21st September, Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist

This Sunday we commemorate Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist. Our morning Gospel reading tells us the start of his journey with Jesus: Matthew is at work, minding his own business, when Jesus spots him, and says simply, “follow me”. Jesus doesn’t call upon Matthew to repent, call him out for exploiting the poor, or for collaborating with an oppressive imperialist regime: he extends an open invitation without strings. And Matthew accepts.

This prompts a howl of outrage from the upstanding religious folk. In a faith culture obsessed with purity and holiness, Jesus has put himself on the wrong side of a polarised division: not only is Jesus unclean by association, but his uncleanness threatens the religious folks’ own sense of safety with God.

To which Jesus (a bit bemused) responds that a doctor can’t make sick people well without associating with sick people. And isn’t making sick people well a good and Godly thing?

We live in a society which seems increasingly polarised around issues of purity – of ethics, of language, even of thinking. Many find identity in dissociating from other people with whom they disagree, or find distasteful. Increasingly we don’t communicate, don’t associate, don’t relate, for fear of being judged impure.

But in Matthew’s case, according to tradition, if Jesus had walked by, not extended the no-strings invitation, we wouldn’t have his Gospel: a unique and irreplaceable account of Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God. The disciple who came from arguably the least ethical beginning gives us the most important foundation for Christian ethics of all the New Testament writers. Nobody (except Jesus) saw that coming…

Every blessing,

Roger.