Faithful, Not Successful
Sermon
Uplifting Christ Through Autumn
Sermons for the Fall Season
Object:
Today is a day in the church year that is set aside to remember and commemorate the early church apostle and evangelist, Saint Matthew.
Actually, very little is known about the Matthew mentioned in the Bible as one of the original apostles. But what little is known is quite significant. This gospel reading (Matthew 9:9-13) states that when Jesus asked him to join the movement, Matthew was a tax collector. This in its original historical setting was a radical proclamation of the extent of God's grace and love.
Tax collectors in Palestine were hated people. They were hated not because they reduced people's take-home pay; hated not necessarily because the collectors were allowed to add on a percentage of the take for their own profit, which they did; not necessarily because their collected taxes were in addition to the temple tax collected in each town, which they were. The tax collector was despised with an internal churning hate because of their legal, occupational connection to the local military rule set up by the Roman overlords. Tax collectors were hated outcasts because they were local people who apparently sold out -- who compromised their Jewish roots and religion, traditions and law to work for the emperor of Rome, an emperor who bordered on claiming his own divinity. To work for the emperor, to collect his taxes, was to participate in idolatry.
The Word of God through Jesus comes often as a radical rearrangement of things. Jesus ate with tax collectors, ate with sinners, outcasts, not only met with them, talked with them, went to them, but ate with them. Eating together, sharing food, passing around the bread and wine from one hand and mouth to another, reclining at table; this was considered a very intimate act, almost sacred interaction in the ancient Near East. And Jesus ate with outcasts, sinners, and tax collectors-traitors. Jesus not only ate with them but also asked them to join the movement. A tax collector -- Matthew -- became an apostle.
Remember, too, that Roman tax collectors were successful people, if success is judged in terms of an annual salary. You had to have connections to get that job. Tax collectors lived comfortably in an uncomfortable age.
We are called by God not to be successful but faithful. Matthew accepted a new mission. As we move our way through choosing courses at college, setting priorities and goals and majors and graduate schools, it is perhaps good to remember Matthew. We are called not to be successful in the eyes of the world; we are called to be faithful. Matthew the tax collector becomes an apostle of Jesus, Jesus whom we now call the Christ. A radical rearrangement of the flow of society and definitions of success.
There is an interesting side chapel in France -- small, contemporary -- that has a simple altar, and on the wall is a painting or series of paintings called the stations of the cross. The artist was Matisse. As you know, I am sure many, if not most, Roman Catholic churches and chapels have somewhere in their naves a series of paintings of statues called the stations of the cross which portray the various stages or stops that tradition has allowed Jesus on his painful walk through the streets of Jerusalem on his way to Calvary.
Well, Matisse, too, painted the stations of the cross. But the Matisse stations of the cross are all out of order. The first station is in a lower row of the painting -- the second to the right of it, and a third, but then the next stops are up in the higher row now moving to the left. They weave around in a strange pattern; they seem all wrong, out of order, all different from the way we normally would expect them to be, but that, I think, is the movement of God through Christ -- the love and will of God often flows opposite to our normal way of doing things -- our normal way of treating people -- opposite to the flow of our cultural baggage -- running counter to our selfish expressions. God's love and will is often opposite of our definitions of success -- our caste systems of racism, sexism, our ways of deciding who are the chosen and who are the outcasts.
Jesus ate with outcasts and chose Matthew, a tax collector, to be an apostle.
Let's jump ahead now to a generation beyond Jesus. The festival day of Saint Matthew has also traditionally been a time to examine the so-called Matthean community in which the gospel that we call the Gospel of Saint Matthew developed.
In the year 70 A.D., in retaliation for an organized Jewish rebellion, Jerusalem was partially leveled by Roman shock troops. The local residents, particularly those who took their religion seriously, were forced to scatter. Included in this group were a number of Greek-speaking Jews who proclaimed Jesus as the Christ. They moved north and settled in a community and formed a church up the coast on the Syrian-Turkish border. More Jews were moving in from the south into this area. Also in this community on the Mediterranean were local Greek-speaking people, some of whom had converted to Christianity, and some of whom kept their local gods.
The newly formed Christian group there felt the need to gather the facts and stories, the tales about this Jesus, the Christ, to share with others in this fast-moving town.
