June 18, 2023

Matthew 9:9-13 sermon


There is income tax, social security tax, Medicare tax that show up on your W2.  But that’s not all there is.  There’s sales tax, real estate tax, personal property tax, capital gains tax, excise tax, inheritance taxes, federal taxes, state taxes, local taxes.  All of that adds up to a whole lot of money.  It’s also a lot to keep track of. At the federal level alone, the IRS has some 80,000 full time employees.  And then there are all the people who work in the private sector just to help businesses and individuals navigate the complexity of the tax code. And I’ll bet that’s a whole lot more than 80,000.

Does this topic stir up any emotion in you?  If it does, I’m guessing it’s not appreciation or excitement.  If anything, its probably more like frustration or resentment.  -Especially if you aren’t a fan of how the government always manages those dollars.  But count your blessings.  At least we get a voice in electing the representatives who tax us.  In first century Palestine in Jesus day, the people didn’t have a voice like that.  Back then it would be more like if Communist China took over North America and then set up a puppet government of their choosing and then made us pay for it.  In other words, they take our money in order to fund their ability to keep us under their thumb.  That was the political situation between Rome and Palestine in Jesus’ day.  And the Romans needed someone to administer all of this.  Well, who better to do it than some of the Israelite’s own people?  If you put a Jewish face on the taxation, it might not be so stark of a reminder that their dollars were going to fund their oppressors.  So what do think Jesus’ disciples thought about the tax collector Matthew?  A Traitor? A money-grubber?

There is a lot that we don’t know about taxation in the ancient world, but the bible tells this much, -that Matthew’s tax collecting booth was located in the town of Capernaum along the shores of the sea of Galilee.  So it stands to reason that his tax collecting had to do with services and goods that were transported and exchanged along the Sea of Galilee.  Maybe he collects a fee every time a fisherman takes his boat out.  Or maybe he counted the fish every time they came in off the lake and took a monetary cut equivalent to the price of the fish.  Whether or not Matthew was one of those who took a little bit extra to line his pockets at his countrymen’s expense, Scripture doesn’t say, but it would have been unsurprising.  Tax collectors were known not only as traitors, but it was apparently common for them to cheat their countrymen.  

And think about this:  where Matthew set up shop was the same town that served as the home base for Jesus and his disciples.  And on the shores of the lake that provided the income for at least a third of Jesus’ disciples who were fisherman, they weren’t strangers to Matthew.  So what do you think they thought of him?  Maybe, “this is the guy who is working hand in hand with our oppressors, -and he’s profiting off our oppression!”  

So how about looking at it from the flip side.  What do you think Matthew thought of Jesus and his disciples?  Or what do you think Matthew expected when he saw Jesus and his disciples walking toward his tax collector booth?  Maybe, “here’s another religious leader coming to chew me out for everything that I’m doing wrong.”  But whatever Matthew expected, Jesus didn’t come up to him to berate him. Jesus came to him to change him.  “Follow me,” Jesus said.  And this isn’t “follow” in the sense of walking behind someone.  This is “follow” in the sense of leaving your life behind and learning from someone else what real life really is.  

So this encounter gives us a stunning picture of the kind of savior Jesus is.  When Jesus casts his eyes out on the world, he doesn’t filter out the no-goods and undeserving and just set his eyes on the people who already at least mostly have their act together.  If that were what Jesus did, that would be like a doctor who only does wellness checkups.  Jesus isn’t like that kind of doctor.  Jesus is like the trauma surgeon.  The one that goes after the worst patients, who other doctors have given up on and moved on from.  After all, what did Jesus say?  “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick.”  So Jesus went to the tax collector’s booth.  And there was more than one tax collector at Matthew’s house so Jesus probably went to more than one booth.  And he went to the other moral outcasts, people who everyone else figured were too lost to be found.   

And so I’ll ask you just to think for a moment.  Where do you think Jesus would go today to seek the sick?  You know that there are as many right answers as there are people in the world.  And it’s a useful exercise to look at people through Jesus’ eyes.  But I wonder if any of you thought about yourselves.  What’s your personal self-assessment spiritually speaking?  Healthy or sick?

