SPEAKER_00: May I speak in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
SPEAKER_00: As some of you know, I am a big fan of the TV comedy series Frasia, from which comes the wonderful line: If less is more, then just think how much more would be.
SPEAKER_00: That thought passed fleetingly across my mind on Thursday evening as the brass band started up and we stepped out on our fifth solemn procession in twelve days.
SPEAKER_00: The season of Eastercar, Eastertide, and the feasts of the Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, and Corpus Christi make for a joyfully busy time each year as the days lengthen and spring turns into summer.
SPEAKER_00: But our revels now are ended, and the long green days of ordinary time or the Sundays after Pentecost are upon us once more.
SPEAKER_00: In the coming weeks and months we will return our attention to St.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew's Gospel as we hear it read at Mass each Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: And today we are presented with a beautifully short, pithy passage concerning the nature of how Christ calls.
SPEAKER_00: It's a passage that appears in all three of the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
SPEAKER_00: And although the basic thrust of the narrative is the same in all three, there are some differences between them, which, when compounded by issues of translation, make for an intriguing case study.
SPEAKER_00: So this morning I want to begin by considering this passage as it appears across the Synoptic Gospels.
SPEAKER_00: And for reference, the parallel passages are Mark 2.13 forwards and Luke 5.27 forwards.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing I want to point to is a, let us say, debatable editorial decision on the part of the compilers of the King James Version from which we've just heard.
SPEAKER_00: In many ancient manuscripts, in modern critical editions of the original Greek, in the Latin Vulgate, and in most English translations which are not derived from the KJV, Matthew and Mark end this saying of Jesus with the words, I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
SPEAKER_00: Only Luke goes further, saying, I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: There are fascinating reasons why Luke alone might have added this qualification, but the point is missed in the KJV, since it adds to repentance to both Matthew and Mark.
SPEAKER_00: We will return to the importance of these lines in just a moment, but for now this is an important example of the need for caution when reading texts in translation.
SPEAKER_00: So, in most translations, only Luke specifically mentions that sinners are called to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: In turn, only Matthew has Jesus paraphrased the passage from Hosea that we heard as our first reading this morning: I will have mercy and not sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: This is very typical of Matthew's desire throughout his gospel to show how Jesus is intimately acquainted with the Old Testament and brings both law and prophecy to fulfilment.
SPEAKER_00: The substance of the saying, a frequent theme of the prophets, is that outward observance is worth nothing without right disposition of the heart.
SPEAKER_00: And this is precisely the point Jesus is making about the Pharisees, accusing them of hardness of heart and thus hypocrisy in their ostentatious insistence on observance of the smallest details of the law.
SPEAKER_00: The third thing that makes this account across the synoptics noteworthy is that we do not even know for certain who is being called here.
SPEAKER_00: Mark and Luke in their versions name the one called as Levi.
SPEAKER_00: There are at least three possible reasons for this apparent discrepancy.
SPEAKER_00: One is that Matthew and Levi are the same person, which is possible since having two names was not uncommon in Semitic societies.
SPEAKER_00: A second is that Matthew and Levi are different people, both called to be followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And if this is true, then we can no longer piece together the precise reasons why the synoptic accounts do not quite match up, though numerous theories have been advanced.
SPEAKER_00: But there is also a third intriguing possibility.
SPEAKER_00: The Greek word for disciple is Mathaites.
SPEAKER_00: So it may be that the author of this gospel is presenting this Matthew slash Mathaites as a sort of archetype or everyman model of what it means to be a disciple, rather like John Bunyan's hero Christian in Pilgrim's Progress.
SPEAKER_00: The evangelist has taken a particular event and turned it into a paradigm.
SPEAKER_00: And if this is true, then clearly this account has much to teach every generation, including our own, about the nature of Christ's call to follow him.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to move towards a close this morning by taking the calling of Matthew, let's call him disciple, and suggesting it has five things to teach us.
SPEAKER_00: Each one of these could be a sermon in its own right, and maybe one day will be, but for now I want simply to draw attention to each of them very briefly.
