Too far gone?
Readings: Matthew 9. 9-13
Today as we celebrate St Matthew he poses for us a question; can you be too far gone to be forgiven by God?
We’re, rather fittingly in Matthew’s Gospel today, and here he is, popping up for a few verses. He’s telling us how he came to be a follower of Jesus, how he ended up as one of the twelve. Mark and Luke also record this encounter but call the man Levi, but it’s clearly the same person. Perhaps he, like a few others, has two names like Simon/Peter or Saul/Paul.
Mark and Luke give the name of the man and his actions more prominence, but in Matthew’s telling of it, he seems to be trying to get the focus off him. Our English translations render the opening of the encounter ‘a man called Matthew sitting at the tax collectors booth’, it’s a nice smooth way of putting it in English. But Matthew in recounting how he came to follow Jesus writes in the Greek ‘a man sitting at the tax office, Matthew’. The name almost reads as an afterthought. Whilst it is the story of how he became a disciple of Jesus, the story isn’t about him, it’s about Jesus.
Something for us to perhaps learn from when telling our own story of coming to faith, do we spend more time on talking about ourselves or about Jesus? Are we the main character in our story or is it Jesus? If it’s the former perhaps it tells as more of a story of personal transformation rather than of encounter with the living God who welcomes and transforms us.
So here’s Matthew at the tax collecting booth. These would be set up near ports or on major roads so that the customs tax could be collected for goods moving along those routes. And tax collectors were hated in those days. It wasn’t like today when perhaps we’ll have a bit of a grumble about paying tax, but we’re not blacklisting every employee of HMRC as a terrible person. Tax collectors in Jesus’ day were seen as some of the worst sorts of people. They were colluding with the enemy for one thing. The Romans were hated for having conquered them, enforcing their rule. Things were ripe at this time for rebellion against the Romans and yet tax collectors colluded with the Romans, worked for them. You were deemed a traitor to your nation and to your people, betraying them for money. Gathering tax to be paid to their conquerors.
But it wasn’t just that they had a job with a bad reputation, tax collectors were also employed based on how much tax they could get from people, and would usually skim a bunch off the top for themselves. And that extra money going into his pockets wasn’t going missing from the Romans, it was being extracted from the people on top of what actually needed paying.
So here sits Matthew, traitor to his people and his nation, a collaborator with the conquerors, and who is well known for using his position to essentially steal more money from his own people to line his pockets. No wonder Matthew and men like him were hated. Men who were far from God, so far beyond his forgiveness, right? And as he’s sitting there Jesus passes and says two simple words ‘follow me’. And it’s not in the sense, come with me a moment I want to show you something, it’s a call to continual following, a call to discipleship. We’ve no idea whether Matthew has met Jesus before, he doesn’t tell us. We don’t know if there was some sort of conversation that happened around those words or whether it literally was just those two words. Again Matthew isn’t putting the focus on himself. What matters are those two words of Jesus that will change his life forever ‘follow me’.
And perhaps in that moment Matthew sees a way out, sees a way to sort his life out and come back to God. Perhaps, in those simple words from a Rabbi, Matthew sees the compassion and mercy of Jesus towards one who was utterly scorned and thought, this is an offer I have to take. Perhaps it was as simple as in the darkness of his life, despised and rejected by many, he recognised the one who is the light, the one who would be despised and rejected for his sake. We don’t know, but we do know this, he gets up and follows Jesus. And this is a lifechanging moment, because there’s no going back from this.
If you were at St Brides a few weeks ago when we joined with them, or if you’ve listened to the sermon since, you’ll have heard me reflecting on Jesus’ warnings about counting the cost before following him. Well here in Matthew is a perfect example. In simply leaving his booth and following he has already paid a huge price. His lucrative income, tax collectors were rather wealthy men, and the lifestyle he funded with it, gone forever. The authorities are never going to take him back again if he changes his mind later, and his booth will soon be filled by someone else. The former fishermen can go back to fishing, and actually later they do don’t they after Jesus has been crucified and raised. Matthew can’t do that. And who is going to employ a former tax collector in another job?
