NUNTIATORIA

St. Matthew/Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

by the Revd Dr Robert Wilson PhD (Cantab), Old Roman Apostolate UK

Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Matthew, as well as commemorating the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Little is known about St. Matthew other than that he was a tax collector who was called by Jesus to be one of his disciples. While some collectors of taxes were state officials, there were others to whom the office of collecting taxes was farmed out to the highest bidder. They were notorious for their extortion and were shunned by respectable society for their immoral lifestyle. It was said that repentance was hardest for tax collectors because it was difficult for them to make good on all that they had defrauded. It is therefore not surprising that Jesus’ association with such people scandalised his contemporaries. His response (as we heard in today’s Gospel) was that it was part of his ministry to seek and to save the lost. It was not the healthy that needed a physician but the sick. He had not come to call the self satisfied who prided themselves in their own righteousness, but the sinners, who were prepared, like St. Matthew, to repent and to follow him.

Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis in the early second century stated, that “Matthew compiled the oracles in the Hebrew language, while everyone translated them as they were able.” Later St. Irenaeus also stated that “Matthew published a Gospel in writing also, among the Hebrews in their own language.” Clearly our Gospel of St. Matthew is in Greek, but there is strong early Church tradition that an earlier version existed in Hebrew, and St. Matthew’s name has always been associated with it. Since St. Matthew was not a particularly prominent figure in the early Church it is difficult to see how the tradition associating him with writing a Gospel could have arisen without having a factual basis behind it.

It is clear that there is a close literary relationship between the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. Luke, hence they are commonly referred to as the Synoptic Gospels. It has traditionally been supposed that St. Matthew’s Gospel was the first to be written. St. Augustine spoke of St. Mark as following St. Matthew as a “sort of camp follower and abridger”. In more recent times this judgement has commonly been reversed and St. Mark has been supposed to be the first of the Gospels to be written. In other words, St. Matthew’s Gospel has been seen to be an expanded version of St. Mark’s Gospel, rather than St. Mark’s Gospel an abbreviated version of St. Matthew’s Gospel (as St. Augustine supposed). In fact, the evidence can be argued either way. The brevity of St. Mark’s Gospel can be taken as evidence that he wrote first, and then St. Matthew and St. Luke wrote later, including additional material that had not been included in St. Mark’s Gospel. On the other hand, much in St. Matthew’s Gospel is clearly directed at a specifically Jewish audience, and so it can be argued that much of this material was omitted by St. Mark, who was writing for a mostly Gentile audience.  

It is probably a mistake to see the Gospels as written in a lineal sequence, one following the other. Most probably they were produced over a similar period of time, but for different audiences and in different places. St. Matthew’s Gospel is essentially a work of catechesis for Jewish Christians in a Palestinian or Syrian setting. St. Mark’s Gospel, enshrining the testimony of St. Peter, was probably produced in Rome for a mostly Gentile audience. St. Luke’s Gospel is the first of a two volume work on the origins of Christianity and is directed at the interested pagan enquirer. St. John’s Gospel enshrines the testimony of St. John, the Beloved Disciple, and was published in Ephesus. 

St. Matthew emphasises above all how Jesus is the fulfiller of the hopes of Israel. This was the hope for the coming of the Kingdom of God (which St. Matthew usually refers to as the Kingdom of Heaven, a reverential Jewish way of speaking to avoid directly referring to God), when his will would finally be done on earth as it is in heaven. In Jesus’ own person and ministry the Kingdom of God had finally broken into history, in fulfilment of the hope of Isaiah about the eyes of the blind being opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped and the good news being preached to the poor (Matthew 11). He had come as the suffering servant who was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, who bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. Not all of the prophecies had been fulfilled in his first coming, as the faithful still awaited a second coming at the end of the present age when the Son of Man would judge the nations and finally separate the wheat from the chaff (Matthew 13) and the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25).

St. Matthew also has the most extensive record of the teaching of Jesus. Most prominently the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), Jesus’ mission charge to his disciples when sending them out to preach and heal (Matthew 10), Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom (Matthew 13), Jesus’ teaching his followers about how to live, especially about forgiveness (Matthew 18), Jesus’ criticism of the scribes and Pharisees, his prediction of judgment upon the Jewish nation and temple, and the final coming of the Son of Man at the end of history (Matthew 23-25).

St. Matthew places particular emphasis on the truth that Christ did not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but rather to fulfil them, a righteousness surpassing that of the scribes. For the scribes (the learned teachers of the Law) had sought to apply the Law of Moses to a given situation in order to prevent the individual Israelite from transgressing against the Law. While they would not have denied that the right disposition of the heart was important (the law against covetousness was one of the Ten Commandments), the main emphasis was placed on outward conformity to the law.

By contrast, the Law of Christ said that outward conformity to the Law was not enough, for what was necessary was a totally integrated unity of thought and act, of conformity of the heart with the will of God. Thus, it is not enough simply to refrain from murder, for it is necessary to look at the root cause from which murder comes, namely anger, for it is from the unbridled passions of the human heart that the impulse to murder comes. It is not enough to refrain from committing adultery, for whoever looks on another lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart. It is not enough to love those who love us, we must rather extend it to include our enemies, and pray for those who hate us and despitefully use us (Matthew 5).

At first sight this seems impossible and makes us despair that we can ever truly be good. The Sermon on the Mount seems to be asking us to attain the unattainable. Who is able to always restrain his anger? Who can keep his every glance pure? Who can love his enemies as he loves his friends? However, it is at precisely this point, when we recognise that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves, that we can begin to accept the need for God’s grace to think, will and do that which is good. As the Israelites were called to obey the Law of Moses in gratitude for their redemption from slavery in Egypt, so the Sermon on the Mount is the Law of Christ, the rule of life for the people of the new covenant written on the hearts of men. Our sufficiency is not of ourselves, for we can never get beyond being forgiven sinners, but we are called by grace to follow the Law of Christ in gratitude for the forgiveness that we have experienced. Hence, the Law of Christ is not a scribal ethic designed to lay down rules for applying the law to every conceivable situation. Nor is it like the ethic of the philosophers, an attempt to apply a set of abstract principles to govern human conduct. Rather it is the absolute standard of the Kingdom of God, for those who are the people of the new covenant. Hence, the Law of Christ does not distinguish between what can realistically be achieved in the present age and what can only be fulfilled in the world to come. Rather it is the ethic for those who have already been made partakers of the world to come in this world. It is not the law written on tablets of stone, but the law of those whose sins have been forgiven, which is written on the hearts of men.

Let us pray that we will follow the example of St. Matthew and accept the calling to follow Christ in our own time and place.but especially those who are of the household of faith.