Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. What sort of person was Matthew the tax collector? If you are a fan of the television series, The Chosen, then you probably imagine him as a socially awkward, fastidious young man with a little bit of OCD. Much of the comic relief in the series comes from Matthew’s inability to follow the social cues of the Roman soldiers with whom he works (especially Quintus), as well as the etiquette of his fellow Jews.
But who was Matthew the tax collector in the Gospels? In Mark and Luke, Matthew’s initial appearance is as a tax collector named Levi. Yet after his call to discipleship, he goes only by Matthew. Perhaps his name change signaled his heart change. Among the Israelites, the tribe of Levi was supposed to be devoted to temple service as priests and lay ministers. Matthew’s original name, Levi, doesn’t necessarily mean that he belonged to the tribe of Levi, but it’s a possibility, and we can wonder if his parents were ashamed that he became a tax man instead of a church worker.
The Jewish people did not like tax collectors. Then again, the American people don’t really like the tax man either! In all the years of meeting people and asking them what they do, no one has ever shaken my hand and told me that they work for the IRS. Maybe it’s not the kind of line of work that you want to advertise or mention in polite conversation.
But the trouble with Jewish tax collectors was much more complicated than just the difficulty of parting people from their money. Tax collectors in the 1st century Galilee and Judea were regarded as traitors to their own people. After all, they were Jews collecting Roman taxes from their fellow Jews and backed up by Roman muscle (i.e., Roman soldiers), if people refused to pay up. The way taxation worked in ancient Rome is that tax collectors would offer bids for the right to gather taxes in a certain region. The highest bidder always won, but then he had the difficulty not only of making sure that Caesar got his due, but also that they recouped their “franchise fee” as well as a living wage. Extortion was a common tactic. Tax collectors were swindlers.
You can imagine the shock that nice, polite, religious people experienced when Jesus called Matthew to be his disciple.
“Follow me!” Jesus said. And Matthew got up, left his tax booth, and followed Jesus. No questions asked. No apparent deliberation. He just got up and followed Jesus. That was that.
For centuries, preachers and theologians have debated how this could occur. Surely, they insist, Matthew must have had some prior interaction with Jesus. He at least had to know who Jesus was and what he was about in order to make such a lifechanging decision. Certainly, he had to have undergone a certain amount of deliberation.
But that’s all speculation. All we know is what the Gospel writers record, and even in his own book, the Gospel according to St. Matthew, the Evangelist makes no mention of any previous encounter with Christ.
I believe that Matthew’s call to discipleship is a miracle. We forget that faith is just as much a miracle as healing the sick or calming a storm. In many ways, faith is an even greater miracle because it changes someone’s final destination and eternal address from hell to heaven. As we heard in last week’s message on Genesis 1, God’s Word creates the reality it speaks into being. “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Gen. 1:3, ESV).[1] God says, “Let there be faith,” and there is faith.
Jesus told Matthew to follow him, and so he did. There may have been no deliberation or decision of any kind. Jesus said it, and Matthew did it. That is the miracle of God’s Word. The Bible teaches that faith (belief) comes by hearing the Gospel (Rom. 10:17). And God’s Word does not return to him empty; it accomplishes that purpose for which he sends it (Isa. 55:10-11).
I am reminded of Martin Luther’s explanation of the 3rd Article of the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him, but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith…” (Small Catechism). In John 15, Jesus tells his disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you…” (John 15:16). Jesus chose Matthew, so Matthew believed and followed Jesus.
Matthew’s response to Jesus’ mercy was incredible joy. He threw a big dinner party and invited all his friends. Well, what sorts of people do you think tax collectors hung out with? Other tax collectors. I already told you their fellows Jews regarded them as traitors. Their neighbors wanted nothing to do with them. So the people with whom they were thick as thieves were their fellow scoundrels. Like the old Garth Brooks song says, “I’ve got friends in low places…”
We can imagine the nervousness and discomfort that Jesus’ first disciples must have felt when they found themselves reclining at Matthew’s table—in the home of a tax collector! These men were fishermen—blue collar working men. Surely, they had no love for tax collectors. One of Jesus’ disciples, Simon the Zealot, may even have been a member of the Jewish revolutionary group called the Zealots. The Zealots routinely assassinated tax collectors and other Roman collaborators, including Jewish priests who were too cozy with Rome. Just imagine the conversations that he and Matthew must have had!
Yet nobody was quite as scandalized by that dinner party as the Pharisees, who were the religious conservatives of Jesus’ day. The Pharisees were devoted students of the Torah and God’s other Old Testament Scriptures. They also adhered to the strict religious traditions of their rabbis and ancestors (men like Hillel and Shimei, whose teachings are recorded in the Jewish Talmud).
When the Pharisees saw Jesus at table with Matthew and his questionable company, they asked Jesus disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Matt. 9:11). It’s a question full of judgment. The Pharisees, of course, despised tax collectors. But who were these “sinners”? Of course, the Pharisees would have to admit, as students of the Torah, that they did not keep God’s commandments perfectly—although they were often loathe to admit this. The Pharisees were sinners too. But they reserved the term “sinners” as a pejorative for people who had committed particularly gross and public sins, such as adulterers, murderers, thieves, money lenders, and other such nasty folk.
Jesus was a rabbi—a religious teacher. What in the world was he doing hanging out with the dregs of society?
Jesus gave a stunning answer: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9:12-13). Wow! Now hold on, slow down, and let’s unpack what Jesus is saying here.