And yet off he goes, there’s no sense that he’s doing the right thing but with gritted teeth, he immediately invites Jesus to his home (Luke tells us it’s his home, again Matthew is a little more vague, wanting the focus on Jesus’ actions and words rather than his) and has a feast, welcoming his friends and colleagues, all of whom are as disreputable as he is. He’s celebrating what has happened, and he wants his friends to know about what has happened. And perhaps most startling of all, Jesus goes to eat with them.
Who you invite over for food still has cultural connotations doesn’t it. You don’t just invite anyone, it’s friends or people you want to impress or ingratiate yourself with. It was even more pronounced in Jesus’ day, who you ate with were people on your level, people who were close to you or who you wanted to be close to. And yet here Jesus is, surrounded with tax collectors and people described as sinners. Sinners are simply those who forfeit their relationship with God by living as they please, living with no care for God or his ways.
Of course the Pharisees are scandalised by this, what’s he doing hanging around with this flagrantly immoral bunch, this isn’t how a religious leader should conduct themselves. Attempt to teach them maybe, condemn them certainly, but not eat with them. Why is he eating with these people who are far from God, far beyond forgiveness, as far as they were concerned.
And Jesus responds with one of his more famous lines. ‘Those who are well have no need of a doctor, but those who are sick do’. Jesus isn’t there to confirm good people in their goodness, to congratulate people on their moral and upstanding lives. Jesus is here to heal the sick, both those who are physically sick, but also those who reveal by their lives the sickness of their souls, who need healing and care. And there’s a rebuke here of the Pharisees, why are these people who think they are well, but who from their lives reveal their own sickness, do nothing to help those who are sick.
Go away, he says, and learn what the prophet Hosea meant when he said that God desires mercy not sacrifice. It’s not that God was saying the sacrificial system was something he didn’t care about, it was the way he had given for people to be made right with him, but rather that mercy matters too, is just as important. As far as the Pharisees were concerned, these sinners were far from God, and rightly so, so they were going to leave them there. Where is the compassion, the mercy that God desires? They look at these outcasts and rather than seeking to draw them back to God, they simply confirm their status as outcast by firmly rejecting them.
Jesus has come not to call the righteous, but sinners. He does not need to call those who are truly righteous for they would already recognise and follow him. He’s there to call sinners, to bring them back to God, to restore them to right relationship with the Father.
Jesus is here for sinners, for those who are far from God and perhaps worry they could never be forgiven. How lost can you be that God cannot forgive you? The answer revealed in Matthew meeting Jesus is that you can’t. That Jesus is already out seeking you, coming to bind up your wounds and bring healing and restoration. Will it cost? Yes, it cost Matthew everything. His old lifestyle didn’t fit with Jesus’ call. And yet when faced with the choice he chooses Jesus and rejoices to do so. Jesus’ call is of course to leave behind our sin, but he doesn’t condemn us in it. Instead he has come to bring us home.
So as the people of God in this place let us rejoice that this is true. That this is true for us. That we were sick, we were lost, we perhaps felt like we were as far from God as we could be, and yet Jesus has come for people like us. People who know our sin, our sickness, and who come to him for forgiveness and healing.
But let us not allow the right relationship with God he brings turn us into people like the Pharisees, who look down on those who are not like us. Instead let us be found, like Jesus, with those the world sees as too far gone, who respectable society sees as too far gone and unforgiveable, perhaps even the church sees as too far gone. Let us be willing to cause scandal, just as Jesus did, not for who we reject as beyond hope, but for who we associate with, who we welcome. A people who like Jesus go to the sick and the lost, and call them home. And let us pray that, as we do, people would respond like Matthew, see in us the compassion and mercy of Jesus, and leave everything to follow him.
Amen.