Feast of St. Matthew

Matt 9:9-13
Psalm 119:33-40

With our weekly Eucharist being tonight, I’ve transferred the Feast of St. Matthew from Sept. 21 to today.

Tax collection was pretty simple in the Roman Empire.  He Romans hired locals to be tax collectors, assigned them a certain amount that had to be collected from their assigned area, then came back later fir the collections.  How the taxes were collected was not their concern.  Frequently, the tax collectors claimed a “commission” from the locals for their “service.”  And of course, what they collected and held in their hands was a coin with the head of the Emperor Tiberius, along with the inscription, “son of the divine Augustus.”  Tax collectors were collaborators with their own oppressors, corrupt in their dealings with their own people, and “unclean” by their constant contact with blasphemy.

This was the Matthew who, stirred in his conscience, dropped it all to follow Jesus.  This is the same Matthew whose recollections of Jesus provided the basis for this Gospel named for him.  It was this Matthew, once so estranged from his fellow Jews, who so sought to reconcile Jew and Christian.  With its constant references to the Old Testament, Matthew’s Gospel is the most insistent on finding common ground between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.  From Matthew, we have a Gospel that more than others, stresses reconciliation between seeming opposites. 

Today, we live in a culture where our news media so regularly stress conflict, and where its consumers feed it.  But that is not who we are as Christians.  “The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” (Book of Common Prayer, p.855).  More than ever 2,000 years later, the Good News of reconciliation in Jesus Christ as given by Matthew, is what we need.  Thanks be to God for Matthew, the reconciled tax collector and Jew.


"We thank you, heavenly Father, for the witness of your apostle and evangelist Matthew to the Gospel of your Son our Savior; and we pray that, after his example, we may with ready wills and hearts obey the calling of our Lord to follow him; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen."