2025-09-21 St. Matthew

Scripture Readings

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen!

A few years ago my sister-in-law Hailey was the victim of identity theft. She’s a Registered Nurse in Calgary. In the staff room at the hospital, everybody kept all their personal stuff while they were on shift. Purses, jackets, phones, you know, all of your regular, everyday-carry items. There were lockers in the staff room but nobody ever used them, because hey, it’s the hospital! These are all caring, well educated and well paid people. Nobody is going to steal your stuff from the staff room while nobody is looking …

That all changed when one day, some no good perp nonchalantly strolled into the staff room. Her wallet, bank cards, and license were gone in the blink of an eye. He was able to take out a bit of cash at an ATM before she shut the card down. But that was the least of the troubles. This guy continued to setup fake accounts with her info at banks and fash-cash money places. 6 months to a year later she got a phone call from the Calgary city police saying they arrested a guy with a pile of IDs on the front seat of his car - Hailey’s was one of the stolen IDs! We’re not sure if it was the same guy who stole it in the first place, but thankfully someone got busted by the fuzz!

It was a very anxiety-filled experience for poor Hailey and many other people who have likewise had to deal with this true violation of identity theft! This crime goes all the way back to the garden of Eden when Satan basically did the same thing to Adam and Eve. He “stole their identity” when he misled them: “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:4-5). You won’t be this person anymore, you’ll be that person, knowing good and evil - with a heavy emphasis on the evil part. We know what happened right after this. The flood gates of death and sin were opened and ever since all people have suffered with a spiritual identity theft.

Poor, miserable sinners we became. This also started God’s rescue mission to reclaim our true identities. For us, it starts with our Baptism. We have our sins washed away and we become a new creation by the water and the word. We are given back our true identity as a beloved and now baptized child of God, heirs of God’s Kingdom once again. All of our baptized lives we continue to grow and strive more and more to be who God has created us to be in our Baptism as we live the Sanctified life. This is the outcome of our Lord’s crucifixion that we talked so much about last Sunday on Holy Cross Day. The forgiveness, life and salvation of our crucified and risen Saviour continues to give poor sinners like us hope and much needed redemption. Our identity as God’s people is restored through faith in Jesus our Messiah.

God is always changing His people in this way. We see it again with the call of St. Matthew, whose festival day we celebrate today, September 21st. He likewise had a bit of an “identity theft.” As Levi, he was a Jewish tax collector in Capernaum. He had become the very scum of Jewish society - a willing collaborator with the Roman overlords. He taxed his fellow Jews for the government which was bad enough. But he most likely also extorted and stole from them, pocketing the difference and becoming filthy rich at their expense. People with the identity of “tax collector” were absolutely despised and ostracized from regular Jewish life.

Levi had bought into the Devil’s lie that becoming a tax collector and getting the good life, living in luxuries’ lap would be the best thing he could do - but instead it caused him to become invisible - he was hated and despised by his own people and family. As he worked in his tax booth cell with bars over the window – it was truly nothing more than a prison. He lived a life of shame, rich with rejection.

Why would Jesus call such a societal deadbeat to be not only one of His hand-picked disciples but also an Apostle and Evangelist, writing one of the most important documents in all of human history?! Does our Lord not know much about public relations and marketing!? This seems like a major misstep! But it is precisely to highlight our Lord’s mission to call the sinners and the outcasts, the societal scumbags that nobody else wants!

So in this case, the “identity theft” is a good thing! Jesus takes away Levi’s previous identity and exchanges it for a new one. St. Matthew, the famous Apostle and Gospel writer will take tax collector Levi’s place. “As Jesus passed on 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” (MT 9:9). Boom! Just like that. No delay. No dallying. No time to consider this proposal. It’s just immediate response to this call of Christ our Lord. The Chosen video series does such an amazing job of bringing this moment to life! Matthew gets up and leaves his tax collector gig to follow Jesus.

It’s a stark reminder of “What is impossible with man is more than possible with God!” (LK18:27). Nobody is beyond the redemption of Christ. No sinner is too great for the grace of God to receive. There is no deadbeat so dead that Jesus cannot make alive and have life abundantly! This is truly good news for us and for politicians! Repent fast and often, folks!

Right after his call to follow Jesus, we hear that Matthew hosts a feast for Jesus and the disciples and other tax collectors. St. Luke also tells us this in chapter 5:29. The setting is around the kitchen table. We see the Lord sitting and relaxing and eating with the rabble of tax collectors and sinners. Somehow the Pharisees key into this and of course reject this abject display of unrighteousness. They look down their noses at Jesus, a Rabbi who should know better than to fraternize with these kinds of people. But to their scorn our Lord declares “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (MT 9:13). He has come to call people just like Matthew. People that nobody else will accept and welcome, the Lord will welcome. Jesus sinners doth receive.

And this ties in so well with the feast of victory that our Lord welcomes us to in Holy Communion. Come to the banquet, come to the Lord’s table with faith that eats and drinks the very body and blood of the Lamb of God who welcomes sinners and tax collectors. His body is true food. His blood is true drink. A medicine of immortality that heals our sins and further cements our baptismal identity. The Lord welcomes His children to His table.

After our Lord’s Ascension, tradition holds that St. Matthew preached the Gospel, possibly in Judea, Persia (modern day Iran), or perhaps Ethiopia. Accounts of his death vary, but for sure he was martyred for the Christian faith, possibly by beheading or stabbing, though the exact location and circumstances are uncertain. His relics, his bodily remains, are believed to be in Salerno Cathedral in Italy to this very day. But these details don’t make much difference for us because St. Matthew’s legacy is in his Gospel that so elegantly portrays the life Christ our Lord who welcomes sinners and tax collectors. In His Name, Amen!