The Feast of St. Matthew, Tuesday, September 22, 2021

Matthew 9:9-13

As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples. The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” He heard this and said, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

The Hebrew name “Matthew” means “the gift of God”.  The Apostle Matthew is called “Levi” by St. Luke, which perhaps is the name of his father, so that the Apostle’s full name was Matthew, the son of Levi.  Matthew was born and lived in Galilee and worked as a tax collector, which may have been his father’s occupation as well.  His line of work was despised by the Jews since it meant, in effect, collaborating with the Roman occupiers.  Also, the tax collectors were known for overcharging people, which resulted in additional loathing.  Matthew’s friends were limited to his colleagues for these reasons.  He lived well, as we can surmise from his occupation and from the fact that he had a large enough house and yard to accommodate “many tax collectors and sinners” as well as Jesus and the Apostles he had so far called.  It is fair to presume that he was married, as he owned his own house and was established in his work: he was clearly of age.

The story of St. Matthew’s call is simply told.  Jesus came upon him at his custom’s post and called to him, and the tax collector walked away from his job and never went back to it.  This speaks very much to the power that radiated from our Lord, that a man like Matthew would leave his career and family to join Jesus without any apparent hesitation.  Besides this, that Peter, Andrew, James, John, and the others already called by Jesus would accept Matthew and not be scandalized enough to leave.  We know that Peter was very strict in the practice of his religion, for in a vision recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, he was told to kill and eat unclean animals. To this he replied, “No, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean” (Acts 10, 14).  If not for the Lord’s hold on him, surely Peter would have at least spoken up, and likewise Matthew would not have dared to join his followers.  St. Luke adds, in his account, that Matthew “left everything and followed him” (Luke 5, 28).  

“While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples.”  The transition in Matthew’s own account is rather sharp.  Luke tells us that Matthew “made him a great feast in his house” (Luke 5, 29).  This would have taken place in the afternoon, as that was the time for the main meal of the day.  We can imagine the haste with which this was put together: animals had to be slaughtered and prepared, some food probably had to be purchased in the marketplace, invitations issued to friends and colleagues.  Matthew would have had slaves to perform much of the labor, but even if done quickly, it would have taken a little time.  Matthew would have welcomed Jesus into his house and given him the kiss of welcome and anointed his head with oil.  There may have been music as the crowd of guests settled onto their couches to eat.   

“The Pharisees saw this.”  It seems like Jesus cannot do anything or go anywhere without Pharisees turning up.  Here they are again, perhaps not many, but only a couple.  Still, they would have made up for their lack of numbers with their haughtiness and arrogance.  “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  The Pharisees were never interested in the repentance of sinners.  They only concerned themselves with preserving, as they thought, the righteous.  The Gospel writers very deliberately emphasized that Jesus and John the Baptist preached the repentance of sins to show how distinct they were from the Pharisees from the very beginning.  For the Pharisees, it was literally unthinkable that any Jew could associate with “tax collectors and sinners”.

“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.”  For the Pharisees, sinners were not “sick” so that they could be healed, but already dead and needed to be buried.  The Lord points out to them how they should look at sinners, and treat them, as physicians treating the sick who came to them for healing: with patience, kindness, and the true medicine of mercy.  The Lord probably gave the Pharisees a chance to respond to his words.  When they did not, he told them, “Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”  The Lord quotes Hosea 6, 6.  He offers this medicine to the Pharisees so that they might heal from their delusions and do the will of God.  And like a good physician, he couches the prescription with a warning.  The warning is found in the context of the quote from Hosea, in which God is speaking about his people: “I have hewn them by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings. But, as Adam, they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me. Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood. As robbers lie in wait for a man, so the priests are banded together; they murder on the way to Shechem, yea, they commit villainy” (Hosea 6, 5-9).  And then, in Hosea 7, 13:  “Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me!”

This lesson would not have been lost on Peter and the others, and we never hear of strife among the Apostles over Matthew’s inclusion among them.

Following Pentecost, Matthew preached for some years, likely in his native Galilee during the worst years of the persecution launched against the Christians there by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem.  He wrote his Gospel in either Aramaic or Hebrew at that time to encourage the believers in Jesus, many of whom had lost their own property and been beaten, and some of whose family members had been martyred.  Reduced to the direst poverty, with threats to their lives, they yearned for the return of the Lord Jesus and for his judgment.  Matthew emphasizes the Lord’s teachings about persevering during persecution as well as the Lord’s protection of the faithful, the certainty of his coming again, and the judgment to end the world.  After preaching in the Holy Land, Matthew went abroad to spread the Gospel, some say to Ethiopia and some say to Asia Minor or Greece.  According to tradition he suffered martyrdom.