Invitation to Transforming Discipleship

 Friends, we’re now in the third Sunday of Lent, as, because of that, the third week of this sermon series I put together for this season, where we’re taking a look at a book called Invitations of Jesus by author and pastor Trevor Hudson. Every week, we’re looking at a verse from the Gospels where Jesus extends some kind of invitation to the folks around him, and we’re looking at what we learn from that invitation. 

This week’s invitation, and the only Gospel passage I’m going to have us look at, comes from Matthew’s Gospel, and it’s Jesus calling Matthew, the man, to be his disciple.

Now, to be clear: many folks who interpret the Bible more conservatively assume that Matthew the disciple and Matthew the author of this Gospel are the same person, and, therefore, that this Gospel is an eyewitness account of Jesus’ life, miracles, and teachings, written by someone who spent every day and night with him for a year. Since nearly all of the disciples died young and tragically, this theory also holds that Matthew the disciple must have scribbled down these words very shortly after Jesus’ death and resurrection, since he didn’t live much longer himself. This is a perfectly fine theory, and I appreciate the logic that supports it. But, it’s not the theory I’m most convinced by. Rather, I’m pulled by the theory I learned in seminary: the name of Matthew the disciple became sacred to the community of folks who told this version of Jesus’ stories to one another. This community was predominantly Jewish, and saw Jesus as the new Moses. They spent somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy years after Jesus’ resurrection telling these stories to their loved ones in an oral tradition, because very few of them could write. But these were dearly beloved stories. Seventy years is a very long time for a community where the average life expectancy is only thirty years, so this theory also holds that by the time these stories saw paper, nearly every person who lived during Jesus’ time had died.Therefore, these stories were not committed to papyrus by a devout eye witness, but rather by someone who had heard his parents and grandparents tell and retell and retell these stories over and over for years, and wanted the world to hear them. Following the logic of this theory, it’s entirely possible, and even probable, that the person who wrote these words down wasn’t named Matthew at all. It was simply the revered name of a disciple from yesteryear that the person who scribbled these words down picked as a book title, and even a pen name. Nowadays that sounds kind of fishy, but in antiquity there was nothing odd about attributing your writing to someone your community admired. This theory also holds that Mark’s Gospel was already out there when Matthew’s was written, and that the author of Matthew held Mark in front of him while he wrote this Gospel. Again, that sounds sus now, but it would have been a high honor two thousand years ago. Folks who hold this theory also tend to hold that seventy years of folks repeating stories to one another is plenty of time for the juiciest details of these stories to get exaggerated and amplified, and the boring parts of these stories to get cut down, and eventually cut out. Afterall, it’s what you do when you’re not just trying to relay a series of historical events to someone, you’re trying to tell them a good story. One that will change their mind and heart and convince them of your truth.

This understanding of how the Gospels came to be written can be a hard sell, especially if it’s not what you learned in Sunday school. After all “I saw it all happen myself, I’m Matthew” would be an incredible subtitle for this Gospel. If you maintain that more conservative theory, it shines a whole other light on this particular pericope, the one of Matthew’s call story. It would mean that these verses are the author telling us about the very first day he met Jesus, and what he saw and heard that convinced him to stop being a tax collector and start following around a wandering, voluntarily homeless rabbi instead. I mean, I’d love to read that story, I’m not denying its power.

What I’d like y’all in these pews to hear, though, is that the power of these words is so strong, so alive, that it can’t be diminished by any person, or any theory of authorship.

This story is bigger than all of that. This is a story about a guy who went so far off the beaten path that the consequences of it killed him, and then twelve dudes who, despite having pretty strong common sense, decided to drop everything and follow Jesus into nothing.

And, most of all, this is a story about what we might expect if we do the same.

When we meet Matthew, he’s actively working as a tax collector. Being that I’m preaching this at the height of tax season, and I was collecting my research for this sermon over a pile of W2s with TurboTax open in the next browser window, “tax collector” has a particular meaning for me right now, and y’all, too, might have certain preconceived notions of what Matthew did, two millennia ago, as a tax collector. And, despite the best political jokes we can all come up with about the IRS sticking its hands in our wallets and ripping us off, even at its worst, the folks who take our tax money now are leagues more ethical than a tax collector in First Century Palestine.

Because Matthew the Tax Collector didn’t work for a halfway reputable government institution. He was a Palestinian in bed with the Romans, the oppressors who were occupying the land of his friends and family, keeping them under tyrannical military threat and taking everything they had to give, and then some. In another few decades, Rome attacked Jerusalem, and destroyed the Temple. They’re very, very much the bad guys in this story. They’re the bad guys in Matthew’s life. But Matthew has betrayed everyone close to him, and his own belief system, in order to lick Roman boot in exchange for a little cash.

