The call never ceases

Think of the worst person you can. You don’t have to know them personally: maybe you’ve seen them on the TV or TikTok; on the bus every morning filling the claustrophobic commuter space with the cloying miasma of Lynx Africa; could be someone pronouncing from the pulpit (not this one obviously) or it might be that person in your pew. The most repulsive person you can think of. Yes, it’s probably Donald Trump. But it doesn’t have to be. Could be anyone– your choice– but they need to be ‘orrid, must make your skin crawl, your flesh creep and your hackles rise. Don’t look like that— it’s not difficult; it’s much easier than thinking of someone you like. We’re humans living among humans– we always see the worst in our fellow apemen because that’s usually what’s on display, warts, calluses, buboes, snot  and all. If you’re having problems getting someone in mind– you are, I know, a saintly lot who always see the best in your brothers and sisters and never have a hard word to say about anyone, but try. For me.

Who is it, the grim ogre lurking under your bridge, the nasty little stain the just won’t shift, the bailiff banging on the door of  your happiness, the landlord sucking the joy out of life. Have you got that person in mind? The worst person in the world. Thing is, it’s not them. It’s St Matthew.

You may be wondering how on earth I can come to such a sweeping judgement about St Matthew as we know next to nothing about the guy. None of us have ever met him after all. We do know his job though– tax collector– and that is why we can confidently say that Matthew was a bona fide kids– get indoors! not today thank you, I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve– nasty piece of work

Tax collector. From the twenty-first century we think, erm, what’s wrong with tax collectors? Advanced apologies to anyone who works for the Inland Revenue for the upcoming cariacatures. What’s wrong with tax collectors? OK you might not want to spend the weekend at a tax collector’s convention; you’d probably try to avoid being cornered by an HMRC employee at a party and nobody is full of joy at giving the powers that be a chunk of their cash,  but if we want hospitals and schools and home care and roads and bridges and GP appointments and armies and navies and pensions… then taxes have to be paid. It might not be a pleasant job but somebody has to do it, and that somebody is the tax collector. 

So why am I so down on Saint Matthew? Is it something personal?

Well, no it isn’t. But the thing is Matthew wasn’t commuting into work every day from his semi in Orpington, scraping away 9 to 5 at the anonymous office block and then boring everybody at the pub describing the best route to  take to avoid traffic jams on the A419 in Swindon; rôles have changed over the past two thousand years. Back in Matthew’s day, the  days of the Roman Empire tax collecting was pretty much legalised gangsterism, and no don’t even bother saying it is now cos it ain’t. This is how ‘tax farming’ as it is known worked. The authorities declared how much tax a particular part of the empire had to give to maintain the emperor in purple, make sure the legions were paid and  keep all the other things the Romans ever did for us working. They then invited interested parties to bid for the privilege of collecting the dosh for them and then pay the amount the Empire wanted into the central coffers. Once the emperor had his tribute, the tax collector could keep any, erm, ‘commission’ they could collect. By whatever means. Not excluding  extortion, enslavement and violence. As long as the Romans got their denarii they didn’t care how the tax collector got it or how much his ‘expenses’ were. Tax collecting, you can imagine, didn’t attract the most salubrious of characters. A better class of entrepreneur than you’ll find in a typical car dealership, but only just. Tax collecting didn’t attract the nice guys.

So. Now you know why, when there’s suddenly a bad smell in the room, it’s probably St Matthew.

Apart from his unsavoury job, the Bible has almost as little to say about St Matthew as it does St Bartholomew (remember him? four, five weeks ago?) Matthew’s name appears in the list of apostles in the first three gospels but not in John’s and like Bartholomew and his alter ego Nathaniel there is some confusion as to whether Matthew calls himself Levi at weekends about which more in a moment. The first gospel as it appears in the New Testament is attributed to Matthew, though it doesn’t say so anywhere in the text, and it’s given this name because in this gospel it is Matthew who is sitting at a tax booth when Jesus calls. In Mark and Luke’s accounts the summoned taxman is Levi, and inconveniently for the Levi-is-Matthew theorists, Matthew’s name appears in these gospels’ apostles lists, not Levi’s.  No doubt the gospel writers were as bad as remembering names as the rest of us, but if someone called Matthew did write the first gospel then you’d sort of expect him to get his own name right.

So his job. His name, which is on a gospel. And then, then an episode of understated high drama in which the Scriptures excel: the calling of St Matthew. There Matthew is sitting at his tax booth, minding his own business extorting and exploiting as you do,  and then out of the blue, without a by your leave, up comes Jesus and says ‘Follow me!’. And Matthew does. Just drops everything, leaves everything and follows Jesus.  Jesus has that effect on people: Peter and Andrew, James and John, Matthew and Levi. ‘Follow me’ and off they go. He appears unbidden, calls, and suddenly the only way is forward, there is no looking back, follow me.

For the future apostle this is a seismic, life-changing event, as outrageous as it is unexpected. You can imagine when he get’s home that night. ‘How was the office dear?’. ‘I’ve left my job. And this is Jesus: I’m following him now. Set an extra place for dinner.’ But the telling of Matthew’s calling in the gospel is terse writing:  a couple of clipped sentences. 

And because the gospel says very little we might downplay the transformation that has occurred, as if it’s little more  than Matthew had nothing better to do that afternoon so he tagged along behind the preacher man. On the contrary. Si! In an instant, Matthew’s life was turned around, turned on its head, turned upside down. It’s every bit as dramatic as Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus, perhaps more so as there’s no blinding light or heavenly voices, just one man saying ‘follow me’. 

OK, sometimes people are stuck in a reprobate rut, trapped in a loop and incapable of thinking of any other way of being until it’s offered to them; maybe Matthew was ready and waiting for the call. But it might never have come. He might have lived on through the following decades, nothing changed, rich on the tears of others, dying is his comfortable bed, waiting for a way out that never came. 

But the call did come. Follow me.

Let’s shift the focus a moment from the called to the caller. Where do we find Jesus next? It isn’t spelled out but it’s Matthew’s house. And Jesus is at dinner. With a load of other undesirables- tax collectors and the ominous sounding ‘sinners’, transgressions unnamed but people bad enough to have the puritanical Pharisees apoplectic that Jesus was eating with them.

There’s an important point here. There was a time when ‘respectability’ was almost synonymous with Christianity. Churchgoing was what all decent, reputable, upright people did. Christianity was good, decorous, presentable. You put on your Sunday best; sat bolt upright, legs glued together, lips pursed;  kept children quiet in church; tutted at the single mothers and illegitimate children and  the divorced and drunk and dirt-ridden masses. Christianity was respectability.

Not at the time of Jesus though. At that point in time Jesus’ followers were the precise opposite of respectable: peasants, political extremists, adulterers, tax collectors, sex workers, slaves, women and foreigners.

Let’s go back to that dinner and the Pharisaical chorus of condemnation. What did they expect? What did they want? Had Matthew not done enough repentant grovelling? Did he need to stay a bit longer in the waiting room till he’d been properly cleansed from his sins and spiritually deloused? Was he only allowed to dinner when he’d proven himself squeaky clean?

That’s not how it happens. Jesus calls; people respond; people change. The call isn’t conditional on changing first; nor is it withdrawn if the person doesn’t change or if the person relapses or finds it beyond their wit to shake the old habits. The call isn’t withdrawn, the call continues.

Sinners repent– they turn away. But they stay sinners. Always. There is no follower of Jesus who is not a sinner.  Never has been, never will be. Ever.

And still. Jesus calls.

Some of you will be hearing that call particularly clearly right now–  you’re going to be confirmed next week.  But, the call is for all. And. Of course you’re not good enough, if being good enough is decided by some list of religious rules, a scroll of sins, the roll call of respectability. 

But you are good enough. When Jesus calls you, you are good enough to follow. Who you are, what you are, what you’ve done doesn’t matter. What matters is that Jesus calls you.

Not everything will change, not right away, not ever. But you will change. You are more than good enough. 

Jesus calls us all.  ‘Follow me.’