Proverbs 31-12
Psalm 119: 33-40
2 Timothy 3:1-17
Matthew 9:9-13

T

he readings this morning are not the usual Sunday lectionary readings, but the readings for the Feast Day of St. Matthew. Matthew is both an Apostle and an Evangelist. He is identified with Matthew the tax collector or publican, mentioned in today’s Gospel reading (Matt. 9:9). Matthew is also traditionally identified as the author of the Gospel identified by his name, the first book in the New Testament. Many modern scholars question Matthew’s authorship, but for the convenience of this sermon, I am going to assume that both the converted tax collector and the writer of the Gospel are the same person. I’ll be focusing on the first Gospel because it is the book that has really given Matthew his influence in the church.

Matthew’s Gospel was the most popular of the four Gospels in the early church, and it has continued to be influential, both in the history of the church, and even in modern secular culture. After hearing the Gospel reading from Matthew on the Commissioning of the Twelve Apostles at a Sunday mass in February 1208, Francis of Assisi decided to devote himself to a life of poverty, and composed a simple “Rule” for his mendicant order – to follow the teachings of Jesus and to walk in his footsteps. Thomas Aquinas claimed that the entirety of Christian ethics could be summarized in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel. At the time of the Reformation, Mennonites found their inspiration for pacifism in Jesus’ commands in the Sermon on the Mount to not resist evil and to turn the other cheek. Anglican and founder of Methodism John Wesley found his doctrine of Christian perfection or “entire sanctification” in Jesus’ command in the Sermon on the Mount: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5: 48). Mahatma Gandhi found the inspiration for his philosophy of non-violence in the Sermon on the Mount.

Even modern secularists have found themselves coming back again and again to Matthew’s Gospel. In 1964, Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini made a film titled in its English translation, The Gospel According to St. Matthew. In 1971, John-Michael Tebelak wrote a script that became the off-Broadway musical and later Hollywood film Godspell, based on Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus of Montreal is a 1989 Canadian film about a group of actors who stage a modern version of the Passion Play. As they continue to enact the play, the actors lives are transformed as they begin to resemble Jesus and his followers. The Jesus of Jesus of Montreal is clearly the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel.

For most Christians, Matthew’s Gospel is likely the one with which we’re most familiar. When we think of the Christmas story of the Magi, we think of Matthew’s Gospel. When we think of the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Lord’s Prayer, we usually think of Matthew’s version, not the parallel versions found in Luke. So in addition to the writings of Paul, Matthew’s Gospel is perhaps the most influential book of the New Testament. It is through Matthew’s Gospel that most people have come to know the story of Jesus.

Despite the average Christian’s love for Matthew’s Gospel, it has sometimes been problematic for theologians, and we see the reasons why in today’s lectionary readings. The Psalm reading is from an entire chapter extolling the glories of Old Testament law: “Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it” (Ps. 119:33-35). In the language of at least some Protestant theology, this is law, and, as the proverb goes: “Law kills.” (What the apostle Paul actually wrote was “The letter kills, and the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6), but Paul had not read modern New Testament scholars).

It is all too easy to read Matthew’s Gospel as an endorsement of a kind of earnest moralism that only compounds the problem of Old Testament Law, and even goes beyond it. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come to fulfill them” (Matt. 5:17). And, “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (5:20). And, finally, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48).

Protestants have sometimes found this focus on good works in Matthew’s Gospel to be problematic, in tension with Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith alone, with Paul’s clear teaching: “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20).

There is a kind of hermeneutic that resolves any tension between Paul and Matthew by reading Matthew in the light of Paul. For theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr, the point of Jesus’ teaching about the law and righteousness in the Sermon on the Mount is not to prescribe moral behavior which no one could possibly hope to carry out, but rather to do just the opposite – to make clear that no one could possibly be expected to do the kinds of things that Jesus demands in the Sermon on the Mount. In this reading, the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount is to proclaim what Niebuhr calls an “impossible ethic,” to make demands so extreme that sinners can only recognize their utter inability to fulfill them, and thus finally be forced to throw themselves on the mercy of the gospel.

This would seem to leave us with an insuperable problem, however, a hermeneutic that puts this morning’s lectionary readings in conflict with one another other. Is the Christian gospel addressed to sinners, good news for those who know that they have failed to fulfill God’s righteous demands, and are simply unable to do so? Or is the gospel good news for the righteous, for those like the Psalmist who ask to know God’s commandments because they delight in them, who promise to keep God’s law and observe it with their entire heart?

