St. Matthew's

Matthew 9:9-13 - St. Matthew the Apostle & Evangelist - September 21, 2014
Jesus Is Our Merciful Physician

As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he arose and followed Him. 

Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples.  And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”

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Christ gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers.  He gave them for the Church.  We continue to benefit from the ministry of the apostles, prophets, and evangelists through Holy Scripture.  God commanded them to speak his words and for some to commit them to writing for our sake.  He gave them his Spirit to work in them and through them.  We hear and read the words they recorded and receive them as from God himself, because they are from God himself.  The Bible is a gift from Jesus. 

Jesus sends ministers today to teach us the Bible. 

As our Epistle lesson also says: Christ gave some to be pastors and teachers.  This is not two different groups of people.  It is one and the same.  “Pastors and teachers” does not refer to some who serve as pastors here and then also to some who serve as teachers there.  No.  “Pastors and teachers” refers to the one office that Christ has given to his church.  Christ tells them what to do.  We do not.  He tells pastors to teach.  And so he places them into the office of preaching the gospel and administering the sacraments – the office of forgiving the penitent and withholding forgiveness from the impenitent as long as they do not repent.  Pastor means shepherd.  Those whom Jesus calls to serve his church shepherd his flock by teaching the sheep.  Pastors are teachers.  The preaching office is a gift from Jesus to his church for the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. 

We do not give these things to ourselves.  Christ gives them to us.  He is our Physician.  He knows our needs.  We don’t tell him what we need.  He is not a corrupt pharmacist to whom we go for a fix.  He is our Physician.  He tells us what we need. We say Amen to his diagnosis and prescription when we repent of our sin and cry out for mercy.  He gives us the true spiritual medicine we require when he forgives us our sins.  Our pastors are not our physicians – though they must act like it.  They must expose the disease of sin and apply the balm of the gospel.  They do not do this in arrogance.  They do not do this as the pot calling the kettle black.  They do what the Good Physician and Shepherd of our souls tells them to do by being faithful to the word of God given to us in Holy Scripture. 

The gifts that Christ has given to his church he gives through the labors of sinful men who need these gifts as much as you do.  Jesus chooses sinners to preach the gospel because he chooses sinners to believe the gospel.  Christ did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.  It pleases God that the message you hear be a message that the messenger need himself.  And our Gospel lesson makes this plain. 

Today is the feast day of St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist.  Christ gave him to us.  So today we consider how the grace of God was at work in Matthew to do what he did so that we might also know how the grace of God is at work in us to live God-pleasing lives.  
It was by the grace of God that Matthew was what he was.  By the grace of God he was forgiven of his sin and washed clean in the blood of Christ; by the grace of God he was declared righteous through faith in him who called him out of darkness and into the marvelous light of his Gospel. 

But in order for Matthew to become anything great by the grace of God, he needed first to stand in a position where he required the grace of God.  He needed to be counted a sinner.  And a sinner he was.  Like St. Paul, he was one of the last Apostles called.  While the first disciples were already accompanying Jesus as he healed the sick and preached the gospel to the poor, Matthew was still cheating his fellow Israelites out of their money and selling them out to the Gentile Romans who were oppressing them. 
He was a tax collector.  He gained wealth for himself by overcharging his fellow Jews when collecting their taxes to Caesar. 
He stole from them.  He should have been ashamed of himself. 
He was a sinner. 

Peter, James, and John among others were no doubt present when Jesus passed by the tax office where Matthew worked.  They had just witnessed Jesus heal a paralytic and forgive his sin.  This created quite the stir.  “This Man blasphemes.  Who can forgive sins but God?”  But Jesus proved that God had indeed given to the Son of Man power on earth to forgive sins by healing the poor guy.  He said to the paralytic, “Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.”   And he took up his bed and went to his house – both justified and physically healthy.  A miracle. 

But this was just a foretaste of his power and mercy.  Here at the tax office, immediately following, a greater miracle was needed: a sinner whose sin was known, whose sin adversely affected everyone who saw him there. 
But Jesus didn’t tell him to pick up his moneybag and go home.  He was not satisfied to demonstrate his power toward Matthew by forgiving him and dismissing him.  He wanted this man to remain with him so that he might preach forgiveness to us.  Like with Ezekiel before him, our Lord Jesus would say to this son of man:

“Open your mouth, and eat what I give you … Son of man, feed your belly, and fill your stomach with this scroll that I give you … Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with My words to them”  (Ezekiel 3).    

Jesus said to Matthew, “Follow Me.”  And he did.  He left what he had, because Jesus gave him the power to do so.  Jesus knew what kind of sinner he was calling.  And Jesus’ willingness to associate with and even use this sinner was proof that Jesus did not condemn him, but that he forgave him.  And so Matthew repented of his sin and left the occupation he knew so well.  He would no longer labor for himself.  From now on the grace of God would labor in him toward us.  He followed Jesus – both justified and spiritually healthy.  His Physician had healed him. 

Matthew’s name was Levi.  The Evangelists Luke and Mark tell us more about him than even Matthew does.  But what Matthew does tell us, as we just heard in our Gospel lesson, is the name he goes by.  Jesus saw a man named Matthew.  What a beautiful thing that Matthew records.  He saw a man named Matthew.  His name was Levi.  It was the name he got from his father, Alphaeus.  He was a sinner.  He was a cheat.  He was selfish.  He loved himself more than others and was stuck in his sin.  He couldn’t leave his sin because he was a sinner and sinners do what sinners do no matter how much shame and regret they feel.  He had no power on his own to love God or his neighbor as much as he loved himself.  Much less power did he have to follow Christ.  He was his father’s son and he received not only his name and his trade from him, but his sinful nature as well. 

