Called From The Tax Booth

Most of us have a private timetable for God. First I’ll get the drinking under control, or the marriage sorted, or the resentment put down, and then I’ll be in a position to pray seriously and go to confession. The order feels responsible. It’s also exactly backward, and today’s Gospel proves it with a name and an address. Jesus walks past a customs booth at Capernaum and calls a man in the middle of his workday, with the ledger open and the coins on the table, and the man gets up. Matthew didn’t clean up first. He was called dirty, and the cleaning started when he stood.

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist, and she puts a strange first reading beside his call. Paul, in prison, tells the Ephesians that the ascended Christ hands out gifts to build his body: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Read the two together and the point lands. The man Christ gave the Church as both apostle and evangelist was, an hour before his call, the kind of person a decent Jew crossed the road to avoid. And the Pharisees who complained about the dinner that followed had a sound argument, on paper. Aquinas admits as much. So why was Jesus right and they were wrong? And where, in your own life, are you still waiting to be clean before you’ll let him call you?

The Readings

First Reading: Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-13

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.

And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the equipment of the saints, for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.

Gospel: Matthew 9:9-13

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. And as he sat at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “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 not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Scriptural Analysis

Paul opens the second half of Ephesians with one Greek word, parakalō (pah-rah-kah-LOH), “I exhort,” and the whole of chapters 4 through 6 hangs on it. Williamson notes that although these chapters contain teaching, their character is appeal, an address to the will, and Paul makes it as “a prisoner for the Lord,” which in Greek is closer to “a prisoner in the Lord,” a man united to Jesus in his chains. ^[1] The verb translated “lead a life” is peripateō (peh-ree-pah-TEH-oh), “to walk,” the Old Testament’s word for the road a person takes through life. He is talking about conduct. ^[2] And “calling,” in ordinary Greek, means an invitation, the kind a man gets to a banquet (Luke 14:16-24). Williamson’s picture is the one I’d keep: if you were invited to dinner with the most important people alive, you’d think hard about what to wear and how to carry yourself. Paul says the invitation into God’s household deserves at least that. ^[3]

Then he names the clothes. Humility, tapeinophrosynē (tah-pay-no-fro-SOO-nay), a word the pagan world despised; Christians were the first people in antiquity to count it a virtue. Gentleness, which Williamson defines as the inner strength to refuse retaliation when provoked. Patience, literally “long-tempered,” the Septuagint’s word for a God who is slow to anger. And bearing with one another in love, which means kindly putting up with people’s faults instead of reacting the way we instinctively want to. ^[4] MacDonald explains why humility leads the list: Ephesians 4 calls for unity in the middle of a diversity of gifts, and humility is what defuses the spirit of competition. She also notices that Matthew’s Gospel, the one we read today, is where Jesus claims the first two virtues for himself: “I am gentle and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:29). ^[5]

Verses 4 through 6 are a creed with seven “ones” in it, and they read like something the Ephesians sang at baptism. One body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father. In the Septuagint, kyrios (KOO-ree-os), “Lord,” stood in for the divine name Jews would not pronounce, and in the streets it was what subjects called the emperor, so “Jesus is Lord” confessed his Godhead and pledged allegiance over every other power at once. ^[6] Only after the unity does Paul turn to difference. Grace is given “according to the measure of Christ’s gift,” and to prove that the risen Christ is the giver, Paul reads Psalm 68 as the ascension: the conqueror going up on high and, in Paul’s small edit of the psalm, giving gifts to men. Peter said the same thing at Pentecost (Acts 2:33). ^[7]

The gifts in verse 11 are people. Williamson points out that every other list of charisms in the New Testament names abilities, prophecy, healing, or tongues; here Christ gives persons who fill roles, all of them to do with speaking God’s word and leading his people. ^[8] The Lectionary chose this passage for today because Matthew fills two of the five slots. He is an apostle, one of the Twelve, and an evangelist, which in Paul’s day meant a preacher who announced Jesus and called for conversion; the use of the word for the four Gospel writers came later. ^[9] The purpose clause says what these men are for: “the equipment of the saints.” The noun katartismos (kah-tar-tis-MOS) appears nowhere else in the New Testament, and MacDonald notes that in the medical writers it means the setting of a broken bone. ^[10] Apostles and pastors exist to set bones so the body can walk, and the goal in verse 13 is corporate: the whole Church grown to Christ’s stature. ^[11]

Now the Gospel. Our analysis begins with the geography. Capernaum sat on the road that ran from Damascus down to the coast, and Harrington says we should picture the telōnion (teh-LOH-nee-on), the “tax office,” as a tollbooth where fees were collected on goods, most likely fish, leaving the region around the lake. ^[12] Mitch and Sri explain why a man in that booth was hated. Tax collectors in Galilee worked for Herod Antipas, were viewed as traitors to God’s people, and were known for demanding more than they were owed. ^[13] Harrington adds that the whole system invited it: contracts went to the highest bidder, who paid the government and then squeezed the difference out of his neighbors, so a tax collector was suspected of dishonesty by the nature of his job, whether or not he skimmed. ^[14] Aquinas puts it in one line. The custom house was a place “where a man can hardly live without sin.” ^[15]

