Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist

“And he arose, and followed him.” — St. Matthew 9. 9

I wore a uniform for twenty-five years in the military. During that time, I learned the importance of duty, structure, and following orders. When a commanding officer gave a directive, you obeyed without hesitation. You knew your place, your purpose, and your identity within that system.

Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom, also knew his place. He was a tax collector, a man defined by his occupation—one that brought him wealth but alienated him from his own people. He was deeply entrenched in a system of worldly authority and financial security. Yet, when Jesus Christ walked past and issued a simple, divine command—“Follow me”—everything changed.

Christ did not offer him a detailed plan, a retirement package, or a map of the journey ahead. He simply called. And Matthew's response was immediate and absolute. He left behind his ledgers, his coins, and his old life. He traded the security of his worldly position for the uncertain, yet glorious, path of discipleship. Just as a soldier answers the call of duty, Matthew answered the call of the Savior. He arose, and followed him, stepping out of his old uniform of sin and isolation, and putting on the armor of light as an Apostle of the Lord. And as a priest, my clericals have been part of my wardrobe for close to twenty years.

I've been thinking recently about turning points. When we moved around during our time in the Navy — we lived in something like fourteen different houses — I had an identity, and so did my spouse. I was a Navy Chief, and Lucille was a Navy wife. She also had a role as a point of contact for Navy families when the ship left on deployment. It's pretty hard not to believe in divine providence when we look back at our lives and understand what happened — how singular those changes were, and how profound the outcomes became. You might say, in the words of the old poem by Robert Frost, that we took the “road less travelled.”

What do I mean by that? In the late '90s, we arrived at Point Mugu for what I knew would be my last Navy job. We joined a church in Ventura, and my movement toward another career began imperceptibly with attendance at a prayer book church. But who could have imagined that it would result in my call to the ministry a few years later? I certainly could not.

One of my favorite hymns from the 1940 Hymnal is No. 566, “Jesus Calls Us.” I often use that old standard as a sermon hymn, because I am convinced that it is emblematic of the Christian's journey. It is certainly fitting on this Saints' Day, as our shared faith connects us to Matthew — also known as Levi — one of our Lord's most improbable apostles: a despised tax collector who extracted money, and perhaps more, for himself and the Roman-backed King Herod. Let me read the third stanza: “Jesus calls us from the worship of the vain world's golden store; from each idol that would keep us, saying, ‘Christian, love me more.’”

Jesus passed that table on a typical day, not pausing to explain himself or question Matthew about the coins in the box. He saw a man doing his job and simply said two words: “Follow me.” The text does not indicate that Matthew argued, hesitated, or inquired about the ledger's fate. “And he arose, and followed him.” Notice: the call did not await the tax collector's transformation into someone deemed worthy. Jesus took him just as he was. In that moment, the tax collector's ledger became irrelevant, replaced by the weight of a new, eternal purpose that demanded his immediate and total surrender. His life of extraction ended, and his identity as a mere servant of Rome dissolved, giving way to the profound and unexpected freedom of being a disciple. The quiet rhythm of the counting house was shattered by the sudden, radical departure from his old world.

Matthew took Jesus to his house and threw a dinner for Jesus, his disciples, and Matthew's acquaintances — described as “many publicans (tax collectors) and sinners.” The Pharisees watching from the doorway asked the disciples the obvious question: why does your master eat with people like this? Jesus answered it himself, and the answer is the hinge the whole feast turns on: “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.” He did not deny what the room was full of. He told them what a physician is for.

“And he arose, and followed him.”

Saint Paul, writing to Corinth, gives the tax collector's calling its second half. “Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not.” Paul does not linger on the mercy as though it were the whole story; he moves straight from receiving it to being put to work by it — renouncing “the hidden things of dishonesty,” refusing to handle the word of God deceitfully, commending himself instead “by manifestation of the truth.” Matthew heard the same two words we all hear when mercy actually reaches us: not only forgiven, but sent. The man who once kept Rome's books took up a pen for an entirely different ledger, the holy Gospel, and the Church has read it every day since.

The Collect appointed for this day will not let us romanticize any of this. It asks God to “forsake all covetous desires, and inordinate love of riches,” and it asks it of us, not only of a tax collector nineteen centuries in his grave. Whatever sits on our own table — the ledger, the grudge, the settled opinion of ourselves or of someone we have already judged unreachable — following Christ asks us to get up from it. Not to apologize for it first, not to balance the books before we go. Matthew left the coins where they were. The call came before the reckoning, not after it.

“And he arose, and followed him.”

That is the whole of Matthew's résumé at the moment Christ wanted him — a man at a desk, and a Savior who called sinners before they had anything to offer but their willingness to rise. He is our patron for exactly this: not the reformed man Christ found, but the ordinary one Christ was not afraid to want.

Mercy found him at his worst table. Mercy sent him from it with something to say. Mercy is still finding tables, still saying the same two words, still asking only that we rise.

Amen.