by CCW | 22 September 2016 21:00
Today’s epistle appointed for The Feast of St. Matthew reminds us that “we preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake”. The focus is entirely on Christ. The call of Matthew is altogether about the resurrection of Christ in us and about our being with Christ; in short, the commemoration of St. Matthew illumines the very nature of salvation for us. We are called to follow him who comes to us and who is raised up for us.
It begins with Jesus passing by, the Jesus who is always passing by. “As Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man called Matthew”. 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 life itself, who is always active, and never static, and whose activity is always purposeful and therefore, always requires a response. We are always in his sight.
His 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.
The episode which immediately precedes this scene is the raising of the paralytic in Nazareth, “his own city”. Jesus sees the man lying on a stretcher. He sees the faith of those who brought him, but he sees as well the sceptical criticism in the hearts of the Pharisees. Christ sees and speaks. First, he proclaims the forgiveness of sins and then, the healing of his body, “arise, take up thy bed and go unto thine house”.
Here, Jesus sees Matthew, like so many of us, deep in our worldly concerns and preoccupations. The Fall of the year in our communities, it seems to me, is very much like that. We return to our regular patterns and practices only to find that suddenly we are overwhelmed with busyness or woes and worries.
Jesus, in seeing us, awakens the need for a response on our part. His glance is a moment of clarifying and illuminating truth. It speaks to the deep and inner essence of the human personality regardless of where we are on the plane of human affairs. Like the paralytic, so Matthew, too, is on the fringes, on the margins of society – rejected and despised because of his job, a job which alienates him from the Jewish society to which he belongs. He is collecting taxes from Jews for the Roman overlords, gaining an economic interest for himself at the expense of his ethnic and religious identity. No one could be more despised but in this gospel, Jesus is in the company of the despised and the rejected. He has come to a world of the lost to bring healing and salvation. His presence signals hope. His glance redemption. His word is resurrection. He sees us and speaks to us. He calls us to follow him. To borrow a phrase from the ancient poet, Sappho, there is in Christ “more gold than gold”.
Fr. David Curry
Feast of St. Matthew (transf)
Sept 22nd, 2016
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2016/09/22/sermon-for-the-feast-of-st-matthew-3/
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