Mark and Luke call this man Levi. Jerome, in the Catena, says the other evangelists used his less familiar name to spare him, while Matthew, following Solomon’s rule that the righteous man is the first to accuse himself (Proverbs 18:17), wrote down both his name and his profession so no reader would despair of salvation, “seeing he from a Publican became an Apostle.” ^[16] Aquinas draws the same lesson: Matthew names himself so that we understand “the Lord is not an acceptor of persons,” and he records the call among the miracles of chapters 8 and 9, out of humility, because he counted his own calling a miracle. ^[17] Chrysostom asks why Jesus didn’t call Matthew alongside Peter and Andrew, and answers that he was still hardened then; Christ waited until the miracles had softened him, and then said two words. Remigius notices what Matthew left on the table: accounts in disorder, masters to answer to, real danger. And “because he relinquished earthly gain, therefore of right was he made the dispenser of the Lord’s talents.” ^[18]

Then the dinner, which Aquinas reads as the second half of one movement. Jesus first calls one man to discipleship, then calls many to familiarity, and the instrument is a meal. Matthew threw the party, and Aquinas takes that as the proof of a real conversion: a man who has truly turned to the Lord draws the people he loves after him. ^[19] Mitch and Sri explain why the Pharisees were scandalized. In ancient Judaism, table fellowship expressed covenant solidarity; shared food meant a shared life. By reclining with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus identifies himself with the covenant’s outsiders and welcomes them into his kingdom. ^[20] Rabanus, in the Catena, diagnoses the questioners’ error as double: they counted themselves righteous while pride had carried them far from righteousness, and they charged with unrighteousness men who were, at that moment, turning toward it. ^[21]

Here Aquinas does something I love. He grants the Pharisees their premise. It seems they argued rightly; he says, “because one should avoid the company of sinners.” Then he sorts the reasons a person might keep away from sinners. Some do it out of pride and contempt, like the men in Isaiah who say, “Come not near me, because you are unclean” (Isaiah 65:5). Some do it to shame the sinner into repentance, as Paul does in 1 Corinthians 6. Some do it out of caution for themselves, since whoever touches pitch is defiled by it (Sirach 13:1). And some stay among sinners on purpose, to be tested like a lily among thorns, or to convert them, as Paul became all things to all men. The rule that comes out of it is the practical one. Keep away from sinners who refuse to repent; among those for whom there is hope, ask whether you are weak or strong, because the weak should not live among them and the strong may, to bring them to God. “And Jesus was the reliable doctor; therefore he did not fear danger when he was with them.” ^[22]

Which is Jesus’s own word for himself. “Those who are well have no need of a physician.” Harrington notes the line sounds like a proverb, and that behind it may stand the Old Testament’s picture of God as healer (Exodus 15:26). ^[23] The Catechism says Christ’s compassion for the sick is a sign that God has visited his people, that he has come “to heal the whole man, soul and body,” and that “he is the physician the sick have need of.” ^[24] Aquinas asks who “the well” are, and answers with Revelation: the ones who say “I am rich, and made wealthy, and have need of nothing,” and don’t know they are wretched, poor, blind and naked. The sick are those who recognize their sin, like David in Psalm 51. ^[25]

Then Jesus sends the teachers of Israel back to school. “Go and learn what this means.” The line is Hosea 6:6, and Matthew is the only evangelist who inserts it here; he uses it again in the Sabbath dispute of chapter 12, and Harrington thinks it worked as a slogan for Matthew’s community against rivals who wanted to extend the Temple’s purity rules to everyone. ^[26] Mitch and Sri unpack the word. The Greek eleos (EH-leh-os), “mercy,” usually translates the Hebrew hesed (KHEH-sed), loyal covenant love, and Hosea was denouncing Israelites who covered grave sins with acts of piety. Jesus turns that on men who had let their table regulations replace the steadfast love owed to God and to every one of his people, tax collectors included. ^[27] Chrysostom is blunter. Jesus is saying: accuse me for reforming sinners and you accuse the Father, who wills the same thing. And he chose the one and rejected the other; he did not say “mercy as well as sacrifice.” ^[28] Aquinas has a reading that has stayed with me. A man is said to want what he wants for its own sake, the way a doctor says “I desire health.” Among the things we offer God, some are offered for their own sake, loving God and neighbor, and everything else, sacrifice included, is offered for the sake of those. ^[29]

The Catechism draws the two readings together without meaning to. Jesus scandalized the Pharisees by eating with sinners as familiarly as with themselves, and against those who trusted in their own righteousness he declared that he had come to call sinners. He gave scandal above all “when he identified his merciful conduct toward sinners with God’s own attitude toward them,” going so far as to hint that by sharing the table of sinners he was admitting them to the messianic banquet. ^[30] That is the banquet Paul’s “calling” is an invitation to, and the man who wrote today’s Gospel got his invitation at a tollbooth.

