10th Sunday of Ordinary Time
There is a painting by the great renaissance painter Caravaggio in the French National Church in Rome. It is called "The Calling of Matthew". Five men are sitting around a table counting money, Matthew the tax collector surrounded by his four assistants. Jesus has walked into the room and has pointed deliberately at Matthew. Matthew is the only figure in the painting to gaze directly at Jesus. The other characters are entirely absorbed by the money on the table. (One of them is wearing a lovely pair of glasses, by the way!) But Matthew's gaze is frozen in disbelief. The busy tax collector's finger points back to himself like a wrongly accused child, as much as to say: "Who, me?" the gaze is one of disbelief. That gospel extract is taken from Matthew's account of the doings of Jesus. It contains one of the most consoling lines in the entire scriptures: "I did not come to call the virtuous but sinners." Tax collectors and sinners were interchangeable terms: tax collectors were agents of the Roman occupiers, and hence despised and an outcast. Sinner in this context had a different meaning to sinner as we understand it. In New Testament times 'sinner' was a technical term for members of despised trades, those debarred because of their profession from participating in the central body of Jewish ritual. The Pharisees had draw up a list of those who were ritually impure and debarred from entering the temple or participating in Jewish ritual: camel-drivers, herdsmen, sailors, doctors, butchers, tanners, bath attendants and of course tax collectors, anyone in fact who in the course of their daily work risked coming in contact with blood, dead bodies and forbidden animals such as pigs. All of these are outcasts, cut off from the central activities of the society in which they lived.
It has been the traditional belief that Jesus called poor fishermen as his first helpers. "Follow me", he said, "and I will make you into fishers of men." The calling of Matthew in today's gospel contradicts this tradition. Tax collectors were very wealthy men in many cases, the very reason why they were so despised. Indeed contemporary scholars have called into question the entire traditional assumption that they were poor people, that they were for all practical purposes vagabonds. The biblical scholar, Raymond Browne, has argued a contrary case. He has argued convincingly that, in the area around the Sea of Galilee, fishing was a very lucrative business. The infrastructure of the Roman Empire provided them with healthy markets for their produce. The business was organised around families and clans. Many of these families had grown enormously wealthy in the trade. Browne argues that the first disciples were fishermen was evidence of their wealth rather than their poverty. Compared with shepherds and herdsmen, for example, fishermen were in a very different economic league indeed.
The biblical evidence we have of the call of the disciples would fit in with Browne's pattern. The scriptures make the point that these men abandoned family businesses. "Leaving their father Zebedee in the boat with the men he employed, they went after him." This wasn't a question of throwing the two fish back into the sea and trying out something else. This represented a whole change of lifestyle. And that change is brought about by the forceful conviction of the preacher, Jesus himself. And the skills that were required in their original profession will stand them in good stead in their new way of life: the patience and the hope that characterises every successful fisherman will be required too in their new profession as fishers of men.
Conflict and division is rife where people gather. The first disciples were no different. They are very different personalities. Each one is burdened with his own unique set of limitations. Peter, the rock upon which the whole foundation stands, is tempestuous, erratic and given to violent outbursts. At one point Jesus declared him a spokesman for Satan. Peter of course would eventually deny the Master. Hence the call of the disciples is preceded by a call to repentance. If they are to bring about change in the world they must first change themselves.
The sons of Zebedee, James and John, were extremists, to the extent that Jesus himself dubbed them Sons of Thunder. Thomas called the whole project into question after the Resurrection. He was convinced it was all a grand con-trick. Simon the Zealot was an extreme nationalist, who opposed Roman rule. Matthew was a tax-collector, a supporter of Roman rule.
In short, the disciples chosen by Jesus represented the broad spectrum of human sin and frailty. Hence, the call to repentance precedes the call to discipleship. If they are to change the world, the disciples must first furnish evidence that they are willing to change themselves. And they furnished that evidence by abandoning their lucrative fishing businesses. In human terms the project was doomed from the beginning. But redemption rather than success was the aim of Jesus. Redemption is brought about because of sin, not despite it. This is the good new of Jesus Christ. His church is founded on human weakness.
And here we find the real significance of the meal which follows on the call of Matthew. Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees for not respecting the traditional taboos that surrounded tax collectors and sinners. But Jesus replies with a proverb that would have been familiar to all his listeners: "It is not the healthy who need the doctor but the sick." Then he adds a quote from the prophet Hosea: "What I want is mercy, not sacrifice." His accusation is that they have become so obsessed with ritual that they have forgotten the central demands of religion, which is mercy! Religion as you use it banishes people to the margins. Authentic religion will gather people together. And he uses the meal as a symbolic act. Saint and sinner sat down together with Jesus at the centre. There is no better image of the Eucharist.