St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church                   Hudson, Florida                                          August 22, 2010

Sermon by Pastor Kenneth F. Gruebel

Those Who Called Him Master: Matthew: The Man They Loved to Hate

Matthew 9:9-13

One of my favorite sayings is, “If in doubt, throw it out.” Keep everything shipshape, that’s what I believe in. Having said that I must confess to you that I have kept every calendar that I have used since I became a pastor. Here’s one I dug out from 1984. In September of that year it indicates that I performed two weddings and four baptisms. I had numerous appointments, went to one presbytery meeting and played racquetball with Bill Whitledge every Wednesday morning at 7:30 a.m. There is no indication that I did anything profound on Monday, September 17, 1984, but I will remember forever what happened that day.

You see, on that day I received a very official looking document from the Internal Revenue Service. “Uh, oh!” I thought to myself, “this can’t be good.” It wasn’t. The IRS was informing me that I had not prepaid enough on my 1983 taxes. Even though I had actually overpaid them, I had not given them enough money during certain quarters. Therefore, according to them I still owed $45.76 in interest penalties. Not only that, but I had only three days to pay this amount or I would be penalized even more! I was furious! I was livid! I was outraged! I was hopping mad! I pronounced a curse upon the IRS and their confounded bureaucracy and rules the likes of which you have never heard!

And that, you see, is exactly how the Jews of Jesus’ day felt about tax collectors like Matthew. Tax collectors were hated, loathed and despised. There was no class of people in the ancient world who was more detested than tax collectors. They were mentioned in the same breath with prostitutes, murderers, thieves and adulterers.

Of all the nations under Roman control, Israel despised the tax collectors the most. You see, for a strict Jew, God was the only one to whom it was appropriate to pay tribute. To pay tribute to anyone else was to infringe on the allegiance which belonged to God alone. Therefore a Jewish tax collector in Israel was not allowed to be a witness in a trial and was even barred from temple worship.

This man, Matthew, whom we call an apostle and whom we credit with writing the first gospel in the New Testament, was a Jewish tax collector working for the hated Roman government. Tax collectors were not only hated on religious grounds, they were hated on moral grounds as well. For they were notorious liars, cheats and thieves. It was not uncommon for tax collectors to charge whatever they felt a person could afford and then pocket the difference between what the tax actually was and what they collected.

Believe it or not, taxes in the Roman Empire were very similar to our modern day taxes. There was a “ground” tax which is similar to our property tax. It consisted of 10% of a family’s crop and 20% of their production of fruit, oil and wine. There was an “income” tax of 1% of a person’s income and a “poll” tax for everyone from 12-65 years of age which paid for the privilege of existing. In addition the Romans had a “purchase” tax much like our sales tax. They also had “bridge & road” tolls, “harbor” taxes, “market” taxes, “town” taxes and “cart” taxes. Custom officials were responsible for these particular taxes and it appears that Matthew was a custom official in the town of Capernaum, located on the northwest coast of the Sea of Galilee.

Now, if you and I were trying to put together a group to attract new members to our church I don’t think Matthew would be the kind of person we would want in it. Matthew was the kind of man everyone loved to hate. Yet Jesus chose Matthew to be one of the twelve apostles despite the fact that Matthew could not worship in the temple, was considered an outcast and a misfit by his own people, was probably a liar and a cheat, and was certainly a collaborator with the hated Roman occupying force. Despite all of this, Jesus called Matthew to follow him. But that isn’t the strangest part of the story.

The most bizarre part of the story is that Matthew took Jesus up on his offer. He left his bureaucratic post that very day and invited Jesus to his home for dinner. In what seems to be an autobiographical vignette told by Matthew himself in the gospel that bears his name, we discover that the people of the village were appalled. How could the good teacher, the rabbi, the prophet from Galilee possibly stoop so low as to be seen in the very company of tax collectors, let alone eat with them? Overhearing their comments, Jesus replies, “Those who are well have no need for a physician but only those who are sick…I have not come to call the respectable (righteous), but rather the outcasts.”  (Matthew 9:12 & 13)     

Stop the sermon! Stop the sermon! Did you hear what the preacher just said?

Jesus replies, “I have not come to call the respectable, but rather the outcasts.” Why that flies in the face of everything we’ve been taught from childhood. Haven’t we always heard, “Stand up straight, chew with your mouth closed, tie your shoes, let me see those hands and tuck in your shirt? For goodness sake try to look respectable, after all what will other people think?”

Didn’t we all learn that the goal in life was to:

                        —live in respectable neighborhoods,

                        —drive respectable cars,

                        —wear respectable clothes,

                        —eat at respectable restaurants,

                        —and worship in respectable churches?

Overhearing the Pharisees muttering to the apostles, Jesus says, “I have not come to call the respectable, but rather the outcasts.” Apparently Jesus didn’t attend the same Sunday School that I did. I guess Jesus didn’t learn all those good proverbs that the Pharisees and I learned. You remember them, don’t you?

                        —You are judged by the company you keep.

                        —Evil companions corrupt good morals.

                        —Birds of a feather flock together.

“I have not come to call the respectable, but the outcasts,” says Jesus. 

The Apostle Paul put it this way, “…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”  (Romans 3:23)  Which is, I think, another way of saying, “We are all human—everyone one of us.”  If we strip away the masks of respectability, we discover that there is some of Matthew in each of us. Like Matthew:

                        We have all sinned.

                              We have all fallen short of the mark.

                                    We have all betrayed a trust.

                                          We have all done things for which we are ashamed.

We all labor and are heavy laden in our vain attempts to cover up our sins, shortcomings, hurts, doubts and fears under the veneer of respectability.

The story of Matthew, the hated tax collector, reaches to the very core…the very essence of the gospel. And what is that? It is that God doesn’t give a hoot about our respectability. God could care less about our savings accounts, late model cars, fine clothes and well-furnished homes. God sees Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire and the nameless transient who walks the streets of Hudson with the same eyes. God’s grace reaches out to the widow, to the prisoner, to the welfare recipient, to the bankrupt, to the mentally ill, to the mentally challenged, to the homosexual, to the homeless, to the battered, to those with a checkered past.

I am here to tell you this simple good news. God’s grace reaches out to you. There are no strings attached, no forms to fill out, no cards to send in. All you have to do is follow the Master.

“As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax booth and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.”   (Matthew 9:9)