Luke opens this lesson with the call of Matthew, a social outcast, by Jesus. Of all people in Palestine the tax collectors were the most hated. Palestine was a country subject to the Romans; tax collectors had taken service under the Roman government; therefore they were regarded as renegades and traitors. A term we used in World War II was “Quislings” referring to the Prime Minister of Norway who became a Nazi puppet.
The taxation system lent itself to abuse. The Roman custom had been to farm out the taxes. They assessed a district at a certain figure and then sold the right to collect that figure to the highest bidder. So long as the buyer handed over the assessed figure at the end of the year he was entitled to retain whatever he could extract from the people; and since there were no newspapers, radios or television, and no ways of making public announcements that would reach everyone, the common people had no real idea of what they had to pay.
This particular system had led to such gross abuses that by the New Testament times it had been discontinued. There were, however, still taxes to be paid, still Quisling tax collectors working with the Romans, and still abuses and exploitation.
There were two types of taxes. First, there were stated taxes. There was a poll tax which all men from ages 14 to 65, and all women from 12 to 65, had to pay simply for the privilege of existing. There was a ground tax which consisted of one-tenth of all grain grown, and one-fifth of all wine and oil. This could be paid in kind, or converted into money. There was income tax, which was one-percent, of a man’s income. In these taxes there was not a great deal of room for extortion.
Second, there were all kinds of duties. A tax was payable for using the main roads, the harbors, the markets. A tax was payable on a cart, on each wheel, and on the animal which pulled it. There was a purchase tax on certain articles, and there export and import duties. A tax collector could stop a man on the road, have him unpack his cargo and charge him whatever he felt like charging him. If the man could not pay, sometimes, the tax collector would offer to lend him money at exorbitant rate of interest and so get him further into his clutches.
Our elected officials must have learned well in Sunday school when you see all the charges on our utility bills, charges couched in terms that defy explanation.
We have seen the power of greed in recent days with the real estate meltdown, corporate giants disappearing from Wall Street, public corruption at all levels of government, loan sharks preying on people least able to defend themselves
In Jesus’ time robbers, murderers and tax collectors were classed together. A tax collector was barred from the synagogue. A Roman writer tells us that he once saw a monument to an honest tax collector. An honest specimen of this renegade profession was so rare that he received a monument.
Yet Jesus chose Matthew the tax collector to be an apostle.
(1) The first thing Matthew did was to invite Jesus to a feast, which he could well afford, and to invite his fellow tax collectors and their outcast friends to meet him. Matthew’s first instinct was to share the wonder he had found. John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, once said, “No one ever went to heaven alone; he must either find friends or make them.” It is a Christian duty to share the blessedness that we have found.Three weeks ago, I shared with you some thoughts from Henri Nouwen’s Lenten booklet, “Called to Life, Called to Love,” leaving you with a closing reminder that God never gives up loving us so we should never give us on ourselves.
(2) The scribes and Pharisees objected. The Pharisees, the separated ones, would not even let the skirt of their robes touch the like of Matthew. Jesus made the perfect answer. The philosopher Epictetus called his teaching, “the medicine of salvation.” Jesus pointed out that it is only sick people who need doctors; and people like Matthew and his friends were the very people who needed him most. It would be well if we were to regard the sinner not as a criminal but as a sick man; and if we were to look on the man who has made a mistake not as someone deserving contempt and condemnation but as someone needing love and help to find the right way.
One thing we know for sure about God. He is a God of the living, not of the dead. God is life. God is love. God is beauty. God is goodness. God is truth. God doesn’t want us to die. God wants us to live. Our God, who loves us from eternity to eternity, wants to give us life for eternity.
When that eternal life was interrupted by our unwillingness to give our full “yes” to God’s love, He sent Jesus to be with us and to say that great “yes” in our name and thus restore us to eternal life. So we should have no fear of exclusion or death. There is no cruel boss, or vengeful enemy, or cruel tyrant waiting to destroy us—only a loving, always forgiving God, eager to welcome us home.
God’s love for us is everlasting, it existed before we were born and will exist after we have died. It is an eternal love in which we are embraced. Living a spiritual life calls us to claim that eternal love for ourselves so that we can live our temporal loves—for parents, brothers, sisters, teachers, friends, spouses, off-springs and all people who become part of our lives—as reflections of God’s eternal love. No fathers or mothers can love their children perfectly. No husbands or wives can love each other with unlimited love. There is no human love that is not broken somewhere. No human love is the perfect love our hearts desire, and sometimes human love is so imperfect that we can hardly recognize it as love.
When our broken love is the only love we can have, we are easily thrown into despair, but when we can live our broken love as a partial reflection of God’s perfect, unconditional love, we can forgive one another and enjoy together the love we have to offer. We must trust that the source of all love is God’s unlimited love, and that this love is not far away from us but is the gift of God’s Spirit dwelling within us.
This gift of God is one of the treasures of faith for us here and now. It calls for patience. Patience is a hard discipline. It is not just waiting until something happens over which we have no control such as the arrival of the bus, the end of the rain, the return of a friend, the resolution of a conflict. Patience is not a waiting passively until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient, we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later and somewhere else. We need to be patient and trust that this treasure of faith, God’s love, is right here where we are and to live in it to its fullest.
PRAYER: O God, we thank you for your gift of unconditional love. Help us not to demand of others the perfect love they cannot give. As you live in eternity, help us to live graciously in the here and now in profound gratitude for the eternal life you have prepared for us. Amen.
