“And he arose and followed him”
The call of Matthew from “the receipt of custom” – what a wonderful phrase! – seems rather disturbing and disquieting. Jesus says “follow me” and “he arose and followed him.” It seems so abrupt and arbitrary.
It is a story of conversion but without the inner struggle and conflict displayed in the conversion of St. Paul. Somehow the external details suffice. He is a tax-collector and that is associated here with being a sinner. Why? Publicans, as the name suggests, have an immediate connection to the res publica, the public things, the things pertaining to the life of the political community especially in its natural and economic life. There is a certain necessity to taxes, unpleasant as they may seem to be. Why, then, the association with sin?
There are two reasons. The first has to do with the particular context. Matthew’s tax-collecting is seen as a kind of spiritual betrayal, a form of treason against the spiritual community to which he properly belongs. He is collaborating with the Roman overlords in collecting taxes for them from his own people while benefiting personally. Rome had outsourced tax collecting!
Unlike contemporary politics, “politics within the limits of economics” where the state exists for the markets, here there is no doubt that the economic is subordinate to the political and that the political is inescapably spiritual. It is a question of fundamental loyalties and identities. Matthew, like Zacchaeus, is despised by his own community for being a tax-collector.
The second reason is more universal and brings out the real problem with each and every form of economic determinism. It is signaled in the Collect [1]. Matthew’s conversion applies to everyone. “Grant us grace to forsake all covetous desires and inordinate love of riches.” It is a question of disordered love, of love in disarray, a question of fundamental loyalties and identities for each of us. We sense the gospel imperative, “ye cannot serve God and Mammon” – worldly riches – “for what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?” The suggestion of the gospel is that we are more than our material acquisitions and more than our acquisitiveness. We are spiritual creatures who cannot, ultimately, be satisfied with anything less than the kingdom of God.
What is overlooked in all forms of economic determinism is sin and evil, in the form of our “covetous desires” and “inordinate love of riches”. What is overlooked is how all forms of economic determinism are essentially materialistic and atheistic. Everything, including God, is turned into a commodity.
So what next? Matthew “arose and followed” Jesus. Does this mean that we should eschew all and every form of economic activity. No. For one thing, not being angels, we can’t. We are inescapably caught up in the necessities of economic life – food, shelter and clothing, to put it simply. But we need to ask, for what end? We must demand for ourselves that economic activity be not an end but a means. Worldly riches are not the ends for spiritual creatures.
Spirit yearns for things of the spirit and seeks to draw all things into the life of Spirit. “The Word”, says Origen, “is the Shepherd of all rational things” and they that serve that Good Shepherd must share in that greater conversion of all things to their spiritual source and principle. “The Kingdom of God and His justice is our good; and the end we must set before us,” Augustine tells us.
There is, then, a redemption of all human desires, and therefore a redemption of the economic, too. Matthew, to be sure, left the “receipt of custom,” though Zacchaeus didn’t. Yet in the case of each “salvation has come to this house.” How? The answer, I think, is found in the gospel story: “As Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and the disciples” provoking the Pharisees and prompting Jesus’ twofold reply. “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick”, he says, and then, “go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
The call to Matthew is “the call of pure mercy toward sinners.” The response is that of sinners who know in themselves the need for mercy. Christ quoting Hosea further intensifies this point. Hosea is the great love prophet of the Old Testament proclaiming mercy and calling us to repentance. “Take with you words and return to the Lord,” he says. There is hope for us all; sinners are called to repentance. What stands in the way is ourselves, our own self-righteousness and the illusions of our own self-determinations.
The counter is conversion, the life-long project of returning ourselves and everything else to God in prayer and praise. The mercy is that we have a God to return to, the God who turns to us even when he is simply passing by.
Matthew discovered in Sappho’s phrase what is “more gold than gold” and so may we if we follow the one whom he followed.
“And he arose and followed him”
Fr. David Curry
St. Matthew, Sept 21st, 2015