Readings:
Sermon:
Today the church celebrates St Matthew the Apostle. That’s quite a difficult thing to do because we’re not sure whether we know anything about him beyond the story in today’s gospel: he was a tax collector and he was called by Jesus.
At this point you might be thinking, “Hang on, isn’t he the one who wrote that gospel? Don’t we know that about him as well?” It’s a good question, but the truth is, all our four gospels come to us without telling us who wrote them. It’s almost as if each of the writers are saying, “This is about Jesus, and I’m getting out of the way so you can listen to him without thinking about me”.
So we have a mix of traditions and guesswork to fall back on, and yes, there’s a very strong association between this gospel and St Matthew. Most people note that the version of today’s gospel in Mark and Luke calls the tax collector Levi – they think that this is Matthew saying, no, this is what happened to me. Possibly, like Simon being renamed Peter, or Saul being renamed Paul, Matthew takes or is given a new name. The original Hebrew name Mattityahu, means “gift of the Lord,” and perhaps Matthew is celebrating this gift that Jesus gives him that transforms him from tax-collector to disciple. He might also be punning on the Greek word for disciple – mathētēs – which means “learner” – it’s what he has now become.
People also think there may be another self-portrait in the gospel when Matthew rounds off a collection of parables with this saying of Jesus: “Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and old.” (Matthew 13:52). Matthew has reached back deep into his memories, he’s read and adapted Mark, and now he’s putting this teaching in a fresh arrangement for the Christians of his time and place. He’s taken his old scribal gifts that he used to keep tax records, and put them at the service of the gospel.
While we’re playing detective, let’s also notice another clue: this time what looks like a slip of the tongue, or at least a slip of the pen. Very early in the gospel, talking about how Jesus went all round Galilee preaching and healing, Matthew says “So his fame spread throughout all Syria.” (Matthew 4:24) That doesn’t quite fit, does it? One explanation is that Matthew has accidentally spoken or written the name of the place where he’s writing and evangelising, rather than where Jesus was ministering. And so many people think that Matthew was based at this point in the great Syrian city of Antioch, where according to Luke, the early disciples first got recognised as distinctive from Jews, and were first called Christians. (Acts 11:26).
But the church which early Christian tradition most associates Matthew with is the Ethiopian Church, where according to legend he was martyred. At a time when some people are trying very hard to identify being Christian with being English, Matthew the Jew, who wrote a gospel in Syria, and may have taught the faith in Ethiopia, reminds us that, however dear our English Christian heritage may be, it came to us as a gift from the Middle East, and has been African as long it has been European.
So today we celebrate Matthew. Matthew himself, it seems to me, would say we celebrate him best by continuing to read the story he wrote, and continuing to listen to the teaching of Jesus he collected and edited. Whether he did or didn’t choose his name as part of a pun on that word for learner – mathētēs – he created his gospel as something of a handbook for learners, and he invites us, his readers, to become life-long learners, not from him, but from Jesus, whose teaching he has collected, and not for ourselves only, but for everyone. At the end of his gospel he shows us Jesus saying, “Go and make disciples – learners – of all nations.”
We celebrate Matthew by being life-long learners in the school of Jesus, by letting Jesus change our lives as he changed Matthew’s, and by sharing his universal vision of good news for all peoples, all races, all places.
Questions:
- Do you find it helpful to think that disciple means life-long learner?
- If you were to pick a name that said something about your faith, what would it be, and why?
- What difference does it make to think about our Christian heritage starting as a gift to Britain from the Middle East?