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Jesus says, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick, go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. Please be seated.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. As Pastor mentioned in his opening, we continue with our look at the saints as our gospel lesson recounts the moment when St. Matthew left a world of relative wealth and power for a life of limited means and humility as a disciple of Christ.
Now this account doesn’t give us a lot of details, very similar to the call of St. Andrew that we heard about a couple of weeks ago, but there wasn’t really any time for deliberation, no time for Matthew to say, let me think about it. But Jesus compels him to follow Him, and he does.
In accepting this call, Matthew would go on to be an apostle, an evangelist to the Jews, and write, or at least provide the account for the gospel that would serve as the bridge between the Old and New Testaments. And much like Andrew, Matthew would remain mostly inconspicuous, like Andrew, a humble servant. Well, Matthew’s gospel was written primarily for Jews so that they would come to faith in Jesus as the Messiah, and the beginning of the book starts with almost an entire chapter that was dedicated to the genealogy of Christ so that they would see that he was the direct son of David.
He shows Jesus as the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies and covenant, and he actually uses this phrase, this was to fulfill, 16 times in places that do refer back to the Old Testament Scripture. Matthew’s gospel is a teaching gospel. It relies heavily on the theme of Jesus as King, a word he uses for Jesus over 20 times. Now perhaps this was to acknowledge, of course, Jesus as the true king. Maybe he was kind of sticking it to Herod because he was actually under the thumb of Herod and Galilee, but it was certainly used to reinforce the Old Testament prophecies that he read in places such as Zechariah 9.9 that says, “Behold, your king is coming to you, righteous and having salvation is he,” just like we sang in Psalm 119.
Now, Matthew is perhaps the most unlikely apostle among the original 12. He was a Jew from Capernaum or somewhere in that vicinity, but he preferred to use his Greek name Matthew instead of his given name Levi, possibly to identify with the Roman world. We hear him often, probably most often described as a tax collector, a profession which seldom is held in any kind of high regard in any society throughout all of time, but his official Roman title would have been publican. That sounds much better, doesn’t it? A publican is a keeper of public tolls or taxes, and since he was a publican, Matthew probably was well-educated. He spoke Hebrew, he spoke Greek, and he probably had an above-average ability to read and write.
And so these attributes obviously served him well as a publican, but they were also going to serve him well in the calling that he was about to receive. Now, publicans would acquire their positions by bidding for the job. And the Roman government really didn’t want to be bothered with filling these kind of menial task positions, so they would often outsource it to the locals. Publicans had the opportunity to put a little extra money in their pocket if they collected more than the Romans required, and the Romans didn’t care as long as they got paid, so this fact made Matthew universally despised.
The Jews hated him because he was basically a tool of the Roman government, even if he was actually under Herod, and the Romans hated him because obviously he was a Jewish collaborator. We can imagine that despite the wealth that he had acquired by filling this position, he had to have lived some type of miserable existence, especially when it came to interacting with other Jews. You might read that he is often referred to as what they call a quizling. That is, somebody who is a traitor to his own people.
It’s kind of like being an Aggie in Austin. Worse, Matthew was unable to attend the synagogue because his Jewish identity had essentially been stripped from him. He was public enemy number one to the Pharisees, and he was, for all intents and purposes, a man caught in the middle of two worlds. So he had to have been pretty surprised when he hears somebody call out to him; he looks up from his ledger, and there is Jesus standing there beckoning him.
Now some say maybe Matthew knew Jesus beforehand, knew him personally, at least maybe had heard of him and his teaching before this encounter, but regardless of that, Jesus speaks to him pretty familiarly and with authority when he plainly says, “Follow me.” That doesn’t sound like an invitation but an imperative, and after all, it wasn’t like Matthew had anything better to do. He probably often kept to himself, immersed himself in his duties, maybe thinking someday I’ll get some kind of recognition for the service I’m providing to the Romans. Instead, Jesus is gonna offer Matthew something that’s gonna come with an even greater reward.
And notice how Matthew doesn’t put any kind of emphasis on what happens next. He doesn’t put it on himself. His account doesn’t tell us which house Jesus goes to, even though Luke does. Luke says it was indeed Matthew’s house. And if it wasn’t bad enough that Jesus now has placed himself at the house of this disreputable Matthew, Jesus goes so far as to invite many tax collectors and sinners. Now these sinners, they could have been guilty of any number of different sins, but in general, to the Pharisees, they were living outside the law. They were like Matthew, unworthy and unclean.
