Not then just the abject rotters...
Ordinary Sunday 10: 5th June, 2005
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, 'Follow me.' And he got up and followed him. (Mtt 9:9)
This Sunday our theme is the idea of call to discipleship, of vocation to be a follower of Jesus and to seek to live out the implications of that in love and service however that may be appropriate. We are considering again the awareness, sudden or gradual or perhaps even very fleeting, that surely each one of us has had, that God actually has a real place in our lives. We see things differently because of this. Despite all its manifold failings, we find ourselves as part of a church community because of this. We are called to live differently because of this. From time to time, this awareness of call is renewed or sharpened or refocussed. It of course requires a context. It may remain unacknowledged or unwelcome. It will require discernment and grace and support. But call and response are going to be something that is not unfamiliar to us, even if we are left with that time-honoured question, why me? Or indeed, why not me? The call of Matthew the apostle is a reminder that this call can and does come to a very wide range of people – and certainly not just to the predictable types.
Actually the New Testament is full of reminders that the really predictable types who are more immediately going to be able to respond to God in Jesus are the ones who have an awareness of their own emptiness, their own deep need, or shortcomings and limitations. So more often than not, it is going to be a foreigner or a person of low social status rather than those who feel comfortable in their goodness, who are going to be those who most readily respond to Jesus and his call to follow him. So we hear that Samaritans and women of the street and criminals and all sorts of others with big hearts are going to surprisingly find themselves in that kingdom of heaven which is such a recurring theme of Matthew's gospel, well ahead of the ones who have been occupying the best seats at religious ceremonies. This has surely always been very discomforting.
So today in our gospel, there is an immediate protest from the Pharisees about the Lord even considering sitting down at table to eat with 'tax collectors and sinners', let alone doing so. We remember that sharing a meal was considered an intimate act, an act of fellowship. Many of the Old Testament purity laws revolved around that; some continuing religious practices today in some parts of the church still reflect that. So when the Lord calls Matthew and them goes at once to have dinner at his home with Matthew's friends and colleagues, very many presuppositions are being affronted and, by the way, at the same time another whole group of people are being made very thankful and grateful indeed. In this unfolding of God's grace therefore not everyone is going to be equally content.
When we remember then that the Matthew of stained glass windows and for instance the most worthy patron saint of my previous parish in Albury was a tax collector we still have to do some stretching of our imagination to realise just what that involved in that first century society. His tax booth was not what we might find on an old-fashioned toll road – just a few coins. He was not the equivalent of some contemporary mild mannered soul working for the tax office, or even a mean-spirited petty bureaucrat pursuing some poor victim in a sudden tax audit. We are dealing here with a much-hated collaborator with the Roman occupiers, and one who in addition by definition would have been seen as being totally corrupt and amassing great personal wealth at the expense of his own people, as well as filling the treasure chests of the Romans. In short, the office and the person occupying it would have been despised. What an amazing choice therefore by the Lord for one of the twelve, even with all those fishermen and the odd revolutionary. Not on the face of it calculated to win support – and certainly not from the respectable. But then also, what an amazing statement about Matthew's choice and his hope for the turning around of a life. And of course, what a statement about what is possible with God.
The gospel narrative reminds us that whatever mess we may find ourselves in, however deeply entrenched and unhappy or unsatisfying or unfulfilling those patterns of living may be, it is possible to be called from that state to something else. And it is interesting as well that the story of the call of Matthew is placed within a chapter of that gospel which is constantly dealing with healing. We have the healing of the paralysed man, the healing of the daughter of the leader of the synagogue, the healing of the woman with the constant bleeding for twelve years, the healing of the blind, the mentally ill – 'every disease and every sickness'. All this is the context for the healing of the way of life of Matthew the tax collector, despite the direct opposition of those who saw that their customs and their attitudes could not accommodate such a step. Jesus instead speaks of old wine in old wineskins and new wine in new wineskins, and 'both being preserved'. There is a message here, for those who would hear it.
Of course the life stories of the saints are full of this. Having just come back from pilgrimage to Assisi I am naturally reminded of the call and the choice made by Francis and Clare in the early 13th century. Francis could very easily have been a rather more easy-going version of his rich cloth merchant father, full of song and enjoying good times with his many friends and setting up the family firm for generations. Clare would have made a fine consort of a high-ranking nobleman worthy of her social status, intellectual gifts and strength of character. Wealth and comfort would have easily remained theirs. But we would never have heard of them and nothing they did would have had repercussions down 700 years. So the example of Francis and Clare – both substantial, respected and well-known members of their community – is a very good reminder therefore it is not just abject rotters who get another chance with God in this call business. We are dealing with the broadest and most general of invitations and a very wide range of possible avenues for response, according to circumstance. It always remains first, a call to relationship with the one who is being followed: relationship with God in Jesus Christ. In the call of Matthew that fact of relationship was at once signified by the table fellowship, the sitting down together at a meal.
There is much hope for each and all of us in this gospel. There is hope and direction here for a Christian community that is more open and outreaching and generous. The open-heartedness to which we are called is both to God and to neighbour; it is in welcoming old friends and the new and the different and it is in welcoming the call of God to grow and to dig deeper into the things of the spirit. It is a reminder of the experience of the generations and the centuries that such things are possible. It is also an encouragement in hard times when it would be so easy to become dis-spirited to keep our eyes on matters of the most basic importance and to tread more lightly with those things that we cannot change or greatly influence.
In the church, and specifically in our own Anglican Church, the call of love and service that each of us has sealed in our baptism is just such a fundamental matter. New life, new heart and a reassurance of ultimate things – that is what I am talking about. That is what is needed when things are very hard. I have in mind for instance what we in this community have experienced this very week in our sad but utterly sustaining requiem for our dear brother James Walters. Even then therefore, especially then therefore, in the face and fact of death, the call to discipleship stands. Even in the context of loss and grief there is still the deepest thanks to the God who loves and upholds. Even too within the crumbling ruins of formerly strong and self-confident institutions, God still calls together all sorts of surprising ones to be the people of God in this time and these places. We are still being called to be people with a yet-sustaining hope, with so much to share and so much to enjoy.
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, 'Follow me.' And he got up and followed him. (Mtt 9:9)
The Lord be with you.
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