For purposes of worship, teaching, and evangelism, they collected the information about Jesus, some of which, according to tradition, had been written down by the Apostle Matthew. (Tax collectors supposedly were in the habit of keeping detailed records.) Information was gathered from various sources, compiled, and written down around 90 A.D. The gospel, the good news of Jesus, the Christ, our Gospel of Saint Matthew, good news that speaks to the problem of unbelief and like the Matisse paintings of the stations of the cross, the good news often flowed opposite to the pattern of normal human expectations and goals.
It's God's Word. It proclaims the Christ, words of forgiveness and grace that accepts even tax collectors as one of the family, one of the children of a loving concerned parent.
As Christ gave to Matthew a new mission, the Gospel of Matthew proclaims a new mission to that first-century gathering of refugees who were looking for some ultimate meaning in a brutal, confusing age that so often defined success in terms of power and wealth and land. Christ gave them a new mission, a mission that was transparent to the movement of God.
Our goal this morning is not just to understand Saint Matthew, or to understand the Matthean community -- what they wrote and why. If we would do just that alone, then we would be good historians, but that's all. Or worse yet, if we took the sacredness of this writing seriously and stopped here, we would make the Bible into some kind of idol.
Our real goal is to go beyond this and ask, "What would Saint Matthew write today if he was among us, in our community? What mission would be given to us?" This is a critical step to remember in your own Bible study. The heart of the matter is to attempt to answer this question.
I think it is a mission that often goes against the flow of things today. It is a mission that calls for us in our totality; it calls for all of us, our whole mind, body, soul, personality, time, place -- we, too, are called to be faithful.
This is like that neat surrealistic image where Ezekiel is portrayed as actually eating the scroll that contains God's Word, digesting God's Word and will, making it a part of his very self -- incorporating it into his very being. Being grasped by God -- this is faith.
We are called to be faithful, and we are sent out. At the origin and the heart of the word mission is the verb meaning "to be sent out."
We are called to be "mission-aries," that's the deepest meaning of our baptism. This is a baptism where God has claimed us as his own, before we were old enough to form illusions about earning our status based on something we did or because we believe certain things.
We have been claimed by God, that's the meaning of baptism; that is the origin of real faith, being grasped by God, and sent out.
We serve, Matthew the tax collector reminds us, not because we want to be saved but because we are saved, chosen.
Our Bible study and discussion together should not focus on how we feel about Jesus, but should focus on the question of how God feels about us.
Saint Matthew would remind us that we are part of the church. You can't be a Christian without being part of the church -- that cultural, racial mix of people, some of whom we might not like but whom we are called to love, under the blanket of God's forgiveness. We are people who come together for worship, strength, insight, interaction, shared concern, and then are continually sent out in mission.
The church is not a club for saints but a hospital for sinners, where we all have a little of the ex-tax collector in us. Christ did not come to invite virtuous people but sinners -- the church is not necessarily made up of those whom you or I happen to like, but the body of those whom God happens to love.
Saint Matthew would say that you are a part of the church and that you cannot know for real that God loves you personally until you meet him at the altar and around his Word.
He sees the church as the suffering servant, the charismatic church. Charismatic means that which contains the gift of the Spirit, the presence and reality of God now and here. Keep in mind, also, that God's Spirit works through non-Christians.
Saint Matthew would say that we must remember that we are catholic Christians. There are many different and valid ways of expression of faith and mission, but when it comes down to the heart of the matter -- the church is one under Christ and under one God.
As it has been said to me, "You are a baptized, charismatic, catholic Christian whom God has had his eye on since the foundations of the earth were laid."
Lutheran, Baptist, Episcopalian, and Methodists -- all are to be adjectives, not nouns; we are a Lutheran Christian, Baptist Christian, Methodist Christian -- Christ is the only base of authority.
Saint Matthew today would say that we have a mission to our world, not the world of the Gospel of Saint Matthew, not a world occupied by Roman soldiers, or the confusion of Greek and Arab mindsets trying to understand one another, but a world today of secularism amid pluralism, all areas of narcissism where the tower of Babel soaring in the sky is constructed out of soda cans from the side of the road, beer cans, sulfur dioxide, nuclear waste, and power politics. It is still a world where poor sinners, twentieth-century tax collectors who have sold out their roots can be picked up from the dust and invited to dinner by Christ himself. It is a world where we are invited to become a part of his movement each day anew, a movement that often flows opposite to values and definitions of success given by the power and status seekers today. It's a movement that often contains stopping places, stations, on a way to a crucifixion, but a movement that through Christ is grounded in the very reality of God, a movement into the promise of love's unending future.
