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St Matthew's Day
H
o m i l y G r i t s
Saint
Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist
September 21,
2003
(© 2003 by Grant Gallup -
permission given for free distribution in fair use or quotation )
¶ Book of Common Prayer Lectionary:
We thank you, heavenly Father, for the witness of your apostle and
evangelist Matthew to the Gospel of your Son our Saviour; and we pray
that, after his example, we may with ready wills and hearts obey the
calling of our Lord to follow him; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who
lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
Proverbs 3: 1-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart
Psalm 119: 33-40 Legem pone - Teach me the way of your statutes
2 Timothy 3: 14-17 The sacred writings are able to instruct you in
liberation theology
Matthew 9: 9-13 I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners
¶ Lutheran Book of Worship
Almighty God, your Son our Savior called a despised collector of taxes to
become one of his apostles. Help us, like Matthew, to respond to the
transforming call of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and
reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Ezekiel 2:8--3:11 The house of Israel will not listen to you, for they
will not listen to me.
Psalm 119:33-40 as above BCP Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes.
Ephesians 2:4-10 - God made us one with Christ Jesus . .. and would have
all future ages see the surpassing richness of God's grace.
Matthew 9:9-13 as above, BCP
Hymn of the Day: How blest art they (LBW 227)
Preface: Apostles
Color: Red
The Koran Interpreted (A.J.Arberry)
> from The House of Imran, III.45
And when Jesus perceived their unbelief, he said, 'Who will be my helpers
unto God?" The Apostles said, 'We will be helpers of God; we believe in
God; witness thou our submission. Lord, we believe in that Thou hast
sent down, and we follow the Messenger. Insribe us therefore with those
who bear witness." And they devised, and God devised, and God is the best
of devisers. When God said, "Jesus, I will take thee to Me and will
raise thee to Me, and I will purify thee of those who believe not. I
will set thy followers above the unbelievers till the Resurrection Day.
Then unto Me shall you return, and I will decide between you, as to what
you were at variance on. (1)
> from The Maori Jesus, by James Keir Baxter
The Maori Jesus came on shore
And picked out his twelve disciples.
One cleaned toilets in the Railway Sation;
His hands were scrubbed red to get the shit out of the pores.
One was a call-girl who turned it up for nothing
One was a house-wife who'd forgotten the Pill
And stuck her TV set in the rubbish can.
One was a little office clerk
Who'd tried to set fire to the Government Buildings.
Yes, and there were several others;
One was an old sad quean;
One was an alcoholic priest
Going slowly mad in a respectable parish.
The Maori Jesus saide, "Man,
> From now on the sun will shine." (3)
During the first few years that I spent in Managua as liaison officer for
the diocese of Chicago, I sent back to the States every couple of weeks
an encyclical (round robin) letter which eventually ran into thousands of
pages. It was called "Managua Saga", a pretentious name for a salamagundi
of news, commentary, gossip, Biblical reflection, homilies, translations
and (surprising to some) recipes, menus, and shopping lists. For I also
reported on the "Canasta Basica", the basic food basket of the table of
hospitality at Casa Ave Maria, the name of the various houses that I've
lived in here, none of them far from the Embassy of Gringolandia. Some
folks were delighted and others dismayed by the prolix content of Managua
Saga, wherein I was forthright about life and love in this besieged city.
Some thought my theology far out, my politics provocative, and some even
dared to suggest I give less space to the topics of food and feasting, of
mealtimes and menus.
In defense of my theological hot sauce and our Sandinista arroz y
frijoles, I called to witness the patron saint of this day,
Matthew--blessed Levi--who is still called conservatively both Apostle
and Evangelist, 'though it probably took more than one person to compose
the character. At any rate, both the Evangelist and the Apostle were also
interested in food, in menus, meals, and especially in hospitality. Early
on, the diet of John the Immerser is given in Matthew's gospel, and
Jesus' refusal to turn stones into bread is told. Hunger and thirst are
specially blessed when they are appetites for justice, and table salt is
prescribed to add savour to life. It is fasting, not feasting, which is
to be kept secret and done in solitude, and not fun and festivity, in
Matthew's view.
