Sermon for the Feast of St. Matthew
“God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness,
hath shined in our hearts”
It is not often that a Saints’ day intrudes upon our Sunday worship. I say “intrudes” because there is a modern liturgical opinion that such celebrations get in the way of the primary focus of each Sunday service, namely, the Resurrection of Christ. There is the fear that the celebration of a saint might detract from the centrality of Christ. A legitimate fear, I suppose, but it overlooks the ancient wisdom which sees the saints as saints only in the light of Christ’s Resurrection. As today’s epistle appointed for The Feast of St. Matthew reminds us, “we preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake”. The focus, we may safely conclude, is Christ. And if, we look more closely, we shall see that the Call of Matthew is altogether about the Resurrection of Christ in us and about our being with Christ; in short, The Feast of St. Matthew illumines the very nature of salvation for us. Light shining out of our darkness and light shining in our hearts.
And all because Jesus is passing by. It all seems so casual, so accidental, so incidental but, to the contrary, Jesus’ passing by is not casual; it is essential. That is to say, it belongs to the very principle of God who is light and life itself, who is always active, and never static, and whose activity is always purposeful and therefore, always requires a response from us.
Jesus’ passing by is not without consequence. Something happens. He glances upon us. “Salvation begins by our being seen by Jesus, by his turning toward us his compassionate eyes”. Here Jesus “saw a man named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom,” at the tax collector’s bench. Everything unfolds from that glance of Jesus. “Follow me,” he says to Matthew who “arose, and followed him”.
