FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
(Proper 5, Year A)
June 8, 2008
Ss. Peter & Paul – Fr. Phillip Ayers
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Nobody loves the taxman.
Two thousand years after Jesus called Matthew to follow him, the tax collector’s status hasn’t changed much. The average American taxpayers’ experiences with federal and income taxes, withholding, estimated taxes, accountants, the threat of audits and the bewildering maze of tax legislation are likely to engender anxiety, suspicion and resentment. Taxpayers tend to have an adversarial relationship with tax collectors not conducive to closer, friendlier contact.
Imagine Jesus in 2008, walking into the local IRS office with his four fisherman friends and saying to the head honcho, “Follow me.” Imagine the reaction of Peter, Andrew, James and John: “Ecch! Are you serious?”
Some things don’t change in 2000 years. Nobody loves the taxman.
Except, obviously, Jesus. He loved everybody, extravagantly and indiscriminately. Tax collectors, children, straying housewives, sweaty manual workers, bad women, thieves, artists, people with horrible and contagious diseases, people who were homeless or hungry or smelled bad—good, bad, worthy, unworthy, and everybody in between. Even people who didn’t love themselves.
For Jesus, love wasn’t about respectability.
It’s embarrassing to admit any identification with people who don’t love themselves, but let’s be honest—believers place a high value on respectability.
We want to be good; we want to be presentable, worthy of respect. We pick up our liter because it’s the right thing to do—and we wouldn’t want to risk a fine. We mow our lawn because it makes the house look nice—and we don’t want the neighbors complaining. We wear the right clothes to the right parties. We worry, “What will people think?” At the root of it, we’re only comfortable with those who are just like us: respectable. But respectability is only a civic virtue. It’s not a religious value.
When Jesus challenges us, “I have come to call, not the self-righteous, but sinners” (Matthew 9:13), how do we respond? “Ecch! Are you serious?”
Over and over God keeps telling us what we don’t want to hear.
If I forget God, if I just slide along, self-righteous and full of civic virtue, who could rescue me from God’s anger? Who would have the daring to go against God on my behalf, or who would have the power to withstand God?
Only God’s Son, who came to call sinners. Sinners like us—if we admit how shallow our faith is and how skimpy our knowledge of God. Sinners like the tax collector and the publican. Sinners like the woman taken in adultery. Sinners like little Zacchaeus, and the fishermen. Sinners whose bodies bore what society considered the mark of God’s disfavor: possessed by demons, mentally or physically ill, sightless, crippled, poor.
Even after 2000 years of the good news of Jesus, we still harbor in our deepest hearts a sense that such afflictions are punishments from God. We pity such people; we want to help in some way . . . if it doesn’t cost too much. We pray that nothing so awful happens to us; we want our lives to be normal, respectable and filled with good fortune.
Yet Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, the sorrowful, those who are persecuted.” Blessed are the “not-respectable.”
Consider one more thing: when Jesus said, “Follow me,” Matthew just did it. Without protest, without questions, without hesitation: he just got up and went with Jesus, leaving behind everything in his old life—job security, position in the community, everything. What incredible presence called forth such faith? What simplicity of spirit spoke directly to Matthew’s heart? What unimaginable depth and breadth of love rocked Matthew’s world?
Jesus still calls us, these days, through other people—yes, including all those sinners. Is our faith deep enough to recognize Jesus in whomever he chooses to speak to us?
It might even be the taxman.
[Ideas from M.D. Ridge in Homily Service, June, 2002]
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