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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning comes from the gospel reading and the calling of St. Matthew as an apostle and evangelist. You may be seated.
With each successive generation, in fact, if you can look at it almost breaking it down into every ten-year increments, the lack of affiliation with religion has grown and increased. So for example, if you take everybody over the age of 65, the percent of those individuals who claim no religious affiliation whatsoever is about 10%. Not very much.
Compared to those who are under the age of 30, the number of those who are under the age of 30 who claim no religious affiliation is 33 percent. Three times. This has been happening for several decades. It’s not an all-of-a-sudden thing. It’s been happening frequently over the last decades. You can reflect upon your own life. You can reflect upon 30 years ago; most people had basic knowledge of Christian terms. Most people had an understanding of basic Bible stories. Not so much anymore. That is not the norm. It is much more the abnorm for people to have this kind of understanding or knowledge.
Now, that is to say that they’re ignorant does not mean that those folks are stupid. Ignorant means uninformed. Ignorant. I’m going to read it to you. It means we handle them in a different fashion than maybe we could have handled them in the past. It means that we take them where they’re at and talk to them where they’re at. Not where we want them to be, but where they’re at at that time. And let God do His work.
It behooves us then to know what it is we believe so that we can proclaim it clearly and simply. Amen. It is not that we can proclaim it to crush them. It is not that we can proclaim it to convince them. That’s not what our job is. Jesus did not say, “Go and convince all people by baptizing them and teaching them.” No, he just said, “Go and make disciples.” He does the work through His word.
Paul made another way of saying it. Paul said, “Speak the truth, but speak the truth in love,” so that we grow up every way into him who is the head and so that we build ourselves up in love.
Enter Jesus. Of all the places that Jesus could have hunted up and scared up an apostle, He chooses to do so in the very den of iniquity. He’s already picked up some apostles on the shores of Galilee. But He picks up Matthew, not in an order of business that’s fairly acceptable by all in society. He picks up Matthew when he is standing in a tax booth, conducting business that was very, very corrupt and crooked.
He didn’t call Matthew when Matthew was possibly in the synagogue one Sabbath day. He didn’t call Matthew in maybe once a year when he would find him in the temple for Passover. He called Matthew in Matthew’s very place of business, at his tax booth, finding him where he is, not where he wants him to be. Kind of like us, isn’t it?
Now when Jesus called him, He did not call him with the caveat that said, “Well, when you prove yourself to be worthy of Me, I will then accept you.” As if there was this time of testing or a time of checking whether or not he was going to be sincere. Jesus just says, “Follow Me.”
Now, Jesus called him from his dishonesty. Jesus called him from his place of iniquity, where he worked in the tax office. Jesus called him from his impenitence to be His disciple, to be His apostle, to be the one who would actually record the first book of the New Testament, the Holy Gospel of St. Matthew.
Consider the other apostles that Jesus picked, the other 11. Lots were fishermen—Peter, Andrew, James, and John. Some were zealots. All were Jews, but there was only one tax collector: Matthew. Wow. Here he comes into the midst of these 11, and he’s the only one who’s a tax collector. The tax collectors were viewed with the most disdain of all professions within the Jewish culture. They were basically robbers. They were extortionists. They were the ones who got money by taking advantage of those who paid their taxes. And he’s the only one. Interesting indeed.
God’s selection of Matthew. Matthew. Well, let’s put Matthew in the right light. If he is a tax collector, this guy’s gotta be really good here when it comes to money and finances, would he not? He should be able to figure percents and rates of return and all kinds of things up here or at least sketching it out. He has that knowledge. But do the other 11 appoint him to be the treasurer of the 12 apostles? Nope. They chose Judas. Go figure, huh?
Here’s Matthew, the tax collector, the only one on the other 12. He’s the only one coming from the lowest class of all Jews. So the fishermen could even say, “Well, we may not be as educated as he, but we’re sure not like him.” And yet were they not just like him?
Matthew did know Judaism well. In other words, Matthew did know the Old Testament. He quotes it more than Luke or John or Mark. He makes sure that his reader hears the Old Testament witness to Christ, who is Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews.
Now, when Jesus called Matthew from that tax collector’s booth, Matthew wasn’t alone. He was probably with other tax collectors too. And Jesus wasn’t alone when He called them. He was with His disciples. So when Jesus chooses Matthew to enter into this little circle of trust that Jesus has created with these apostles, this is very early on in Jesus’ ministry because He’s assembling His twelve.
So the people watch Jesus, the disciples watch Jesus, Matthew’s peers watch him, as all this transpires before their very eyes. And it has both effects. Some watch this take place and are encouraged, and some watch this take place and consider it irreprehensible.
Now, even though we may think that the Pharisees are the bad guys, we have to remember their role in Jewish society. Though they did miss the boat, absolutely, they were still looked upon in Jewish society as being the standard bearers of the society and of the religion. So when the Pharisees see this, everybody’s watching the Pharisees too. How will they handle this?
