Saint Bede, known as the Venerable Bede, was one of the great jewels of northern English monasticism in the seventh and eighth centuries. He wrote commentaries, histories and sermons, and had this to say about Saint Matthew in today’s Gospel reading:
“Jesus saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office, and he said to him: Follow me. Jesus saw Matthew, not merely in the usual sense, but more significantly with his merciful understanding of men… He saw the tax collector and, because he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him, he said to him: Follow me.”
Jesus saw the tax collector through the eyes of mercy and chose him. Most people at the time of Jesus would not have looked at tax collectors with mercy. They were collaborators with the occupying Roman empire, collecting, or extorting, money for far-off Rome, backed up by Roman military force, and often adding their own mark-up to what they collected. Many people hated them with a passion. When we hear in the Gospels the phrase, “tax collectors and sinners”, as we did today, that is all the bad people lumped together.
There were opponents of collaborators and tax collectors. People like the Zealots, a fierce political movement of religious nationalism that sought to incite the Jewish people to revolt and drive out the foreign Roman invaders. The threat of violence was never far away, and could be brutally repressed.
Obviously Zealots and tax collectors wouldn’t be seen in each other’s company. Except, when we read the lists of the Apostles, we see, amongst the others, Matthew the tax collector, and Simon the Zealot.
It would seem that the only thing that these people had in common was that Jesus had looked at them through the eyes of mercy, and chosen them. That look, and that choice, was so powerful that it drew the first disciples immediately to Jesus, no matter who they were. No matter that they then found themselves, by the choice of Jesus, in the company of others, equally chosen, whom they would never normally have associated with.
The choice of Jesus creates a new reality in which irreconcilable opponents, even enemies, suddenly find themselves united. The attraction of Jesus overcomes every human division.
Last week, on Holy Cross Day, we noted that the Cross is the sign of reconciliation: the saving work of Jesus who reconciles humanity with God, and with one another. Our enmity is overcome, and one new humanity is created in Christ in which there is no barrier or race or nation or culture.
On St Matthew’s Day, we see people of the same race and nation who are nevertheless radically divided by their different social and political positions. And these too are drawn together in unity in the new reality created by Jesus.
And this is the beginning of a movement that is meant to spread. As Saint Bede says, further, on today’s Gospel:
“ ‘As he sat at table in the house, behold many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples.’ This conversion of one tax collector gave many men, those from his own profession and other sinners, an example of repentance and pardon. Notice also the happy and true anticipation of his future status as apostle and teacher of the nations. No sooner was he converted than Matthew drew after him a whole crowd of sinners along the same road to salvation.”
As we have often noted, the Church is not a club for good people, it is the community of forgiven people. The task of the Church is to draw after us a whole crowd of other sinners along the same road to salvation.
And in this new community, following the way of salvation, all are united. All races, nations and cultures are drawn together in one new humanity in Christ. And the polarity of different political and social positions is also overcome, because Jesus looks on us all with the eyes of mercy and chooses us. The Church is therefore not only the community of forgiven people, it is also the union of people who are not like each other, not like me, except for this one thing: that Jesus has looked at us through the eyes of mercy and chosen us.
We live in a world which seems to be becoming increasingly polarised and divided. The echo chambers of social media amplify their own messages and drown out anything else. In this toxic environment disagreement is not far away from enmity, and violent speech gives rise to violent actions.
In this world the Church needs to be a visible sign of reconciliation and unity. A sign that Jesus looks at every person through the eyes of mercy and chooses them. And therefore chooses them, and me, and all of us, to belong to a new reality in which our divisions are overcome.
Of course, the Church must also be a sign of truth in a world that is forgetting how to tell the truth, for we follow Him who is the way, the truth and the life. The Church must challenge false narratives that undermine the God-given humanity and dignity of every person. The Church must call out and stand against messages of fear, hatred and exclusion.
But this also means recognising the truth of the person who is different from me, who radically disagrees with me. Not necessarily the truth of what they say, for the Gospel sets out a clear law of love that is contradicted by those who preach hate. But, certainly, we must recognise the truth of who they are, the dignity of human persons made in the image of God. People upon whom Jesus looks with the eyes of mercy, and chooses them. Just as he looks upon me and chooses me. And so gives us to each other, in the new belonging that he creates, and which it is the Church’s task to live and proclaim.
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