The Call of St. Matthew

Fr. Geoff delivers an inspiring sermon on the transformation of St. Matthew, illustrating the power of Christ's call and the significance of responding without hesitation. He encourages the congregation to recognize their own "tax booths" and invites them to stand up and follow Christ into the world, carrying the message of hope and mercy.

Transcript

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This morning we have the feast of St. Matthew the apostle and evangelist. Today the church presents us with the call of St. Matthew. Once a tax collector, entangled in compromise and regarded by his own people as morally lost, he was transformed by the call of Christ into a proclaimer of the kingdom of God and a witness of God's mercy. It's a wonderful story.

A little bit of background here to the leadup to this story. Today’s gospel story follows a series of miracles that demonstrate Jesus’s power over disease, nature, demons, and sin. The miracles he performed drew the crowds. You think this is wonderful. Jesus was happy with crowds, but he wasn't. He was wanting disciples.

Here we have a case where he's got crowds following him, but he picks out one individual. That's the way God works. We have a bit of a crowd here, but God might put his hand and finger on you and say, "I want you to follow me in a very specific way." We have to be aware of that and ready for it.

The gospel today describes the moment that changed Matthew's life. There he is sitting at his tax booth, absorbed in the calculations of earthly gain. He was a tax collector. And the Lord passed by and spoke two words to him: “Follow me.”

There's no argument. There's no demand for repentance before the call and no examining of his past. Our Lord Jesus saw Matthew's heart underneath the brokenness. And Matthew, without hesitation, rises and follows. That decisive response, simple, immediate, and total, marks the beginning of his apostlehood. What society dismissed as corruptible, Christ recognized as redeemable.

I want to talk to people who are watching online. We've found over the last years that some people watch online because they're afraid of coming to the church because they don't think there's any hope for them. For you, eventually, they come. But what I want to say today is you might think you're not good enough to come to church, but you are. And when you come to church, you'll find it's much better than actually watching online. Although we thank God for the online ministry because at least some people can keep in touch with us who are far away.

The situation then intensifies when Matthew hosts a feast, inviting Christ to dine with his tax-collecting and sinful friends. The Pharisees can't understand this gathering. But the Lord responds to them with these words which have come down to us through the centuries to today: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” In that one sentence, Jesus reveals the heart of his ministry.

He doesn't avoid the wounded. He seeks them. Holiness, as he defines it, is not avoidance of sinners as some groups think it is, but the outpouring of mercy on those people. Mercy is not a soft alternative to righteousness. It is righteousness understood properly.

Matthew heard the irresistible voice of Christ and became the voice for many others who would hear him. He records the first written gospel, the gospel of Matthew. Initially, we were told in Sakarian in Aramaic, the language of his own people, and later he carries the message of salvation beyond the borders of Palestine even to Ethiopia where he ends his ministry with martyrdom. His calling wasn't an easy one. St. Paul's epistles give us some clues about the things that apostles had to go through.

“We hunger and thirst. We're poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless. We labor working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless. When persecuted, we endure. When slandered, we entreat. We have become and are still the scum of the world.” This is the way that the pagan world that the apostles went out into regarded them. In some ways, we're going out into a pagan world as well to try and bring the gospel to them. We might have these kinds of reactions to us as well. But still, if God calls us, we must do it. He has called us to take the treasures of the Orthodox faith into the whole of Australia in the English language. That's our calling.

At the beginning of this fasting period, this nativity fasting period, the feast of St. Matthew calls us to recognize the tax booths in our own lives. The places where we have become stuck, comfortable, or compromised. There are corners in our hearts where we sit counting things like St. Matthew counting the money, counting things that are not going to last. Habits that quietly possess us, resentments that limit us, and patterns of life that keep us spiritually seated when Christ is calling us to stand up and walk and follow him.

The Lord who passed Matthew's booth passes our booth as well. He speaks the same simple command: “Follow me.” Not tomorrow when our affairs are tidied up and we've earned enough money and everything else. Not when we think ourselves worthy, but now.

St. Matthew's greatness doesn't lie in his abilities, but in his willingness, his availability, that makes all the difference.

Twenty-five plus years ago, 25 to 30 years ago, when the Anglican church first started to sort of go off the rails in my view—I mean, if there's any Anglicans here, I apologize. You probably think it's still on the rails—I was invited to hear Bishop Japan, the Antiochian Orthodox bishop at the time because there were a lot of us who were very uncomfortable, a lot of clergy. At that stage, we went to St. Nicholas's Hall. If you've ever been there, it's quite a big hall. The hall was filled with Anglican priests who were uncomfortable with the direction of the Anglican church. Filled. I thought, "Wow, you know, if we all moved to the Orthodox church, then wouldn't it be wonderful?"

There were people there who were very smart, much smarter than me, very clever people, well-qualified and everything else. Do you know how many moved? You're looking at him. Some of those came over afterwards. But I made myself available and God's used me a little bit in this way in the Orthodox church. More have come since, thank God, and we need more.

I've been talking to a group meeting on Monday night with the young guys, the young men, looking at the book "Thinking Orthodox." It was a chapter on theology, orthodox theology. One of the phrases that we looked at was the church needs theologians. It does. It needs theologians. We need Jesus to come up behind people and say, "Follow me along this path."

In six months’ time, I'll be 80 years old. When you think about what the Bible says, you know, we got three score and 10. And if we're strong, we get four score and maybe a bit more. Do you think? Maybe a bit more. God bless. We don't know. We don't know. So, we've got to have more people following and getting trained now. I'm the voice of Jesus today saying follow me along this track. St. Paul said at the end of his epistle today, “For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you then, be imitators of me.” All I did was be available to serve as a priest in the church. It hasn't been easy. There's been some ups and downs. You can talk to my wife about it all. She'll tell you. But here we are. We got here.

The challenge is are we going to stay seated down or are we going to stand up and follow Christ and have the greatest adventure of our lives? Really, we don't know what he has in store for us. But if we want the church to continue, we want to take the gospel into the whole of Australia, then some of us are going to have to say, “Yes, Lord,” and stand up and follow him.

The challenge before us is to rise from whatever holds us captive and receive the mercy of the divine physician who came not to call the righteous, not to call the brilliant, not to call the super-academic people, but to call the available and to call the sinners. We’re all sinners, and having received his mercy, we become the witnesses of the gospel in the world starving for hope. The world is starving for hope, and we have the answer to their starvation.

Are we going to stand up and follow Jesus through the intercessions of St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist? May the Lord grant us the grace to follow him without hesitation and to proclaim his mercy with the uprightness of our lives. Amen.