I would suggest that this dilemma is really a false dichotomy and a fairly serious misreading not only of Matthew, but of Paul. There is no hint in Matthew’s text that the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount thought that he was making demands that he did not expect his disciples to emulate. Indeed, to the contrary, Jesus seems to be making demands that he expects his disciples to follow. But Niebuhr’s reading also fails to explain why the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel has been so appealing to readers throughout the ages, from church fathers and medievals like St. Francis to the modern screen writers of Godspell or Jesus of Montreal, who admire Matthew’s Jesus as someone to be loved and celebrated, not someone to throw us into despair of our own righteousness.

In the rest of this sermon, I’m going to engage in a kind of summary of something like “Law and Gospel” in Matthew’s Gospel. I can only give an outline, but I want to make clear that Matthew’s Gospel is not mistitled. Matthew’s Gospel really is good news, not only for sinners, but also for saints, if there are any among us.

New Testament scholars sometimes suggest that Matthew portrays Jesus as a “new Moses,” and the Sermon on the Mount as a kind of “New Law.” This is not incorrect, but I think it is the wrong place to start. It tempts us to read Matthew as a kind of moralist. I think that the proper place to begin is rather with Matthew’s understanding of God. Nothing Jesus says or does in Matthew’s Gospel makes sense apart from what Jesus tells us about the God who is his Father.

It is well known that the God in Matthew’s Gospel is the Jewish God of the Old Testament. Matthew’s Gospel is full of statements like “This was done to fulfill what was written in” followed by an Old Testament citation. But just as important as the Old Testament fulfillment is that God is described throughout Matthew’s Gospel as the Creator who loves his creation, and exercises providence over it. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us not to be anxious about our lives, what we will eat or drink because God our heavenly Father will feed us and cloth us just as he feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field. Against our worries, Jesus says: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all of these things will be added to you” (Matt. 6: 33).

I would suggest that this understanding of divine providence is even a clue to Matthew’s reading of the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. The Creator God who watches over and cares for his creation is the same God who was at work in his covenant with Israel, and is now at work in Jesus.
This God who is the Father and Creator not only watches over and cares for those who follow Jesus, but even those who do not. Followers of Jesus are called to love their enemies, and to pray for their persecutors that we may be sons of our Father in heaven, who “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). The context makes clear that this is what Jesus means when he says that we should be “perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48) This is not a call to moralist perfectionism, but a call to love others as God our Father loves us, to love even our enemies. So this is the first theme. The God of Matthew’s Gospel is the loving Father who cares for and watches over all of creation, and all people, not only those who are good, but also the evil.

Next, this Creator God is the Father of Jesus, and this God has come among us in the person of his Son. It is not just that Jesus is a “new Moses,” a law-giver, but that Jesus is God’s personal presence, and God is like Jesus. At the very beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, an angel appears to Joseph, engaged to his betrothed, Mary, and tells Joseph in a dream that Mary’s son will be named Jesus because “he will save his people from their sins.” Then comes the traditional formula. This was done to full what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “The virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name, Immanuel,” which Matthew reminds us means “God with us” (Matt. 1:20-23).

Throughout Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus plays this role of “God with us.” The providence that Jesus’ loving Father exercises over creation, Jesus now exercises in relation to his followers. Jesus appeals to his own intimate knowledge of his Father: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Immediately following this verse is Jesus’ invitation, found only in Matthew’s Gospel: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:27-29).

Jesus speaks of his relationship to his church applying this same imagery of divine providence to himself: “Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matt. 1:19-20). And the resurrected Jesus promises his followers that he will always be with them: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20).

This is the second key point. The loving God who cares for and exercises providence over creation has now come personally among us in his Son Jesus. This means that Jesus is not only a teacher of a new law, and a moral example to his followers, but is himself the very presence of God’s law, a law which is about God’s good care for and love of his creatures, not only birds of the air and lilies of the field, but especially human beings, both the good and the evil.

And so, the third point. This is actually good news for sinners. Matthew’s Gospel really is a gospel, a euaggellon. We see this especially in today’s Gospel reading that speaks of Jesus’ calling of Matthew the tax collector. If this story is autobiographical, if the apostle Matthew is also the author of the Gospel, it is even more significant because Matthew is telling the story of how, through Jesus, God was gracious to him.

In the story of Jesus’ calling of Matthew, we see a contrast between two different kinds of people, a group of good people and a group of bad people. Matthew actually describes the latter as “sinners.” After calling Matthew to follow him, Jesus is eating dinner with some of Matthew’s friends, and this offends the Pharisees, who object not directly to Jesus, but to his disciples: “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus does not use the occasion to perhaps enter into a post-modern discussion about moral relativity: “Who are we to say whether one group is morally superior to another?” Jesus rather acknowledges the legitimacy of the complaint, but then responds: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came to call not the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9:12-13).
So Matthew’s Gospel is good news for sinners, but that’s not the whole story. The story of the calling of Matthew is not the story of Jesus going to hang out with a bunch of tax collectors. The Gospel reading begins with “As Jesus passed from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.’ And he rose and followed Him” (Matt. 9:9).

