This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; Jeremiah 31:27-34; Ephesians 5:1-20; Matthew 9:9-17
This morning’s Canticles are: Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah, Isaiah 55:6-11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)
“Follow me.”— Matthew 9:9. Jesus commands, and Matthew simply obeys. Why does Matthew follow him? Our passage provides but an indirect hint. Matthew is a tax collector. He is therefore reckoned among “the sinners” by “the righteous” (Matthew 9:11). He is among those who recognize they are sick, and in need of a physician (Matthew 9:12-13)—that they are worn out by life, and need to be made new (Matthew 9:14-17).
What makes me follow him? I see some of myself in Matthew. In addition, our readings today give me ample reason to follow.
Because he is God. — Hebrews 1:10-12 is a direct quote of Psalm 102:25-27: “But you are the same, and your years will never end.” In the psalm, these verses anchor the psalmist’s hope “in the day of my trouble” (Psalm 102:1). His troubles come from enemies (v. 8), from his recognition of God’s indignation at his sin (v. 10), from his feeling of homelessness (v. 17), and from a creeping fear of death (vv. 11, 24). With verses 25-27, the psalmist places his destiny in the hands of the Lord who is eternal.
The fascinating thing is that in Hebrews these verses conclude the writer’s argument that Jesus is God. Psalm 102 affirms the eternality and the deity of Jesus Christ, says the writer to the Hebrews. And whether Matthew the tax collector realized it in that moment when Jesus told him “Follow me,” or whether it dawned on him over time, he came to see it as well. Matthew’s Gospel is the one that tells us that Jesus’s name means Emmanuel, “God with us.”
So, with Matthew, I follow Jesus because he is God.
Because he makes sin go away. — Jeremiah speaks of a new covenant that’s not like the old covenant. The old covenant, announced on Mt. Sinai and engraved on tablets of stone, did more to convict people of their sin than it did to mold them into the kingdom of priests they were called to be. The old covenant relied on sacrifice after sacrifice to provide covering for sin after sin. Jeremiah looks to a new covenant that brings the law’s work into the human heart where it can produce transformation, not just demand it. The premise of that new covenant is one single sacrifice that finally cleanses consciences once and for all. That sacrifice, in addition, gives God a sort of holy amnesia: “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34; Hebrews 8:12).
Did Matthew catch a glimpse of that hope when Jesus told him “Follow me”? Who knows? But by the time he wrote his Gospel he definitely did! Of the three Gospel accounts of the institution of the Last Supper, it is Matthew’s alone that echoes the amazing scene in Exodus 24, when the elders saw Moses take blood from the sacrificed oxen, dash it on the people, and say, “See, the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you…” (Exodus 24:8). Matthew alone recalls Jesus speaking of the sacrifice he was about to make as “my blood of the covenant” (Matthew 26:28). As the writer to the Hebrews makes clear: the one last sacrifice to end all sacrifice, by clearing all sin and covering all transgression once and for all: “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14, and context).
So, with Matthew, I follow Jesus because he has dealt with sin—and my sin—for good.
Because he breathes life into the deadness of my being. “But be filled with the Spirit,” says the apostle Paul in Ephesians 5:18. Sin taken care of, transformation can take place. Transformation occurs when the Spirit who raised him from the dead and who now resides in us breathes fresh life into us. The breath of the Spirit draws us out of the walking sleep-death of “fornication, impurity, greed (which is idolatry),” and into the robustness of wise living, thanksgiving, praise, and above all, love. How ironic that this new life is the opposite of pursuits that people undertake in the name of freedom, fulfillment, and fun. The Bible characterizes those pursuits as representing a coma of sorts: an internal deadness, a lack of awareness of being truly and vibrantly alive, of being incapable of understanding the authentic nature of love. One only needs to think of wild partying in bars or on the beach in the midst of pandemic—yeah, that’s some fun!
Christ lives in us now! He’s writing God’s law on our hearts by the Spirit! He ushers us from the darkness of spiritual stupor and into the light of full awakening! “‘Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you’” (Ephesians 5:14). Perhaps Matthew did, or perhaps he didn’t, immediately sense the newness of life offered in Jesus’s “Follow me.” But at some point, he did come to understand (because he wrote about it) that Jesus was refashioning him into a new wineskin so that he could be a vessel of the new wine of new life (Matthew 9:17).
So, I follow Jesus because, with Matthew, I choose newness over senescence. I choose life over death. I choose being awake over being in perpetual torpor. I choose the breath of the Spirit over the sour aftertaste of mere amusement.
May you, this day, follow Jesus—and in following him, may you know his divine protection, may you revel in the forgiveness he has won for you, and may you breathe in the fresh wind of his Spirit.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+