They come up not to Jesus to ask him, “Why are you doing this?” They backdoor Jesus and ask His disciples, who haven’t been with Jesus very long. Interesting, isn’t it? Satan backdoored Adam when he went and spoke to Eve first before he spoke to Adam. No different than the Pharisees speaking to the disciples first before they spoke to Jesus. But Jesus loves His disciples and stands in the brink for them and answers Satan, speaking through the Pharisees.
The fly in the ointment that really got underneath the skin of the Pharisees was not just that Jesus chose Matthew, the tax collector, not just that He was setting Himself apart from them, the Pharisees, but that He would go and eat and sup with sinners and tax collectors. In fact, Matthew has Him over to his house. Who’s Matthew going to invite that’s going to come but fellow tax collectors?
Jesus doesn’t just eat with tax collectors and sinners, does He? He also eats with Pharisees. And who do Pharisees invite? Fellow Pharisees. Why is there this “birds of a feather flock together” kind of mentality? Because you and I know in the scriptures, whenever someone eats a meal with someone else in this Middle Eastern culture, it was a way of affirming their unity with them.
So when Jesus ate with the tax collectors, He was affirming His unity with them. Obviously, not all believed in Him. Matthew sure did. He also affirmed His unity with the Pharisees. Not all Pharisees believed in Him either, but some did. So the Pharisees looked upon this and said, “This is crazy.” But when Jesus steps into the brink to answer the Pharisees, here’s what He says: “These people say they’re sinners and they believe it. These people say I’m the Savior and they believe it. What about you?”
Now that’s not the words in the text; I understand that. That is in essence what Jesus is saying. Why is it that people ask you, “Why do you involve yourself in the institution known as the church when the church is filled with a bunch of sinful hypocrites?” Rather than justifying why you belong to that, you and I can say the same answer as Jesus: “I’m a sinner. Here’s where my sins are dealt with.”
That’s not trying to convince, strong-arm, or anything else. It’s saying what you believe to be true about yourself. They’ll cry out, “Why are you involved with people who are so narrow-minded and so unloving?” Why? Because I need to have my mind cleansed by the One who alone can cleanse it. I’m sick and I’m dying of this sin, and the divine physician feeds me Himself in His words planted deep within my ears and in my heart, and He lays Himself on my lips in His flesh and blood.
It’s not a matter of proving anything; it’s a matter of proclaiming who you are and who Jesus is. That’s it. The real issue with the Pharisees was the same issue that you and I can have. You see, the real issue with the Pharisees was that they were impeccable in their vertical relationship with God. Who could fault them? They bore the standard of the entire culture. Where the Pharisees had their problem was that they didn’t translate their vertical relationship with God into their horizontal relationship to their neighbor.
So they looked at these tax collectors, cut them from a different bolt of cloth than they themselves were, and ostracized them. Brothers and sisters, we’re going to run into a lot of people who aren’t at the same place you are when it comes to the scriptures. That’s going to be the norm of our society in which we live. It is incumbent upon us to know why you believe what you believe, not to win the argument, not to convince them, just to proclaim who you are and who your Savior is. That is all.
But it starts in acknowledging if we’re all about our relationship with God and are very selective about our relationship with our neighbor, that’s ungodly. The Apostle John wrote this: “We love our neighbor because he first loved us.” It is a reminder to you and me to be repentant and mindful of ourselves. John’s words about our relationship with God are tied directly to our relationship with our neighbor to keep us mindful of our own selves so that we repent.
We can’t live this sterile life only with God without living a very dirty life, complicated. Confession and absolution, repentance and forgiveness, never clear, clear with our neighbor. Jesus lived such a life, upsetting some, disappointing others, affirming some, and saving others. It’s never clear-cut in loving another human being. Jesus made that very clear to Matthew, and He made that very clear to you.
One last thing. Sometimes people—not you—sometimes people in our church are embarrassed of close communion because they say, “Well, it’s offensive.” Balderdash, brothers and sisters! It is you affirming your sinfulness because you are affirming that you and everybody else in here are eating and drinking with the Savior who only eats and drinks with what kind of people? Sinners, not righteous—sinners.
If anything, it is saying to all of us and to any guest we bring, “There is this relationship into which Christ is wanting to bring us.” There’s more. And it behooves you and me to explain that to them.
Now, after Matthew was called by Christ, did Jesus celebrate the Lord’s Supper with Matthew that same day? No. He waited years before He celebrated it, and He only celebrated it with the twelve. So you and I grow in our faith and make that confession of faith just like our loved ones do. Bring them, invite them, have them come to the class, have them hear and see what God is calling us to be beyond so that we’re joined not only to Him but to one another, confessing that our relationship with one another is being defined here by Jesus, who sets the table and brings us the feast.
We commune today with St. Matthew on that other side of time and immortality, as well as with all of our loved ones, for the church is one, made up of sinners.
In the name of Jesus, Amen. For the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