Which bring us to our concluding point: In Matthew’s Gospel, salvation is not only about forgiveness of sins, but also about following Jesus. The gospel is good news for sinners, not only because Jesus forgives sins, but because Jesus does not leave us in our sins. I would say in this respect that Matthew’s understanding of discipleship is a kind of parallel to Paul’s understanding of justification by faith. For Paul, faith is not simply belief, but faithfulness, “faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6). What Paul calls “faith,” Matthew calls “following Jesus,” and following Jesus means patterning our lives on Jesus’ own character, to live as Jesus lived.

Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount is a kind of commentary on how to live as Jesus lived, and how to imitate the character of the Creator God of providence who is Jesus’ Father. In this context, it is a misreading of the Sermon on the Mount to read it as a series of didactic commands, a list of rules to be followed. Rather, the Sermon is a description of the character of disciples who come to resemble Jesus as they follow in Jesus’ footsteps.
The Sermon begins with the Beatitudes – a series of topsy-turvy descriptions of the moral character of followers of Jesus, people who live in ways contrary to the values that most human beings rather naturally tend to embrace: “Blessed are the pure in heart,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” “Blessed are the merciful” (Matt. 5:2-11).

Throughout the Sermon, Jesus speaks of a way of life that focuses not only on external moral behavior, but strikes to the very heart of the motivations behind our actions. We are not merely forbidden to kill, but to hate and to be angry without reason. We are not only expected to avoid the kinds of moral behavior that makes for scandalous headlines, but even to lust. We not only are forbidden to get even with those who do us wrong, but Jesus actually commands us to love our enemies, to forgive them, to wish them well (Matt. 5:21-48).

And of course, throughout Matthew’s Gospel, this is exactly what Jesus did, loving his enemies all the way to the cross. In a very real sense, the Sermon on the Mount is Christocentric. Just as Jesus emulates his Father’s providence by having mercy on sinners, so followers of Jesus are called to emulate Jesus by having mercy in our own treatment of others.

Another passage in Matthew’s Gospel – the parable of the Sheep and the Goats – makes clear how Jesus is central for our moral dealings with others. Jesus is not only God’s presence among us, but Jesus is present also in all of those with whom we deal. How we treat the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the imprisoned, the homeless, is indirectly a matter of dealing with Jesus. As Jesus says in the parable, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40).

In the end, there cannot really be any conflict between law and gospel if we follow Jesus. Law in Matthew’s Gospel is a reflection of God’s love for and care for all of his creation, not only the good, but also sinners. As Immanuel, “God with us,” Jesus reflects the character of his Father. He offers mercy to sinners like the tax collector Matthew, but he also calls to Matthew, “Follow me” (Matt. 9:9).

This does of course result in a kind of paradox. On the one hand, Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel is absolutely uncompromising in his demands: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). On the other hand, the call to be perfect is precisely a call to sinners, a call to be merciful as the Father of Jesus is merciful, to be merciful to others as Jesus himself has been merciful to us. What could be heard as moralistic perfectionism is actually a call to consistency, to reflect the behavior of Jesus in our own lives as Jesus reflects the character of his Father, and as he shares that character with us.

How in the world are we expected to live this out? It would perhaps be easier if we could embrace only one of these truths: The gospel is about forgiveness of sins, so it is good news for sinners. Or rather, the gospel is about being perfect as God is perfect, so it is good news for good people.
What certainly seems to be a paradox is resolved in the character of Jesus himself. Jesus is the perfect image of his Father. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. Jesus’ character is morally perfect because Jesus’ character is perfect love, the character of the Son who is the perfect reflection of the Father who sends sun and rain to both the just and the unjust. And because Jesus is perfect love, Jesus demonstrates that love to sinners – sinners like us – sinners to whom Jesus calls “Follow me.”

Paradoxical as it might seem. how these two qualities of perfect goodness and perfect mercy hold together in the life of Jesus, perhaps explains why Matthew’s Gospel continues to be so irresistible, why people as diverse as Francis of Assisi and people who make movies like Godpsell and Jesus of Montreal, keep coming back to Mathew. Despite the uncompromising character of Jesus’ call to discipleship, they find that call irresistible.
And if we read Matthew’s Gospel for ourselves, it is just possible that we may end up hearing Jesus call to us as well: “Follow me!”