267 Matthew's Selfie

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Matthew’s Selfie”, originally shared on June 7, 2023. It was the 267^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   Matthew, yes that Matthew, tells the story of how he came to be a disciple of Jesus Christ in the third person, as “he” not “I”. Why? And what does this tell us about what it means for us to be disciples of Jesus Christ? Today, we’re going to find out.

   Matthew was a tax collector. He was also the Matthew who wrote the first book in the New Testament.

   There are four gospels, or stories of the good news of Jesus Christ, in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and they all tell it a little differently.

   And they were all inspired by the Holy Spirit. When you read one of those gospels, you aren’t just processing words on a page. You are in the presence of God. God is speaking to you, to your true self.

   So, it’s interesting that there is a part of this gospel where Matthew tells the story of how he came to be one of Jesus’ 12 disciples, the guys who spent the three years of Jesus’ public ministry on the road with Him. And he tells it in the third person. He describes the most important event in his life as an observer.

   Why?

   Here’s the scoop, in Matthew 9:9,

⁹As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

   That’s it. No details on how he felt, how it changed his life, why he got up and did a complete 180 in his life, or why he did it just like that.

   Maybe he didn’t know the answers himself. There was just Jesus and Matthew followed Him.

   There was certainly a reaction from the Pharisees, members of a religious party among the Jews. They were the good people who everybody else looked up to. They were lay people who had devoted their lives to studying what we would call the Old Testament and living according to its laws. Every Jewish man, and only men could be Pharisees, of Jesus’ generation hoped to be in the financial position to be a Pharisee one day.

   And Jesus was almost always knocking heads with them.

   Why? Because they were devoted to keeping the letter of the religious law, and often looked down on those who didn’t, but they had not recognized the spirit of the law.

   Here’s how they responded to Jesus associating with guys like Matthew, in Matthew 9:10-11,

¹⁰And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. ¹¹When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

   Here’s why being a tax collector was a problem on a par with being a publicly known sinner at that time:

   The Jews knew that their tax money wasn’t going to go to their representative government, it was going to serve the interests of the Roman Empire and the tax collectors.

   When the Romans occupied Israel, they put out a job notice, looking for literate locals.

   The Romans had divided the country up into tax districts, and they invited people with the necessary accounting skills to apply for the job of tax collector in each district.

   The Romans then asked for bids. Whoever submitted the highest amount of money that they said they could extract in taxes from that district got the job.

   The Empire gave the tax collectors coercive power and personal protection from Roman soldiers, and anything the tax collectors “collected” from the populace beyond what they had bid would go into their own pockets.

   So, tax collectors were hated as traitors to their own people who got rich by extorting money from them, and they were feared because they were agents of the foreign occupying Roman Empire.

   And here’s how Jesus responds, in Matthew 9:12-13,

¹²But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ¹³Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

  The Pharisees were the very definition of being self-righteous. They were full-time religious law-keepers. They believed that their need for forgiveness was little to none.

   Matthew had to feel the hatred of his community. He knew he was a sinner. When Jesus showed up at his tax booth, perhaps he saw in Jesus the chance for forgiveness that only comes to those who know that they need it. He saw his chance and he took it.

   Maybe that’s why the story of himself that Matthew puts in his gospel about his sudden career change is so short. It’s obvious.

   At least it’s obvious to all those who know that something’s wrong with their life, perhaps they know that they are separated from God by their rebellion against God, their sin. Perhaps they have known their separation from the beginning of their lives. Or someone recognized it for them. And when Jesus offers you redemption, a new life, you take it.

   A selfie is a picture you take of yourself. There might be others in the picture, but you are certainly there. That’s why it’s called a selfie.

   Matthew gives us a picture of himself.

   It’s written in the third person, as a description of himself as from the outside, because it is the story of the person he used to be, not the person he is now, the person writing the gospel.

   He has been given a new life in a living relationship with the one true living God.

   Pastor Rick Warren once said that God’s doesn’t call the qualified. God qualifies the called.

   Like Matthew, God has called, equipped, and sent us into the world with a vocation.

   It is lived-out as a consequence of our relationship with God. It is a natural expression of who we have come to be in the presence of Jesus and the invitation he extends to each of us to, like Matthew, follow Him.

   We are, each of us, no matter who we are or what we’ve done, valued by God. God makes of us a new creation. We are born again. We are loved. This is God’s nature.

   It is a message that we are privileged to share with those who most need it today.

   One of my favorite examples of this comes at the end of a 2007 article about the early 20^th century evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson in the “The New Yorker Magazine” by John Updike. Sister Aimee, as she was known, was a pioneering and popular figure in the United States, her life was filled with success and scandals. She founded Angeles Temple in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles and the international Foursquare Church denomination. She at one time fled the country.

   Charges against her had been dropped in LA and she traveled to New York. She went to Texas Guinan’s popular speakeasy (fun fact Whoopi Goldberg played a character named Guinan who ran the bar on the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek: Next Generation).

   Sister Aimee entered the club in a yellow suit and furs. A reporter called for her to speak. The proprietress agreed and Sister Aimee calmly walked to the center of the dance floor, smiled, paused, and said, “Behind all these beautiful clothes, behind these good times, in the midst of your lovely buildings and shops and pleasures, there is another life. There is something on the other side. ‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ With all your getting and playing and good times, do not forget you have a Lord. Take Him into your hearts.”

   Texas Guinan walked over to Sister Aimee to the applause of the crowd, put her arm around her, and stood there to the ongoing ovation of the club-goers.

   We are no longer sinners alone, we are saints and sinners, still not perfect except in the relationship with God in Jesus Christ that was earned for us on the cross.

   We are God’s imperfect but redeemed people, not by our own efforts or successes, but by the recognition of our failures to be the people that God has made us to be. It is simply God’s call that makes us strong.

   Matthew’s selfie is a picture of God at work. It is powerful in its simplicity. It is our selfie, too, the story of God ‘s grace at work in us. We who were lost have been found. We have been given newness of life and we, like Matthew, get up and follow Jesus.