But Jesus didn’t just see a man named Levi. 
He didn’t simply see a sinner lost in sin — though he did. 
But he saw also a sinner whose sin he would pay for.  He saw a man whose name he would write in heaven with his own blood.  He saw a son of man whose sins he would forgive and to whom he would commit the word of reconciliation to proclaim.  He saw Matthew.  Luke and Mark call him Levi.  And so he was.  But Matthew calls himself a man named Matthew, because this is what Jesus called him.  He identifies himself not according to the sinful life out of which Jesus called him.  Rather, he identifies himself according to the gracious calling he received to be an Apostle and Evangelist – to be a Christian. 

And by the grace of God he was what he was.  He was who he was.  He was a sinner, redeemed by Christ and called to live by grace.   The words that Jesus gave him were the words that he wants us to receive as well.  He was the first of the Apostles to commit to writing the Gospel he learned by following our Lord.  What he wrote is known, of course, as the Gospel according to St. Matthew, the first book of the New Testament.  The words he wrote are the words he learned.  They are the words of the scroll that he ate by hearing the sweet words of Jesus.  They are sweeter than honey.  They give eternal life.  They call us to follow Jesus who rescues us in mercy.  These words confront us as sinners.  But they make us righteous.  They give us power and inclination to leave our sin in true repentance and to follow Jesus our Savior who forgives us.  And these words give us such power because they teach us what God’s Son, the Son of Man, has done to save us. 

Peter, James, and John, after having seen the Lord’s almighty power, left their boats and nets and followed Jesus.  It was an honest living with honest gain.  But by calling them, Jesus gained more.  He made them fishers of men.  Matthew left his lucrative business and followed Jesus.  What compelled him?  What miracle?  What healing of the sick?  What miraculous catch of fish?  What amazing thing did Jesus do to capture and claim Matthew’s heart and attention? 
He forgave him.  Jesus received him as his own.  No miracle was needed to persuade Matthew.  Mercy persuaded him. 

Christ tells us to follow him.  But he no longer persuades the nations by amazing them.  He persuades us by ascending to heaven and giving gifts to men.  He gives us the gospel we hear.  He gives us preachers to teach it.  If we are to follow Jesus, we need to be persuaded as Matthew once was.  We need to know our sin.  And if our sin is not obvious to those around us as St. Matthew’s was, it must be made obvious to us.  We must know what we are. 

Matthew, or really, Levi was a thief.  He stole.  It was legal.  But he got what he could get from his neighbor in a dishonest way.  He should have instead helped his neighbor to improve and protect his possessions and income.  So should we.  

But we want to improve and protect our possessions and income, not our neighbor’s.  It isn’t just unjust gain and filthy lucre that we are attached to and that we tend to worship.  We are attached to ourselves.  We love ourselves.  But Jesus tells us to deny ourselves – to lose ourselves.  Consider the words of our Lord that Matthew records:

“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.  For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:24-26) 

What a joy these words would have been for Matthew to record.  They applied precisely to him.  And so they apply to us for whose sake they were written. 

We don’t deny ourselves by becoming something that we are not.  We can’t do that anymore than Matthew could. 
We deny ourselves by admitting what we ourselves are.  We are sinners.  We cannot stop being what we are even if we were to sell all that we have and give to the poor.  Such a sacrifice will do nothing for God.  And it will do nothing for you.  God says, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”  Learn what this means.  It means that what you give to God, what you give up, what you offer to God, what life you turn around and fix, what outward sins you avoid — none of this God desires, because this won’t justify you.  Jesus didn’t come for the righteous.  God desires rather to have mercy on sinners.  So be what you are.  Own your guilt. 

It is on the guilty sinners and them alone whom Jesus has mercy and whom he calls to himself.  It is to sinners whom Jesus gives a new name and a new identity.  And this identity is not found in your sacrifice.  It is found in God’s.  It is found where Jesus took your sin as his own and suffered what Levi the tax collector deserved.  It is where he died as the one who lived for himself so that in his resurrection you might live with him.  This is what Matthew records.  Jesus gave himself as a perfect and final sacrifice so that God would have mercy on all.  He gives us a life to find — it is a life we find in the forgiveness of our sins. 

And here is your identity.  Here is where God names you a Christian – where he joins you to Christ’s sacrifice.  It is where his mercies continue until the day you die.  In receiving God’s mercy, you find your life.  It is the perfect life of Christ.  It is yours to live today as you acknowledge your sin and repent.  It is yours to live as you hear the word of God and believe it.  It is yours to live as you live for others and as God receives all your sacrifices of praise for the sake of his Son. This life is yours to live as often as your sin and selfishness, your greed and failed life rise against you to call you a sinner. 
You say: “God doesn’t call me a sinner.  He calls me his child. 
He gives me a new name in Holy Baptism.  The life I live I live by faith. 
The life that is mine is found where God has mercy.  I follow where Jesus calls me to follow, not because I deserve to be where he is, but because he tells me to come where he is.”  And so he tells us today: Follow me.  We follow by hearing his voice.  He leads us to living waters through his word.  He restores our soul.  Goodness and mercy follow us because Jesus is leading us. 

Amen.