Now imagine looking out your front window and you see Jesus walking up your driveway.  Just like Matthew saw him walking up to his tax collector booth.  Do you suppose that “here he comes to tell me everything that I’m doing wrong,” or “I better get my act together before he gets to the front door.”  Jesus doesn’t come to you for a wellness check up.  It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  And its not like the sicker you are the less interested Jesus is in you.  No, the sicker you are, the more you need him.  

And Jesus’ call to Matthew is the same as his call to you:  “Follow me.”  Not just in the sense of walking behind, but “follow me, and discover anew what real life really is, and that in me you really have it.”  And even if every other person in the world were to react to Jesus’ calling you the same way that the Pharisees reacted to Jesus calling Matthew, (something along the lines of “why in the world would Jesus want someone like that?) that wouldn’t change Jesus’ mind.  His call still goes out to you: “follow me.  Follow me and discover what real life is like and that in me, you really have it.”  And when you follow him, you know where he takes you don’t you?  The same place where he took Matthew: to his cross.  That’s where he shows you your life in his death.  That your identity and your value to God and your hope in life and in death doesn’t come from how well you are able to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.  That would be like a trauma surgeon taking a gun-shot victim and wheeling him into the operating room and then just standing there doing nothing because he thinks that the patient should be able to take care of himself.  That’s not what surgeons do. They do surgery.  They save.  That’s what Jesus does.  He took the record of your sin, -the record of everything that separates you from God and from life, -he took it all and put it on his own shoulders and put it into his own body and put his own name on it.  And as surely as that killed him, its all gone.  -Everything that separates you from God and from life is gone.  That means God will never leave you.  That means that you have a life that nothing can take away.  That means you have purpose.  Not mere existence, whiling away the time while you wait for Jesus to come again.  That would be like a gunshot victim recovering from his surgery and then just staying in his hospital bed.  

Look at what it was for Matthew.  For Mathew this new life resulted in this huge transformation that everyone could see.  He walked away from his tax collector booth and became one of Jesus 12 apostles.  God used him to write the first book of the New Testament.  These words about Matthew were written by Matthew.  He was telling us what God had done for him.

God has a purpose for you too.  It may not be as high-profile as apostleship.  People might not be still talking about you 2,000 years from now.  But lower profile does not mean lower value in the eyes of your God who died for you.  If you are at home alone and you pray for someone who needs it, no one else may ever know about that besides you and God.  But that prayer is heard and answered by the God who can move mountains.  If you use your phone as a phone and call up someone who needs it, it probably won’t make the evening news: “Christian person calls another and says something nice.”  But still that person will hear the love of God in the sound of your voice.  

Let’s wrap up with this:  the calling Matthew is recorded in three of the four gospels.  And each one of those records the event in its own words.  They aren’t photocopies of each other.  But there is something at the beginning of each of them that is striking.  They all tell us that Jesus saw Matthew.  The story doesn’t being with Mathew looking up and seeing Jesus.  Jesus saw Matthew.  And when Jesus walked up to that tax collector’s booth, he knew what he was getting himself into.  He didn’t have any illusions about Matthew’s character.  But that didn’t stop Jesus.  It didn’t keep Jesus away from him.  In fact, it’s the reason Jesus went to him.  Because Matthew was sick.  And Jesus was a doctor.  And let’s put aside the metaphor.  Matthew was a sinner.  And Jesus was his savior. Jesus went to Matthew because Matthew needed him.  Desperately.

If you ever feel that you are too messed up ever to be made right again, then remember how the account starts every time it is recorded.  Jesus saw Matthew.  There wasn’t anything about Matthew that Jesus didn’t know.  And there’s nothing about you that Jesus doesn’t know either.  He knows what he’s getting himself into.  That’s why he calls you.  That’s why he made sure that you were baptized.  Because you were sick and needed a doctor. A sinner that Jesus saves.  Let these words my soul relieve, Jesus sinners does receive.