Matthew 9:9-13

The gospel of Matthew reports that when  Jesus saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office, he said to him, "Follow me." And the man got up and followed him.

The idea of someone who works for the tax office becoming a Christian is not surprising to us, so we have to appreciate the first century context in which this story was told. Those who collected taxes in the first century were working for the Romans, whose harsh rule caused tremendous suffering for the Jewish peasants. So, Matthew was not just a government employee. For the Galilean peasants following Jesus, Matthew was an agent of the oppressor. The poor who were encouraged by teachings about the coming kingdom of God might well have expected that collaborators with the Romans, like Matthew, would be punished when the kingdom of God came. Certainly, peasants would not have been happy to find a tax collector among the disciples of Jesus.

But the gospel of Matthew was not written for Galilean peasants but for Greek-speaking Jews in a major Roman city. These Christians, who in may ways benefited from Roman rule, probably had quite a different view of Jews who served the Romans by collecting taxes. No one likes taxes, but those who make money under the rule of a government recognize the necessity of funding the enforcement of the laws that protect their property. Moreover, the churches in Roman cities did not want to be identified with rebellious movements, and surely that is how many Romans saw the Jesus movement in Palestine that Pilate tried to stamp out by crucifying its leader.

The teaching that Christians should pay taxes may have first been articulated by Paul (Romans 13:7), as part of his campaign to extend the gospel among Jews and Gentiles in Roman cities like Corinth, Rome, Ephesus and Philippi. If so, the gospel of Mark, which was written after the letters of Paul, attributed the teaching to Jesus (Mk. 12:17) and the gospels of Matthew (Mt. 22:12-22) and Luke (Lu. 20:20-26) confirmed this law-abiding imperative within the church's witness.

In the gospels Jesus not only calls a tax collector to be his disciple, but eats with tax collectors and others who are identified as sinners under Jewish law. Among Jewish leaders this would have been seen as a criticism of the religious leadership similar to the ancient message of the prophets that accused priests and political elites of hypocrisy, because they failed to provide justice for the poor as God commanded. But at the time the gospel of Matthew was written, this emphasis in the story might also have implied more openness in the church to Gentiles, who were considered by traditional Jews as "sinners" simply because they did not adhere to Jewish law.

Grace and peace...Bob