Vigils Reading – St Matthew

Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist, from The Saints, ed. John Coulson^[1]

Few people love the tax collector.  Even in these days when the relation between taxer and taxed is, no doubt, scrupously correct, his name strikes cold.  Much more was this so in the Palestine of the first century, when it was in his interests to bully and harry and falsify.  But even the mild and honest tax collector was not acceptable to official Judaism: he did business with the gentile and handled his money; he was legally impure, socially outcast.  A Jewish Rabbi would be bold indeed to invite him to join his inner circle of disciples: it would be a gesture of defiance to the established prejudice.  And so the formula ‘publicans and sinners’ slipped even into the phrase book of the evangelist and, quaintly enough, into the Gospel of Matthew the publican.  This term ‘publican’ by the way does not accurately describe Matthew’s profession but flatters it.  The Pharisees might despise it, but the trade was a profitable one and much sought after: whether it be pursued honestly or dishonestly would depend on the character of the officer.

“And Jesus passed further on, he saw Levi, the son of Alpheus, sitting at work in the customs-house and said to him, “Follow me”; and he rose and followed him.  That this was a call to the apostolate there is no doubt – its terms too closely match those of the call of Simon and Andrew to be otherwise.  Yet ‘Levi’ does not appear in any list of the Twelve.  Now the vocation of the tax collector is reported in the first Gospel too, but there he is called ‘Matthew’, thus identifying him with the Matthew who appears in all the apostolic lists. The widely accepted and most natural explanation is that Matthew and Levi are one person with two Semitic names.  It may be that our Lord himself gave him the name Matthew (Mattai, ‘gift of God’, in Aramaic) as he gave Kepha to Simon.

This Matthew then got up from his registers and henceforth – at our Lord’s suggestion – took a lesson from the lilies and birds that never did a day’s calculation in their lives.  His master was no longer Antipas, the shrewd ‘fox’ but one who, unlike the foxes, had not even a home.  The change destroyed all Matthew’s worldly prospects:  Simon and Andrew might return to their fish, but Matthew had thrown over a coveted business and could never recover it.  He left it gladly, it seems and completely – at least it was not he but Judas who kept the accounts for the apostolic group.

After the incident of his call Matthew disappears from the New Testament except as a name in the apostolic lists.  What became of him?  We have a sentence from a book by Bishop Papias of Hieropolis. “Matthew wrote an ordered account of the oracles (of our Lord) and each interpreted these oracles according to his ability.”  Time had had its revenge.  When the need for a written gospel record began to be felt, upon which of the Apostles would the choice fall?  Upon one who used the pen, no doubt.  Poor Matthew was back where he started, but this time with an eager will and high purpose.  In Palestine, some time between the years 40 and 50, this ex-civil servant produced not the lively and artless Gospel of St. Mark but the orderly, almost ledger like, treatise, which we know as ‘The Gospel according to St. Matthew.’

And so Matthew’s old trade entered a new service; the accountant became an evangelist.  It is not surprising that he alone records his Master’s words; “Every scholar whose learning is of the kingdom of heaven…knows how to bring both new and old things out of his treasure house.  For there is no poor tool of ours that God’s service will not perfect and dignify.

It is commonly but not unanimously affirmed he died a martyr’s death; but we know for certain that he lived a martyr’s life – and that is enough.  And for us he will always be the man who knew what money was and what it was not.

     ^[1]The Saints.ed. John Coulson, Guild Press-NY,1957,p.538-541.