Follow Me
Ordinary Sunday 10, 9 June, 2002
Fr Neville Connell
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
Last Tuesday night (4th June), a group of us from the Parish had our second film club outing. We saw "Charlotte Gray", suitable for the clergy as it had a minimum amount of unclothed activity. Miss Gray was representative of a true person, and many people who left England during the War to work with the Resistance in occupied and Vichy France. In this case Vichy France, which was more poignant, because the normal system of government, as far as was possible from Vichy, was only able to continue because of collaboration with the Germans.
The film may have been about the trials and tribulations of Charlotte Gray. some of them avoidable, but no doubt necessary for dramatic effect, etc. But the real star of the film, it seemed to me, was collaboration. One particular chilling scene had an official from Vichy, come to achieve his quota of Jews for transportation to the death camps, emphasising collaboration as a duty to France! That is, to save the nation. One can understand the sense of shame so many French people felt during and after the War; and yet, we cannot, because we in Australia never knew such a dilemma, such a turn of the screw.
Our Gospel Reading today is about a collaborator Matthew, (Levi in St Mark's Gospel) and his colleagues. "As Jesus was walking on he saw a man named Matthew sitting by the customs house, and he said to him, 'Follow me.' And he got up and followed him." (Matt 9:9) Tax-collectors such as Matthew and Zacchaeus were collaborators with the Roman occupying power, and were resented, to say the least, by their fellow Jews because of that, and because they added their own personal premium to the amount collected for the Romans. It is doubtful if Matthew and his colleagues could produce even such a slippery argument as our man from Vichy did, to justify their work.
Yet Jesus saw Matthew and said to him, 'Follow me'. Whereupon Matthew got up and followed him. It seems obvious that Matthew had done nothing to deserve his call to be one of the Apostles – he certainly does not seem to have earned it. Even so he was called, as were all the Apostles, in the same way including Judas Iscariot. And just as Jesus went to eat at Zacchaeus' house, so he ate with Matthew and a whole group of tax-collectors and sinners. This was, as we can read, very disturbing to the Pharisees as guardians of the Jewish Law and Traditions. Jesus was breaking the rules, particularly those relating to table fellowship. In so doing he was saying something to them and us about the Kingdom of God.
It reflects what has been a struggle for human beings for a long time, summed up as the tension between Law and Grace, faith and works, though they are not quite equivalent. Hosea struggled with this, within himself and in his people. His own life, particularly his marriage, became an early parable of God's love, the love we see in Jesus and his relationship with outcasts. It was love which was, is, and will be the key. Love which must motivate our actions, which must guide our application of such rules and regulations as we may have – in the Church in Society. " ..since what I want is love, not sacrifice; knowledge of God, not holocausts." (Hosea 6:6) Even our offerings to God in worship, no matter how perfectly offered, are nothing without love. So it was in Israel in our Lord's time. The Pharisees were in so many-ways exemplary in their guardianship of the Law and the Faith under an occupying power. But a rigidity had set in, and sacrifice, inevitable under such stress and fear, had come to overshadow love.
St Matthew put his trust in Jesus – simply that, and followed him. In our Second Reading, St Paul can stress the priority of faith much more, because he can appeal by then to what Jesus has done for us. "Our faith too will be considered (as justifying us) if we believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, Jesus who was put to death for our sins and-raised to life to justify us." (Romans 4:24-25) This justification, this sense of self-worth, of being loved, is quite simply and wonderfully God's free gift in response to our faith, and even before we believe.
When Jesus called Matthew he was saying that God does not demand righteousness according to Law, but gives the Kingdom to those who have no righteousness of their own. "It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick. Go and learn the meaning of the words: What I want is mercy not sacrifice. And indeed I did not come to call the virtuous. but sinners." (Matt.9:12-13). That is, those who know their need of God, and this can be – and is – anyone, you and me. As Karl Barth. the Swiss protestant theologian has put it, God is gracious before he is demanding. He gives love, and demands that we love. This is that to which we are called, just like St Matthew. So let us, like him, get up and follow Jesus and his way of generous love.
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Views is a
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St Peter's Eastern Hill, Melbourne Australia.
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