SPEAKER_00: First, God calls, and we respond.
SPEAKER_00: The initiative is always his.
SPEAKER_00: In the Gospels, people frequently approach Jesus because they want something from him, and some of these subsequently become disciples, but by no means all.
SPEAKER_00: The call to follow Jesus for his own sake comes from him alone.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says to disciple, follow me, and disciple rises and follows him.
SPEAKER_00: The second point is that God calls us where we are.
SPEAKER_00: Disciple was in the middle of a working day at the tax office.
SPEAKER_00: And just as an aside, the meaning of the phrase receipt of custom, as we've just heard read, is familiar to us today in the sense of customs houses or customs and excise.
SPEAKER_00: And the word publican in the KJV has its origins not in the hospitality industry, but in the sense of one who gathers the public revenues, i.e.
SPEAKER_00: taxes.
SPEAKER_00: And so disciple was a tax collector.
SPEAKER_00: And just as Jesus called Peter and Andrew, James and John away from their fishing nets, and just as he called Saul, as he was on his way to persecute some more Christians, so here Christ calls disciple as he is going about his daily business.
SPEAKER_00: God calls us where we are.
SPEAKER_00: The third point is that God calls us as we are.
SPEAKER_00: To be a tax collector was a despised position.
SPEAKER_00: It meant working on behalf of the occupying Roman forces, and in addition, the operation of the system was frequently corrupt.
SPEAKER_00: And yet Jesus calls disciple, knowing precisely what he is.
SPEAKER_00: It is this, and the company that Jesus goes on to keep, which so scandalizes the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: But the fact remains, Jesus calls us as we are, because he loves us as we are.
SPEAKER_00: The fourth point is that while Jesus may call us as we are, he loves us too much to leave us there.
SPEAKER_00: This is made explicit in the fullness of the phrase, I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: The call to follow Jesus, accepting the call to follow Jesus, demands conversion of life, symbolized in the way that disciple, like Peter, Paul, and the others, leaves everything that he is doing and does so instantly in response to Christ's call.
SPEAKER_00: But even if the words to repentance are not included at the end of that phrase, those words of Jesus still carry a real punch.
SPEAKER_00: I am not come to call the righteous but sinners.
SPEAKER_00: The implication is that we cannot follow Jesus if we do not acknowledge ourselves to be sinners.
SPEAKER_00: If we insist on our own righteousness, then Christ will not call us.
SPEAKER_00: He says so himself.
SPEAKER_00: And so the truth is, every single one of us here is fallen, every single one of us needs saving, and every single one of us is loved beyond words by the God in whose image we are made, from whose perfect image we have fallen, and by whom we are indeed offered salvation by the death and resurrection of his Son.
SPEAKER_00: The beauty of this is summed up in the offices of the Church by the collect for the second Sunday after Christmas Day, which begins, O God, who didst wonderfully create and yet more wonderfully restore the dignity of human nature.
SPEAKER_00: The restoration is even more wonderful than the creation.
SPEAKER_00: Acknowledging the depths of our sinfulness is also to acknowledge the unbounded heights of God's redeeming love.
SPEAKER_00: And this has been one of the great insights of the saints in every age.
SPEAKER_00: So God calls us where we are and as we are, but he does so in order to save us and raise us to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: The fifth and final point is that, as someone once said, salvation is a task in company.
SPEAKER_00: No sooner has disciple left everything to follow Jesus than he finds himself in the midst of a dinner party, and thereafter he is engaged alongside the others in the public ministry of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In the words of one modern commentary, responding to the call is not a private choice, but means joining others who have responded as well.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the church exists.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we are here together.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we will break bread with one another at two tables this morning, here and now at the supper of the Lamb, and then a little later on at the luncheon of the Parish Potluck.
SPEAKER_00: This is what it means to be called by God, as illustrated by the example of Matthew Disciple.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus calls us where we are, as we are, to save us, and to unite us in communion with one another and with him.
SPEAKER_00: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_00: O God, who didst wonderfully create and yet more wonderfully restore the dignity of human nature, grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, Thy Son, Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.