By way of analogy, Jesus reminds the Pharisees, the religious crowd who supposedly have it all figured out, that healthy people don’t need doctors; sick people do. In a similar way, Jesus came not to call the righteous (supposedly spiritually healthy people), but sinners (those who are sin-sick in their souls). Of course, there’s irony in what Jesus says—an irony captured by Jesus’ quotation of Hosea 6:6 from our Old Testament reading today. “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’”
Now anybody who reads their Bible at all knows that the Lord is not being quite literal here. Of course, God desires sacrifice! In Exodus and Leviticus, God commanded all kinds of animal sacrifices for sin offerings, thank offerings, and drink offerings. The biggest day of the year was Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, on which a bull was sacrificed and its blood splattered on the congregation and upon the ark of the covenant.
The statement in Hosea that Jesus quotes is a type of exaggeration, a “rhetorical device known as ‘dialectical negation.’” As one pastor explains: “In a kind of exaggeration, one side of the statement is completely negated (‘I do not want sacrifice’) in order to emphasize the other side of the sentence (‘I do want mercy!’)…. What God is here saying through the prophet is, in effect, ‘I do not want only sacrifice, but even more importantly, I want mercy.’”[2]
The Pharisees were heavy on sacrifice and low on mercy. They tried hard to keep all the religious laws and hang out with the right people and do the right things, but they demonstrated very little actual love and compassion for real people. The most basic law of the Old Testament was to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). Yet here they were, looking down their noses at Jesus because of who sat at the same table as him.
Nor was it the last time that people would accuse Jesus of keeping bad company. Later, his opponents would say, “Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matt. 11:19). We all know the Bible verse, “Bad company corrupts good character” (1 Cor. 15:33, NIV). And we have that old saying that “One bad apple spoils the bunch.” We worry about contaminating our minds and polluting our souls by spending time with sinners and associating with “undesirables.” But we miss the point. As Christians, we are called to love everyone and be open to all kinds of people, whether or not we agree with them or approve of their lifestyle, language, and appearance. God desires mercy, not sacrifice.
We are called to be a godly influence and a positive reflection of God’s love in the lives of everyone we meet. Do we want to be corrupted by their attitudes and behavior? No, of course not. So don’t allow them to influence you in that way. But love them and spend time with them, so that they can see the love of Jesus in you.
The problem with always worrying about doing the right thing is that pretty soon you care more about being right than righteous. We become puffed up with pride: self-righteous, which is not really righteousness at all. When we act all “holier than thou,” we forfeit the grace of God that has been given us. We become unholy because of our hate.
The Bible says, “None is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). For all their religious song and dance, the Pharisees weren’t anymore righteous than the so-called sinners they condemned. We’re all sinners. We all fall short of the glory of God. We all deserve damnation because of our sins. We all need a Savior. We all need God’s forgiveness.
The irony of Jesus’ statement is this: the Pharisees think they are righteous, but they are not. They think they are healthy, but they’re sick and rotten to the core. They need a “doctor” just as much as anyone else. They just can’t see it.
Going to church and trying to be a good person is not good enough. God desires mercy, not sacrifice. He wants us to be the Church, not just go to Church. Sadly, we all have people we judge and put down because they’re not as “good” as we are. We look down on them and treat them as “less than” because their very existence offends us.
The Pharisees looked down on tax collectors and sinners. Who are the “tax collectors and sinners” in your life? Who are the people you judge or hate? Is it homeless people? Illegal immigrants? What about people who vote for “the other party”—however you define that? Maybe you’re disgusted by people who refused to wear masks during the pandemic—or those who wear them still. Perhaps your “tax collectors” are members of the LGBT community. Or alcoholics or registered sex offenders. Maybe you don’t like Catholics or Baptists—or Californians. Perhaps you harbor disgust for people you believe listen to the wrong kind of music or watch the wrong movies and television shows or wear the wrong clothes or have too many tattoos. Maybe it’s just the younger generation—or the older generation.
But whoever it is that you hate, ignore, reject, or disregard—that is your tax collector. And that is the person Jesus wants to have dinner with (cp. Luke 15:1-2).
The Good News for you and me—indeed, for everyone—is that Jesus came to save sinners. The Apostle Paul writes to Timothy: “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Tim. 1:15). Jesus himself described the purpose of his mission “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Or, in the words of today’s Gospel, he “came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9:13).
Martin Luther famously quipped, “Christ died only for sinners. See to it that you are one.” [Pause for laughter] This statement by Luther is not a license to sin. Rather, it is a reminder to us when we are puffed up with pride and self-righteousness that we are no better than anyone else. We are sinners too. And Christ died for “those people over there” as much as he died for us. Christ loved Matthew the tax collector long before he ever became St. Matthew the Evangelist.
At the beginning of my message, I asked what sort of man Matthew was. Yet this story of Matthew’s call and conversion from a slimy tax collector to a follower of Jesus is really the story of every Christian.[3] Matthew’s story is our story. And Matthew’s story is this: every saint has a past, and every repentant sinner has a future with Jesus. The call of Matthew is not just about Matthew (or Levi) the tax collector. And the book in which we read it is not just the Gospel according to St. Matthew. This is the Gospel according to St. Matthew the Tax Collector, a forgiven sinner-saint like us. As forgiven sinners, may we all go and learn what Jesus means when he declares, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” In the name of the Father and of T the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] All Scripture references, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.
[2] Gibbs, Matthew, 464.
[3] Jeffrey A. Gibbs, Matthew 1:1–11:1 (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2006), 465.