Daily Application

The interior movement this feast asks of you is to let yourself be called before you are ready. Matthew’s whole story is compressed into one verb. “He rose.” He didn’t close out the accounts, didn’t square himself with his employers, didn’t propose a timeline. Aquinas says the sick, in Jesus’s sense, are simply those who recognize their sin, and the well are the ones who have decided they need nothing. Which means the only qualification for the call is the one you’re most tempted to hide. If you have been telling God you’ll come once you’re presentable, you have the physician’s office backward. No one gets well first and then goes to the doctor.

So go now, in the state you’re in. If it has been a year or five since your last confession, that is the tax booth, and the ledger is open, and he is standing in front of it. Get up. And if you are already in the pew every Sunday, the reading has a second edge for you, because the Pharisees at Matthew’s dinner were the religious people. Aquinas gave them their due: there are good reasons to keep your distance from sin, and prudence about your own weakness is one of them. But he also named the bad reason, contempt, and Rabanus named its result: a man who charges others with unrighteousness at the very moment they are turning toward it. Think of the person in your parish or your family whose conversion you have quietly decided is fake, or too late, or beneath the effort. Jesus went into that man’s house and ate.

There is a practice to attach to this, and it’s Matthew’s own. He threw a dinner and invited his old colleagues to meet Jesus. Aquinas calls that the sign of a real conversion: a person who has turned to Christ draws the people he loves after him. The program is a table. Invite one lapsed friend or one estranged relative to your home this month, feed them, and let the conversation get wherever it gets. Hosea’s word for what God wants is hesed, loyal love that shows up, and a meal is the oldest form of it.

Paul’s reading tells you what Christ makes out of people called this way. He gave apostles and evangelists to set the Church’s broken bones, and the first name on the Church’s list of evangelists belongs to a tax collector. Saint Matthew is the patron of accountants, bankers, and tax collectors, and I think the Church means that as a promise. ^[31] Whatever you do for a living, and whatever you have done with it, he was called from worse.

Get up from the booth. The physician is already in the room, and he’s asking for you by name.

---

Notes

1. Peter S. Williamson, Ephesians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 108; Margaret Y. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, Sacra Pagina 17 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 286. ↩
2. Williamson, Ephesians, 108; MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 286. ↩
3. Williamson, Ephesians, 108. ↩
4. Williamson, Ephesians, 108-109. ↩
5. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 286. ↩
6. Williamson, Ephesians, 110-111; MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 287-288. ↩
7. Williamson, Ephesians, 114-115. ↩
8. Williamson, Ephesians, 116. ↩
9. Williamson, Ephesians, 116-117. ↩
10. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 292. ↩
11. Williamson, Ephesians, 121; MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 293. ↩
12. Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew, Sacra Pagina 1 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 126. ↩
13. Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri, The Gospel of Matthew, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 134. ↩
14. Harrington, Gospel of Matthew, 127-128. ↩
15. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Chapters 1-12, trans. Jeremy Holmes and Beth Mortensen (Lander, WY: Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2013), C. 9, L. 2, no. 756. ↩
16. Saint Jerome, quoted in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers, vol. 1, St. Matthew, trans. John Henry Newman (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1841), on Matt 9:9-13. ↩
17. Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, C. 9, L. 2, nos. 756-757. ↩
18. John Chrysostom, Homily 30 on Matthew, and Remigius, in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 1, on Matt 9:9-13. ↩
19. Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, C. 9, L. 2, nos. 755, 758. ↩
20. Mitch and Sri, Gospel of Matthew, 134. ↩
21. Rabanus Maurus, in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 1, on Matt 9:9-13. ↩
22. Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, C. 9, L. 2, no. 762. ↩
23. Harrington, Gospel of Matthew, 126. ↩
24. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 1503. ↩
25. Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, C. 9, L. 2, no. 763. ↩
26. Harrington, Gospel of Matthew, 126, 129. ↩
27. Mitch and Sri, Gospel of Matthew, 134. ↩
28. John Chrysostom, in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 1, on Matt 9:9-13. ↩
29. Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, C. 9, L. 2, no. 764. ↩
30. Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 588-589. ↩
31. Franciscan Media, “Saint Matthew,” Saint of the Day, https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-matthew/. ↩

Books Cited

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

• Peter S. Williamson, Ephesians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2009)
• Daniel J. Harrington, SJ, The Gospel of Matthew, Sacra Pagina 1 (Liturgical Press, 1991)
• Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri, The Gospel of Matthew, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2010)
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Chapters 1-12, Latin-English Opera Omnia (The Aquinas Institute, 2013)
• Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, 4-volume set (Baronius Press)
• Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition (Doubleday / Image, 2003)