Now there are some things going on here that we need to take into consideration. This isn’t just some kind of casual get-together where Jesus is just hanging out with all these ne’er-do-wells. We’ve all probably made some pretty poor decisions about the people we’ve hung around with, who we fraternize with at one point or another. But to the Pharisees, Jesus is defining who he is by who he’s hanging out with.
We also don’t really think twice about sharing a meal with people we don’t know very well. But this wasn’t the case in Jewish society where table fellowship reinforced societal norms and relationships. This is where the social status quo was solidified and enforced. So participation in a meal signaled intimacy and mutual affirmation. And Jesus was sending a very strong message to the, not just the Pharisees, but to those he had invited.
So you’ve probably heard the saying, “haters gonna hate.” Well, the Pharisees are gonna Pharisee. I mean, how did they even know this meeting was taking place? Probably, like always, they had their spies there, but the text says they saw this quote, this going on, so they’re gonna go out of their way to catch Jesus doing something wrong as they usually do, and in their characteristically cowardly fashion, they don’t go confront Jesus directly. Instead, they go to the disciples, trying to separate them apart. “How dare your teacher eat with these lowlifes? Why aren’t you gonna do something about it?”
And in his usual temperament, we can see Jesus kind of pushing the disciples to the side saying, “I’ve got this.” In his reply, Jesus doesn’t go into some kind of diatribe or some kind of lesson back to the law as the Pharisees would have done. Rather, he makes this simple analogy: “Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick.”
So what exactly does Jesus mean by saying this? Well, at least two things. First, no one is going to go to the doctor for no reason at all. Maybe a hypochondriac might do that, but it would be unexpected for a patient to just show up and say, “I want to take my exam, how much is my co-pay?” No, Jesus says these tax collectors and sinners are here because they are sick. They need healing, the healing of forgiveness which I give them.
And second, doctors don’t refuse sick patients out of fear of getting sick themselves. But Jesus says, “You Pharisees, you would rather say, ‘Yep, you’re sick. Sorry I can’t help you.’ You want to point out their faults but not give them a remedy.” So Jesus tells these self-righteous, all-knowing Pharisees that they really don’t know much at all. “Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” Go and learn. That sounds almost kind, but in fact, it’s a pretty stiff rebuke.
So go back and read the scriptures you know so much about. Particularly, go read Hosea chapter 6, verse 6, where Yahweh says, “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” But the Pharisees, they don’t think they need mercy, so why would they give it to anyone else, especially tax collectors and sinners?
So Jesus then kind of caps this lesson off with, “For I came not to call the righteous but sinners.” You have to wonder if the Pharisees ever questioned, “Why doesn’t Jesus, this teacher, come and seek us out?” And even if he did, they would assume that he was coming to learn from them. They had forgotten the proverb, “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
So in his interaction with the Pharisees, Jesus exposes them to be the hypocrites they are, but more importantly, Jesus reveals the nature of his ministry. Yet was everything the Pharisees were preaching, and their preaching in the law, wasn’t. So in eating with tax collectors and sinners, Christ had offered a place at the table not simply to fill empty stomachs, but empty souls. He was making disciples, calling them to leave their old lives behind. He was offering grace and mercy instead of spite, salvation instead of condemnation.
And Matthew was one of those very sinners that he came to call. Matthew was an outcast. He was a pariah. He was rich in earthly means, but he was poor in spirit. He was physically healthy, but he is suffering the sickness of sin. And he was never going to find himself with an invitation at the table of the Pharisees.
Now, although Matthew has this distinct calling to be a disciple and an apostle, his calling is really not that much different from you or I, from any other Christian. So as Christians today, we find ourselves kind of like Matthew. We’re caught in the middle of these two kingdoms.
One that says that God’s law and the Christian life is intolerant, bigoted, hateful—a kingdom that wants to shun and cancel us, but a kingdom that we nevertheless have to live in. The other kingdom says we should fear, love, and trust God above all things because he promises grace and every blessing to those who keep his commandments. And this kingdom it seeks us out; it brings us into it not by our own ability to keep the law, but through the grace of Jesus Christ alone.
So like Matthew, Jesus has called us to be disciples. In doing so, he says simply what he said to Matthew, “Follow me.” And in following him, we are prepared to forsake all earthly things and become like one who has nothing. Like Matthew, he invites us to the table where he comes as our host, where he has prepared a meal that will refresh and nourish us in body and soul. And like Matthew, we come to Jesus the great physician himself in need of healing from the sin that infects us, and like Matthew, Christ welcomes and accepts us as the tax collectors and sinners we are only by the blood of his cross through which he gives us mercy and peace so that we may be counted righteous before God.
Now may the love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ be with us all and forevermore. Amen.