Today is the festival of Saint Matthew, the apostle and evangelist. If we take this character seriously, he is a powerful reminder of our shared mission. Amen.
Actually, very little is known about the Matthew mentioned in the Bible as one of the original apostles. But what little is known is quite significant. This gospel reading (Matthew 9:9-13) states that when Jesus asked him to join the movement, Matthew was a tax collector. This in its original historical setting was a radical proclamation of the extent of God's grace and love.
Tax collectors in Palestine were hated people. They were hated not because they reduced people's take-home pay; hated not necessarily because the collectors were allowed to add on a percentage of the take for their own profit, which they did; not necessarily because their collected taxes were in addition to the temple tax collected in each town, which they were. The tax collector was despised with an internal churning hate because of their legal, occupational connection to the local military rule set up by the Roman overlords. Tax collectors were hated outcasts because they were local people who apparently sold out -- who compromised their Jewish roots and religion, traditions and law to work for the emperor of Rome, an emperor who bordered on claiming his own divinity. To work for the emperor, to collect his taxes, was to participate in idolatry.
The Word of God through Jesus comes often as a radical rearrangement of things. Jesus ate with tax collectors, ate with sinners, outcasts, not only met with them, talked with them, went to them, but ate with them. Eating together, sharing food, passing around the bread and wine from one hand and mouth to another, reclining at table; this was considered a very intimate act, almost sacred interaction in the ancient Near East. And Jesus ate with outcasts, sinners, and tax collectors-traitors. Jesus not only ate with them but also asked them to join the movement. A tax collector -- Matthew -- became an apostle.
Remember, too, that Roman tax collectors were successful people, if success is judged in terms of an annual salary. You had to have connections to get that job. Tax collectors lived comfortably in an uncomfortable age.
We are called by God not to be successful but faithful. Matthew accepted a new mission. As we move our way through choosing courses at college, setting priorities and goals and majors and graduate schools, it is perhaps good to remember Matthew. We are called not to be successful in the eyes of the world; we are called to be faithful. Matthew the tax collector becomes an apostle of Jesus, Jesus whom we now call the Christ. A radical rearrangement of the flow of society and definitions of success.
There is an interesting side chapel in France -- small, contemporary -- that has a simple altar, and on the wall is a painting or series of paintings called the stations of the cross. The artist was Matisse. As you know, I am sure many, if not most, Roman Catholic churches and chapels have somewhere in their naves a series of paintings of statues called the stations of the cross which portray the various stages or stops that tradition has allowed Jesus on his painful walk through the streets of Jerusalem on his way to Calvary.
Well, Matisse, too, painted the stations of the cross. But the Matisse stations of the cross are all out of order. The first station is in a lower row of the painting -- the second to the right of it, and a third, but then the next stops are up in the higher row now moving to the left. They weave around in a strange pattern; they seem all wrong, out of order, all different from the way we normally would expect them to be, but that, I think, is the movement of God through Christ -- the love and will of God often flows opposite to our normal way of doing things -- our normal way of treating people -- opposite to the flow of our cultural baggage -- running counter to our selfish expressions. God's love and will is often opposite of our definitions of success -- our caste systems of racism, sexism, our ways of deciding who are the chosen and who are the outcasts.
Jesus ate with outcasts and chose Matthew, a tax collector, to be an apostle.
Let's jump ahead now to a generation beyond Jesus. The festival day of Saint Matthew has also traditionally been a time to examine the so-called Matthean community in which the gospel that we call the Gospel of Saint Matthew developed.
In the year 70 A.D., in retaliation for an organized Jewish rebellion, Jerusalem was partially leveled by Roman shock troops. The local residents, particularly those who took their religion seriously, were forced to scatter. Included in this group were a number of Greek-speaking Jews who proclaimed Jesus as the Christ. They moved north and settled in a community and formed a church up the coast on the Syrian-Turkish border. More Jews were moving in from the south into this area. Also in this community on the Mediterranean were local Greek-speaking people, some of whom had converted to Christianity, and some of whom kept their local gods.
The newly formed Christian group there felt the need to gather the facts and stories, the tales about this Jesus, the Christ, to share with others in this fast-moving town.
For purposes of worship, teaching, and evangelism, they collected the information about Jesus, some of which, according to tradition, had been written down by the Apostle Matthew. (Tax collectors supposedly were in the habit of keeping detailed records.) Information was gathered from various sources, compiled, and written down around 90 A.D. The gospel, the good news of Jesus, the Christ, our Gospel of Saint Matthew, good news that speaks to the problem of unbelief and like the Matisse paintings of the stations of the cross, the good news often flowed opposite to the pattern of normal human expectations and goals.
