As Jesus passed by,
he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post.
He said to him, “Follow me.”
Jesus calls each of us in the same way he called Matthew. And while we are often surprised that Matthew was able to simply get up and go simply when he was asked, to leave his former life behind him simply at the invitation of Jesus, there is a way in which it is like this for every disciple he invites. None of us knows Jesus so well when we begin to walk with him that we understand to where that call will take us. We all have reasons why perceive that the invitation is credible. We sense that it promises joy and fulfillment. But none of us really understands how this comes to be until immediately. It is rather by a lifetime of following that we come by degrees to truly understand what was hidden but present in the initial call.
And he got up and followed him.
Matthew might probably have been ashamed of his old life as a tax collector now that he was in the company of Jesus. But there was nothing in Matthew's past that Jesus couldn't turn into an asset. There was no brokenness that could not be woven into a new and beautiful design.
While he was at table in his house,
many tax collectors and sinners came
and sat with Jesus and his disciples.
Matthew's own stained past opened the way for Jesus to speak to others in similar circumstances. If Matthew had simply hidden or denied that past then many others who needed what Matthew needed from Jesus might not have been able to receive it. Jesus has this power to make use of all of our pasts in ways which we would not expect and could not guess.
The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples,
“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
He heard this and said,
“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
Jesus worked through Matthew to call more and more people into the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. He worked through natural gifts and circumstances that already characterized Matthew. But to this same end of uniting all people in himself he also gave supernatural gifts.
And he gave some as Apostles, others as prophets,
others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers,
to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry,
for building up the Body of Christ,
until we all attain to the unity of faith
and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood,
to the extent of the full stature of Christ.
Jesus made Matthew an Apostle and an evangelist, a teacher by the words he wrote, in order to be a source of unity for the whole Church. His past and human characteristics at a natural level were not thrown aside, but rather taken up and perfected. In Matthew's Gospel his own sinful past and transformation in Christ was able to reach beyond his own acquaintances during his lifetime to all sinners who would read it throughout history. They could see in him hope for themselves. We can see in him hope for us. We are not so different from Matthew the tax collector before Jesus invites us to follow. And the promise to us when we do follow him is no different: "knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ."
Their message goes out through all the earth.
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