Day: September 21, 2025

“We preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves
your servants for Jesus’ sake.”

Once again we have an Apostolic Feast day on a Sunday. In late August it was Bartholomew the Apostle. Today it is Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist as the BCP calendar makes clear. At first glance, it seems so black and white, rather arbitrary. Jesus sees “a man named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom” and says to him, “Follow me. And he arose, and followed him.” Without question, without any hesitation, without any background information, it seems. And yet, both the Gospel and the Epistle provide us with a logic and meaning to the call of Matthew.

The ancient wisdom of the Church sees the saints essentially in the light of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. This is highlighted for us in the Epistle which underscores the Apostolic ministry in terms of Apostolic doctrine and in the Gospel where the call of Matthew is seen in terms of the mercy that calls sinners to repentance. It is not about calling attention to ourselves but to Christ and in images that recall John’s Prologue about Christ as the Word and Light of God. It all has to do with who Christ is.

“We preach not ourselves,” Paul says, but Christ, in whom “the light of God shines out of darkness” For what purpose? That it may “shine in our hearts,” not simply for ourselves but for our life with one another, in short, “to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.” Light is given so that we may be light for others. How do we know any of this? Only through the Gospel which illuminates our understanding of God naturally and supernaturally, by grace, we might say, in the concurrence of things natural and supernatural.

Matthew is called from “the receipt of custom,” in other words, a tax collector, like the publican several Sundays ago viewed in contrast to the Pharisee. Here, too, the Pharisees associate publicans with sinners and use that association to attack Jesus. “Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?” The conversation brings out the meaning of Matthew’s call to follow Jesus. It is a call to the ministry of repentance, a ministry of mercy received that gives mercy in turn. As such, it is a call to wholeness or better, to holiness which is really about the gathering of all things back to God from whom all things come.

That it seems so black and white might seem to suggest that collecting taxes or business and economics in general is evil. Kathleen Stock, observes that “black and white thinking and a lack of tolerance for ambiguity” is a feature of the social and therapeutic culture of our times. There is “a splitting of the world into good or bad objects, … [and] a failure to distinguish fervent wants from real needs.” She calls it “toddler logic,” meaning “I should get what I desperately want, and never mind whether it might be actually best for me, or what will happen afterwards.” Is that the case with the Feast of Matthew? I think not but in place of ambiguity there is a depth and wisdom that speaks to who and what we really are and need in Christ.

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