Sermon for the Feast of St. Matthew
“And he arose and followed him”
The call of Matthew from “the receipt of custom” – a wonderful phrase! – seems rather disturbing and disquieting. It is so abrupt and seemingly arbitrary. Jesus says “follow me” and “he arose and followed him.” At best, it suggests a crisis to which there seems to be but one response.
It is a story of conversion but without anything of the inner struggle and conflict displayed in the conversion of St. Paul. Yet 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, perhaps, was the first imperial power to outsource tax collecting! Matthew, like Zacchaeus, is despised by his own community. It is an issue of spiritual justice, we might say, a question of fundamental loyalties and identities.
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 for St. Matthew’s day which applies Matthew’s conversion to every one of us. “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.
At issue is the relationship between the forms of our spiritual identity and the forms of economic life. 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” and the willful destructiveness born out of deep hatred and animosity. What is overlooked is how all forms of economic determinism are essentially materialistic and atheistic.