It's God's Word. It proclaims the Christ, words of forgiveness and grace that accepts even tax collectors as one of the family, one of the children of a loving concerned parent.
As Christ gave to Matthew a new mission, the Gospel of Matthew proclaims a new mission to that first-century gathering of refugees who were looking for some ultimate meaning in a brutal, confusing age that so often defined success in terms of power and wealth and land. Christ gave them a new mission, a mission that was transparent to the movement of God.
Our goal this morning is not just to understand Saint Matthew, or to understand the Matthean community -- what they wrote and why. If we would do just that alone, then we would be good historians, but that's all. Or worse yet, if we took the sacredness of this writing seriously and stopped here, we would make the Bible into some kind of idol.
Our real goal is to go beyond this and ask, "What would Saint Matthew write today if he was among us, in our community? What mission would be given to us?" This is a critical step to remember in your own Bible study. The heart of the matter is to attempt to answer this question.
I think it is a mission that often goes against the flow of things today. It is a mission that calls for us in our totality; it calls for all of us, our whole mind, body, soul, personality, time, place -- we, too, are called to be faithful.
This is like that neat surrealistic image where Ezekiel is portrayed as actually eating the scroll that contains God's Word, digesting God's Word and will, making it a part of his very self -- incorporating it into his very being. Being grasped by God -- this is faith.
We are called to be faithful, and we are sent out. At the origin and the heart of the word mission is the verb meaning "to be sent out."
We are called to be "mission-aries," that's the deepest meaning of our baptism. This is a baptism where God has claimed us as his own, before we were old enough to form illusions about earning our status based on something we did or because we believe certain things.
We have been claimed by God, that's the meaning of baptism; that is the origin of real faith, being grasped by God, and sent out.
We serve, Matthew the tax collector reminds us, not because we want to be saved but because we are saved, chosen.
Our Bible study and discussion together should not focus on how we feel about Jesus, but should focus on the question of how God feels about us.
Saint Matthew would remind us that we are part of the church. You can't be a Christian without being part of the church -- that cultural, racial mix of people, some of whom we might not like but whom we are called to love, under the blanket of God's forgiveness. We are people who come together for worship, strength, insight, interaction, shared concern, and then are continually sent out in mission.
The church is not a club for saints but a hospital for sinners, where we all have a little of the ex-tax collector in us. Christ did not come to invite virtuous people but sinners -- the church is not necessarily made up of those whom you or I happen to like, but the body of those whom God happens to love.
Saint Matthew would say that you are a part of the church and that you cannot know for real that God loves you personally until you meet him at the altar and around his Word.
He sees the church as the suffering servant, the charismatic church. Charismatic means that which contains the gift of the Spirit, the presence and reality of God now and here. Keep in mind, also, that God's Spirit works through non-Christians.
Saint Matthew would say that we must remember that we are catholic Christians. There are many different and valid ways of expression of faith and mission, but when it comes down to the heart of the matter -- the church is one under Christ and under one God.
As it has been said to me, "You are a baptized, charismatic, catholic Christian whom God has had his eye on since the foundations of the earth were laid."
Lutheran, Baptist, Episcopalian, and Methodists -- all are to be adjectives, not nouns; we are a Lutheran Christian, Baptist Christian, Methodist Christian -- Christ is the only base of authority.
Saint Matthew today would say that we have a mission to our world, not the world of the Gospel of Saint Matthew, not a world occupied by Roman soldiers, or the confusion of Greek and Arab mindsets trying to understand one another, but a world today of secularism amid pluralism, all areas of narcissism where the tower of Babel soaring in the sky is constructed out of soda cans from the side of the road, beer cans, sulfur dioxide, nuclear waste, and power politics. It is still a world where poor sinners, twentieth-century tax collectors who have sold out their roots can be picked up from the dust and invited to dinner by Christ himself. It is a world where we are invited to become a part of his movement each day anew, a movement that often flows opposite to values and definitions of success given by the power and status seekers today. It's a movement that often contains stopping places, stations, on a way to a crucifixion, but a movement that through Christ is grounded in the very reality of God, a movement into the promise of love's unending future.
Today is the festival of Saint Matthew, the apostle and evangelist. If we take this character seriously, he is a powerful reminder of our shared mission. Amen.