You see, Matthew’s job wasn’t to take social security and FICA taxes out of his neighbors paychecks, and then dole out some refunds on April 15th. Matthew’s job made him look more like that one school yard bully we have hazy memories of. The one who was way too tall for a third grader, and who picked you up by your ankles and shook the quarters out of your pockets. Matthew’s job was to relentlessly go after his neighbors for the large sums of money that Rome insisted on taxing them. Sums that left them utterly destitute once paid. What made all of this so much worse was that Matthew was not only free, but encouraged, to ruthlessly take his neighbors for all the blood he could squeeze from them, because whatever he could scare out of them that they didn’t actually owe in taxes to Rome, he could keep to build up his “Matthew buys a new Ferrari” fund. Matthew did this knowing perfectly well that he was working for evil people who would eventually sell him out for their own profit. This work shamed and haunted Matthew, and he saw no good way out.

That is, until a random guy named Jesus gave him one when he approached him and set, hey, quit and come with me. It might be hard for us to wrap our minds around dropping everything to follow Jesus like that, but the greatest thing Matthew’s story teaches us is that when we drop it all for Jesus, we may give up some perks and comforts, but we also get relieved of our burdens, our bad relationships, our mistakes, and our oppressors.

Matthew was free.

He knew what it would look like to be free, and how desperately he needed someone to sever the chain between him and Rome.

What chains hold you down to something harmful right now, and what would it look like if Jesus showed up with bolt cutters and set you free? What freedom do you seek?

Or, put differently, what healing do you need from our physician? In the second piece of this story, Jesus is confronted for the 9,000th time by the Pharisees, who got bored on their pedestals and decided to go harass Jesus for kicks. They saw Jesus sitting in the proverbial cafeteria, sitting at the loser table with the other tax collectors and folks like Matthew who knew exactly which chains they wanted to drop. And they questioned why Jesus, the carpenter’s son, and now a Rabbi of good repute, would associate with this riff raff. The answer for Jesus is straightforward, and two fold: we’re all riff raff on some level. We all have something in us that we’re not proud of, something that we want out. And his mission is to cure all people of those ailments, starting with people just like Matthew who know more clearly than anyone else what their ailment is. The Pharisees are very sick, too, and their ailments are clear as day to those looking at them from without. But they lack the self awareness to be able to see their own afflictions. So good for them, says Jesus, they can go enjoy another day under the delusion that they’re better than everyone else. That delusion is its own reward, and won’t last forever. And Jesus will be there when the bubble finally bursts.

Where are we in this conversation? Which table are we sitting at? How close are we to Jesus? Are we willing to sit right next to a tax collector if it means getting the help we know we need? Would we break bread with our own modern day tax collectors–the pay day loan sharks, the big pharma reps, the scuzzy used car salespeople–because Jesus’ presence would be so healing as to make everything else not matter?

Those feelings are what Hudson meant when he wrote about “transforming discipleship”. Deciding to drop our manacles and learn from Jesus can be the most liberating feeling in the world, and that feeling empowers us to pass it on and free others.

I don’t know about y’all, but I want to be free. Because I’m weighed down, and tired. Now that the department of education is getting dismantled, many of my friends are either terrified that their student loan payments are going to skyrocket, or that their kids will lose the services that help them thrive in school, or, in my case, maybe both. I’m tired of looking over my shoulder and waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m tired of reading a new horrible headline every morning. I’m tired of worrying for my most vulnerable friends. I’m tired of hiding behind the privilege afforded me as a white lady in the suburbs. I’m tired of denying my complicity in this system that’s gone way too far. And I’m tired of pretending I don’t have the power to try to change it. I’m tired of saying “I’m just a mom, someone else will have to worry about that, my kids have made it clear that cities will burn if they don’t get their chicken nuggets.” I’m tired of letting my own sin define me.

I want to drop all of that garbage like a heavy chain, and explore what I could do in the name of Jesus.

What would your life look like if you dropped your doubts, your excuses, your bad memories, your sociopolitical biases, your prejudices, and your bad decisions, and instead starting migrating toward warmth, light, and freedom?

Can you imagine it? If you can’t, then consider it a blessing that someone you don’t think very much of can highlight what you’ve been blind to. Be thankful for your Matthew, the one who shows you when you have collected taxes.

And let’s try something better, together.

Amen.