Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

June 8, 2008

Genesis 12:1-9

Romans 4:1-13

Matthew 9:1-28

 

Tax collectors have never been popular, in any culture.  It is hard to imagine a child wanting to become a tax collector when they grow up.  In the Palestine of Jesus’ day, people who became tax collectors did so because they wanted to make a lot of money in a short time. Unfortunately, their resulting wealth came at a very heavy price.  Tax collectors were among the most detested members of society.  They were accused of collaborating with the occupying Roman forces; they were accused of making their money on the backs of the oppressed and the suffering.  Had Jesus been in the business of recruiting disciples from the professions most likely to produce dedicated, loving and compassionate people, he would not have wasted his time looking among the tax collectors.  But Jesus did not judge people by the jobs they had or the clothes they wore.  He was most certainly not in the business of “profiling”.  We hear in this same chapter of the Gospel of Matthew that he ate with publicans and people with bad reputations.  The religious authorities of Jesus’ day found it so shocking that they publicly criticized Jesus for the company he kept.  

 

Often, tax collectors set up their stalls on major roads, where they were assured of meeting traders or travelers from whom they could extort heavy payments.  Jesus meets the tax collector Matthew while he is on his way from the country of the Gaddarenes to Galilee, and it was on this road that Matthew had set up his collecting table.  We don’t know much about Matthew.  Some people think that he is the Matthew who wrote the Gospel by the same name. Others believe that the Gospel was named after him as a mark of respect, but not written by him.  We don’t get much of an idea of his character from this narrative of his calling.  We are told that he is a tax collector, and that he simply left his trade and his family (if he had one) when Jesus says to him, “Follow me”.

 

We can also see the urgency and immediacy of this imperative to follow God in the call of Abraham.  There is no preamble.  Just the voice of God, who says “Leave your homeland, and go where I tell you.”  There is a limit to how much we can prepare ourselves to respond to such a call.  By its very nature it disrupts our careful plans.  Abraham followed God’s call, and ended up travelling almost one thousand miles down into Egypt and then back again into Palestine.  There is a real irony in his story.  God had promised him a whole country, and descendants as numerous as the grains of sand on the seashore.  And yet he never lived in a house with four walls and a roof.  He was constantly pitching his tent in a new place.  His home was the call of God and the promises that God had made to him.  Once he found his home in God, he trusted that all the rest would automatically follow. 

 

The disciples must have felt the same way about Jesus.  Every single one of them had left what was most dear to them; their families, their homes, their means of making a living.  From that moment on, the only place they could call ‘home’ was the place where Jesus chose to lay his head.

 

Some of us are lucky enough to have houses or apartments where we feel that we are completely at home.  Others of us are working hard to find a place that we can call our own.    Others perhaps do not have much hope of securing such a home; you may even feel exiled and lonely in a place where nothing seems to make sense. 

 

Whatever place you find yourself in, the stories of Abraham and of the call of Matthew will bring you comfort.  God did not call Abraham because he was a much better man than his neighbors.  Jesus did not call Matthew because Matthew was a much more holy and righteous tax collector than the others.  Every one of us can hear that very same call – no matter who we are or what we have done.  Every one of us is a child of Abraham.  Sometimes we think that we can see our final destination.  At other times we may have barely enough faith to put one foot in front of the other.    At those times, it is important to remember that our security and our peace lie in God alone – where we have our heavenly home.

 

                                    The Revd. Nigel Massey