The Reign of God is about much more than food and clothing, but the
Heavenly Home Maker promises all of them if we set our hearts on justice
doing. There are place-cards saved for all outsiders at the Inaugural
Party of the Reign of God. And best of all, the first real sit-down
dinner in Matthew's evangel is at his own house, at his own table, where
he was Jesus' neighbor in the town of Capernaum, just down the street
> from the Tax Office where Matthew had formerly sat, in the collect for
his day, "in receipt of custom."
Point number one to remember in this homily is that when Jesus walked
past Matthew's desk that day and said to him, "Follow me" that what in
fact happened was that it was Jesus who followed Matthew home instead, to
his house for supper. Jesus went to the taxman's table, furnished with
its disreputable guests--a hustler's cronies and connections. Tax farmers
were the people of the puppet government, who had sold out to the Empire,
like so many who cooperate with the Empire today, helping Herod Antipas
to skim off what they could, handling every day the hated coinage with
the image of Caesar proclaimed as a god. "In God we Trust"-- they had it
in Latin, and we translate it into Spanish for Nicaraguan coins, "En
Dios Confiamos". But theologically, Jesus was identified with the
Pharisees, and some of his fellow Movement people--true patriots, not
those created puppet patriots by he Patriot Act--objected to his
disciples that their rabbi had fellowship with dropouts and deadbeats,
trimmers and scam artists. "Alumni" of the church, we might say, those
who "used to be Episcopalians", as so many have told me, or "used to be"
some other churchy thing, but it got to be too hard, or too boring (I
understand!) or too irrelevant to how they made a living, scrabbled for
survival on the edge of propriety or beyond the pale of decency, far from
the Sunday school or its picnic grounds. They were not possessed, they
were not demoniacs, they were not heathens, they were not even like the
revolutionary on the cross, who won heaven one Friday afternoon. They
were instead bourgeoisie and businesslike in their betrayal of the summum
bonum, and they were denominated by the technical name of "sinners." And
Jesus followed one of them home.
All in order that at the last they might follow him "withersoever he
went." The foxes had dens, the birds of the air had nests, but the truly
Human One had nowhere to lay down his sweet head, since outcast shepherds
had made him a pillow in a barn. There is no reliable information as to
where Matthew ultimately went with his followership of Jesus, but Persia
(Iran) has been mentioned, and it is said that his relics are in Salerno,
in Italy, a long way from the cash register at the customs house in
Galilee.
The Pharisees, whose theological heads were not far from where Jesus' own
head was, could not bring themselves to sit down with his glad and
generous heart in the company of "sinners", sickos, schismatics and
subversives. But Jesus said it was the sickos who needed the doctoring of
a dinner date with him. Hospitality becomes in the New Testament the best
medicine in the cabinet, and by the time the Revelation is fleshed out as
Revolution, the inaugural banquets of Messiah would be seen as pig-outs
with real crown roasts of pork and lobster tails on the table, much to
Simon Peter's surprise upon peeking under the table cloth that was let
down from heaven. All the outcasts of Empire would be seated on thrones,
like the World Court at the Hague, judging the conduct of nations, and
turning the world upside down.
Did Jesus win them all? All the tax farmers, that day at Levi's table,
before Jesus changed his name to Matthew, for he had seen him as "a gift
> from God"? They were all pretty well off folks, we know, these tax
lawyers. Did they all abandon their junk bond morality of an evening?
Probably not, but they were welcome anyway at Matt's dinner table, for he
knew at once that following Jesus did not mean giving up his friends,
those unrepentant and unreconstructed cronies. They had all been
compromised by their investments, by shady deals, and probably even
serving at their meals some non-union grapes, some Starbucks coffee,
instead of Nicaraguan fair-trade coffee, perhaps even some veal from
caged calves or some rum and cigars from Cuba. It isn't hard to pollute
your environment in an Empire. Eventually, we know, Levi changed his
ways, his name, his job, his life trajectory, and would be Jesus'dinner
guest at the last evening in the Upper Room, in the city of the Great
King.
