for Temple, because they ate and drank with the goyim, and were usually
shunned in society, grouped with sinners, as the Pharisees comment in today’s
Gospel reading.
Truly, there is nothing new under the sun and we have not
changed our ways.
And this was St. Matthew’s whole world and he thought it was
wonderful. He probably grew up in Jerusalem and it became small and po-dunk, to
him, as he learned of the Empire and the wider world. He began to see his
future as he strived for higher education and a chance at tax collecting.
Bigger and bigger his dreams got.
Worldly friends, worldly work, and worldly play. Hey Levi,
let’s go party! Yeah! Hey Levi, let’s go drinking! Yeah! Hey Levi, let’s go
count de money! Yeah! Week after week. Month after month. Year after year.
Party again? Drink again? Money again? Didn’t we do that last week, guys?
Suddenly his world wasn’t so big anymore. Suddenly, he took
a look at his life and found that, instead of being a man of culture, he had
become a man of ill-repute and there was only so much he could say to make
himself believe that it was everyone else’s fault, instead of his own.
Then one day, someone mentioned a saying going around
recently. It went, “he who sins is a slave to sin”. And Levi paused and
thought, that couldn’t mean me, could it? And as he continued his life,
spinning faster and faster down the proverbial drain, another saying was thrown
in his face as he was trying to focus on business:
“Follow me”.
This time, his whole world stopped spinning. He stopped
spinning a thousand miles per hour. He stopped dreading the next extrovert,
social interaction. He stopped counting other people’s money. This happened,
not because he heard a still small voice, but because he heard a Word with
authority. Unlike the scribes, unlike the Pharisees, and unlike his
rabbi.
Follow me.
Levi had no reason to obey. He had it made. He was well off.
Maybe had a kid or two on the side. And because his grandmother nagged him, he
went to sabbath every once in a while, and gave a tithe…sometimes. There was no
benefit, no advantage, no promise of return on Levi “following”.
Yet in those words there was a fire he could not deny. There
was a declaration that “what you have is not your own”. There was a
condemnation there that “You shall not charge interest on loans to your
brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent
for interest.” (Deut 23:19). And there was a promise there: “I have not
forgotten you”.
At that Word, the heavens and the earth come into being, and
at that same Word, Faith comes into the being of Levi, now known in the Lamb’s
Book of Life as St. Matthew. Sure, at first, St. Matthew is not forgotten. All
of his sins now are confronting him and bearing their demonic fangs. But St.
Matthew is also not forgotten within the Lord’s Atonement for all his sins.
We are not St. Matthew and we do not sit at the receipt of
custom and we do not have Jesus walking past and saying, “Follow me”.
However, we do have that same Word. And it is found in the catechetical
question: Who is your god?
Though we underestimate the Word; though we doubt it; though
we question its relevance in our day to day lives, He has been given to us. And
He does the same work on us as He does to St. Matthew. In our sin, we believe
that throwing a bible verse into normal conversation is awkward, embarrassing,
and irrelevant. Though that’s the trick: it should be.
But that is coming from you who are saturated in it. You
have been already brought into the widened world of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
For those not there yet, the Word is a shock to the system. Again, as it should
be.
For example, imagine this awkwardness with me as you sit
down with an acquaintance and ask him, “So, which god do you serve?” He has
more than likely thought of this before, on his own. And this will link to many
topics, among which are “how do you make hard decisions” and “why do you have
the values you do” and what gives your life purpose”.
Asking, “what is God’s first commandment and what does it
mean”, stops the world from spinning. And either the person will know it or
should know it or will reject it completely. Either way, you find their true
god. You find what they truly fear, love, and trust above all things and it is
usually the self.
That is our lesson from St. Matthew today. In our sin we
believe we can create the life we want and God will be pleased no matter what.
And He’s not. We know He’s not, because He has come to give His own life, which
is not ours to begin with. He has come to remake us into what pleases Him and
that is only found in His Word, His Son Jesus Christ.
So, so what? So what if the world thinks Scripture is
awkward? So what if you challenge others to really confess their values? So
what if you both leave a little more purposeful and contemplative? Is it best
to leave the blind men in the pit or pull them out?
This is St. Matthew’s position at the time of the Gospel
reading. He hears Jesus’s words and he could care less what the soldiers think.
He hears Jesus and he could care less what his friends and colleagues think. He
hears Jesus and he could care less what the Pharisees think, because the Word
has come to take away sins and St. Matthew has plenty of those.
And the strength of that Word moves the Holy Spirit, Who was
given to St. Matthew, to forsake all and follow Jesus. The Root that gives the
fruit for free. St. Matthew followed Jesus to rebelling against the world. He
followed Jesus through His suffering and death, to the empty tomb and His
Church.
It’s not enough that Mathew change his ways. He must now
live within the Body he has been baptized into. But he cannot get there on his
own. He must be brought there, through the Word. Then he must be brought back,
through Baptism. Then he must be brought back, through the Sacrament of the
Altar.
Because that is where Jesus is leading him to. To follow
Jesus is to find His Word and sacrament and pitch your tent there, until He
returns. To follow means the fulfillment of “You shall have no other gods”. And
that fulfillment means to live and have your being where that God has chosen to
dwell. “You shall have no other gods”, and the One, True, Triune God is
preaching the forgiveness of sins and communing with His people.
Amen.
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