Jesus Calls a Sinner
St. Matthew 9:9-13
St. Matthew had quite a reputation to live down!
The ’publicans’, or ’tax collectors’, of the Roman Empire were so crooked that the animosity toward the IRS today is partly because of them. Why should we be mad at the taxmen when it is Congress that levies the taxes and makes the complications in the laws that make the forms so unwieldy! Still, these poor public servants often have to take abuse, as they say, "of Biblical proportions."
The problem with publicans in the Bible is that they could alter the tax bills to line their own pockets. It wasn’t like today, where you fill out the form, look at the tax table, and know how much you owe; no, it was more like a non-recorded ’property assessment’ type of tax: the collector was the assessor and the clerk, and what he told you and what he told Rome didn’t have to be the same thing at all. Remember Zacchaeus, who certainly had a dramatic turn around when he saw that Jesus had come to give life even to such a despised man as himself. "If I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay it back four-fold!" he said, rejoicing that his treasure and his life no longer consisted in the abundance of his possessions.
Can we say the same of St. Matthew?
We don’t know. Certainly he, too, had a dramatically different life as an Apostle and Evangelist, from what receiving taxes was like, and it was certainly an unusual thing to have happen, to have been regarded as ’suitable material’ by a great rabbi (much less the Messiah!)...but was Matthew also a ’thieving publican’?
That, we can’t say. Perhaps he was the shining example of a righteous one, one who didn’t cheat...or, perhaps he made Zacchaeus look like a saint by comparison even before Zacchaeus believed and repented! The Bible doesn’t tell us. But we do know that his office alone carried such a stigma that he would have been a very unlikely candidate for the Office of the Holy Ministry, and that the enemies of Jesus would have used Matthew’s background and the evil practices of his co-workers--if not his own--against him and against Jesus. Yet, Jesus does not hesitate to call Matthew Levi, nor does he hesitate to follow Jesus when He calls.
It is interesting, against this background, to remember that it is in St. Matthew’s Gospel alone that we have our Savior’s prescription for dealing with both private and public offense. If some offense were given openly, that would call for an open rebuke and correction, as we see in Matthew 18:23-40, the parable of the unforgiving servant, and as we see Jesus doing when the Pharisees tried to condemn His followers. In this way, others are warned not to fall into an error similar to the one they’ve witnessed.
In Matthew 18:15-18, though, Jesus tells us that if there is something that someone has done against us that was not done in public, then we are to go to that person privately and seek to be reconciled--bearing in mind our Lord’s admonition in Matthew 5:39: "whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."
If any thought that, perhaps, Matthew had cheated them, would not this be the better course? To seek to receive privately whatever he had taken privately--or else, to simply suffer what they had lost--that the Lord and His work not suffer from their self interest? If Matthew proved to be unrepentant, he could certainly be brought before the leaders of the Church--even before Jesus the Messiah Himself.
This eighteenth chapter of St. Matthew is an amazing parallel to what Jesus does for us ’over all’, and what is bequeathed to Matthew by Jesus’ call in today’s Gospel. In Matthew 18, Jesus seeks to preserve our reputation--to do as the Eighth Commandment demands and show us how to "fear and love God so that we do not tell lies about our neighbor, betray him, slander him, or hurt his reputation, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain everything in the kindest way."
What else, really, is Jesus doing in all that He does for us? His whole work of living in perfect accord with God’s Law in your place and of dying as the atoning sacrifice for your sin, what does that do, but give you a ’good reputation’ before God and before Man? He gives you His own reputation, causes God to look at you as though you were good enough to go to Heaven, and to thus "speak well of you," even though you have deserved only death and Hell! He has ended Satan’s ability to accuse you, and defends you each day, holding up His perfect life as if it were lived by you, so that the Father is pleased to give you the Kingdom and call you His child and heir!
The call of Jesus frees us from our offenses, you see! It freed St. Matthew from any and all sins he had committed, and from the stigma of what he was. Jesus once said to His disciples, "He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean," (John 13:10) and, again, "Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you" (John 15:3). You have been freed through the washing of this font, made "clean every whit," so that the stigma of being born merely human, being born the fallen child of fallen Adam, that stigma is taken from you, and no one can bind you again into the accursed end that this ’background’ of yours brought with it.
While Jesus certainly speaks to us of our sin, to the Father, He presents us as being completely righteous!
God the Son took on human flesh, was made our Brother. As a loving Elder Brother who bears our burdens, He suffered everything we threw at Him without a murmur...our every act of rebellion and disrespect, the sins and rejection of all Mankind, all borne without complaint. He so bore with your sins against Him that He even took the blame for them upon Himself, suffered Divine Justice and Righteous Wrath as if He deserved it instead of you, and holds up His righteousness before the Father claiming that it belongs to you! And, truly, He gives that righteousness to you, as well, holding it up before your eyes and placing it onto your lips in the Holy Supper, giving you grace by making the very body and blood once sacrificed for you into your life-giving Food.
Jesus calls Matthew from sitting at the tax collection seat and goes where there are more publicans and others who were considered ’more vile’ sinners by the ’normal’ sinners of the church. When the Pharisees complain, He demonstrates what the church is to be: not a social club for those who think they are in good shape, but a hospital for those who are unable to take care of their own needs: "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Matt. 9:12-13).
It has been interesting this week, watching several other pastors get ready for this Festival of St. Matthew and noting that there is a lot of emphasis being placed on just how bad Matthew was...while the fact is, we don’t know...we don’t know whether he was the example of a Godly civil servant or of the lowest scoundrel. If the scoundrel, so much more the glory of Jesus who called him and washed him! Yet, if Matthew was not a cheat and thief, this is fitting, too, as it shows us what Jesus has done for us as well as what we are to do for one another: Jesus has taken away our shame, covered our guilt with His blood, and made us children of the Heavenly Father by taking all our sins away. Matthew--who remembers to make reference to his unworthy background whenever he lists the Apostles--stands as an example to us of one who saw that being in a position to ’gain it all’ really was no gain at all, but humbly confesses that God had given all to him by grace...and, thus he shows you, along with Zacchaeus, Saul of Tarsus, King David, St. Peter, and so many other ’notable sinners’, that there is no way that you have not been been included in His mercy.
"’Jesus sinners doth receive’--
Oh, may all this saying ponder
Who in sin’s delusions live
And from God and Heaven wander.
Here is hope for all who grieve:
Jesus sinners doth receive!"
Rejoice, then, you Baptized: Christ has taken away all your reproach, has given you a ’good name’ before God--His own name, with which you have been renamed, as His righteousness now covers your sin! Amen.
+ IN NOMINE JESU +
First Lutheran, Harrison, Arkansas, Festival of St. Matthew, 21 September 2003