The apostolate of hospitality: Jesus immediately accepts it, first time
in Matthew's house perhaps, and maybe this is where the Lord Jesus
himself learned how to be the host at dinner, who is "strong, loving, and
wise", as Robert Hovde describes the style of the president of the
eucharist.(2) He says that no one ought to preside at eucharist who
has no experience presiding at an ordinary table of hospitality, or who
has never thrown a party for friends, or who has no manners for festivals
and frolics. Jesus had great table manners wherever he was--they're
light years ahead of Emily Post and Amy Vanderbilt, who nowhere give
rules about washing the guests' feet, or getting them to pour spikenard
on your hairdo. Jesus at once sees the connection of "hospitality" and
"hospital." Why do you eat with such people? he was asked, why socialize
with reprobates? "Because they need therapy" (so the Greek says) --
"because they need healing." They need the medicine marked "Mercy", they
need a foretaste now of the coming re-assignment of seats, the shuffling
of the courses and the guest list, and there's no time like right now to
start nibbling at the hors d'oeurves and sipping the cocktails of the
kingdom. Heaven is an acquired taste, we are told by venerable pilgrims
to that land. We learn it over here on this side of Paradise, along with
tasting the soup and salad of friends and family, the connections of the
eucharistic buffets of ordinary life. The fast food of hell is always
carry-out and eaten alone after it's gone cold in the styrofoam package.
Jesus quotes the prophet Amos or pretty close tries to, who heard God
say, "I hate and despise the kind of parties that are solemn festivals of
sacrifice without mercy, chant without charity, cacaphonus music without
compassion. Give me a tumbler of water from the stream of justice, and a
torrent of integrity bubbling out your baptismal font."
So the second point of the homily is to keep up the connections, make
more synapses, use them all to jump to liberation. The author of Timothy
Two reminds us that "tradition" is making connections, but not only
connecting with the content of what we've been taught, but connecting
with those who were and are our teachers. We are bidden to look to all
those who hand us what we have and now to connect with those to whom we
now hand it on. We hand it on redacted, as all recipes must be, refreshed
and renewed as revolutions must be, to teach in new situations, for "new
occasions teach new duties, and time makes ancient good uncouth".
Up the road from Capernaum, towards Parthia, perhaps, or Italy, or
Evanston, or Managua, we continue to receive from Scripture and Tradition
(for Scripture is itself a tradition of belief) the meaning of what we
see in the Sacrament of this table, and find that it works anywhere in
the world. For there is one Lord, one Faith, one Body and one Bread, and
one Baptism.
Matthew began his gospel with only one family--one family in one place in
one remote corner of the ancient world, but the genealogy of Jesus that
he gives connects him to all the People of the Book: Jewish, Christian,
Muslim. Jesus is related to us. We are all blood brothers and sisters. We
connect to him and his mother by family ties, and reconnect to them and
to each other when we eat of the one Loaf and share the one Cup of
Commitment. Matthew takes the family tree back to Abraham, the Friend of
God, but does not hide the horse-thieves and the bimbos, whose pictures
we have often turned to the wall in our piety. Matthew ends his gospel
with Jesus giving full authority in heaven and earth to US (not the U.S.
of United States, but the US of me and you.) Some of us are High Church
Pharisees, some Fundamentalist Saducees, some of us Zealots and
revolutionaries, some of us Republicans and Sinners, and all of us now
invited by Jesus to follow him home.
FOLLOW ME, Jesus says. "Be like me" is what it means. But if we take
Matthew for our model in response, it will mean taking Jesus to follow US
to our homes and hearts, to meet our kind of people, our lovers and our
loved ones, our same-sex
partners and our monogamous hetero ones, our own families and friends.
And then we can with him show the hospitality of heaven, and the healing
power of love.
GRANT GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
gallup@tmx.com.ni
GRITS 3rd series now on-line:
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits
(1) The Koran Interpreted, a translation by A. J. Arberry. A Touchstone
Book, published by Simon & Schuser. copyright 1955 by George Allen &
Unwin.
(2) Strong, Loving, and Wise: Presiding in Worship. Robert W. Hovda,
Liturgical Press, 1983.
(3) "The Maori Jesus," by James Keir Baxter. from Divine Inspiration,
the Life of Jesus in World Poetry. Assembled and edited by Robert Atwan,
George Dardess, and Peggy Rosenthal. New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 1998.
This homily for St Matthew's Day is resurrected from a homily preached in
1990 at St Matthew's Church, Evanston, Illinois.