St. Matthew, Apostle

St. Matthew, Apostle

The Feast of St. Matthew Apostle – 9/21/2025

Matthew 9:9-13

Rev. Christopher W. Brademeyer

That portion from God’s holy Word for consideration this morning is our reading from the holy Gospel according to St. Matthew in the ninth chapter with special emphasis on verses twelve and thirteen which read as follows:

“On hearing this, Jesus said, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’”[1]

Thus far the Scriptures.

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is the Feast of the Commemoration of St. Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist. Today’s Gospel reading gives us a brief account of how our Lord Jesus called Matthew into His service. Jesus walks by the tax booth. He sees Matthew sitting there, doing his work. And He says two words: “Follow Me.” And Matthew gets up and follows Him. No hesitation. No negotiation. No résumé presented to prove worthiness. Just a call and a response. Such is the power of the Word of God.

While we Christians are accustomed to thinking about God’s Word as powerful and active, it is good for us to stop for a moment and thing about who Matthew was. He was a tax collector. A collaborator with the Romans. A man despised by his fellow Jews as a cheat and a traitor. In brief, he was the last person you would expect the Messiah to want in His inner circle. Yet Jesus called him to Himself. Certainly, this was not due to some in born trait or personal quality that the Lord delighted in. Jesus has a habit of equipping those He called into service rather than having them rely on themselves.

More to the point, this tells us something central to the Gospel: Jesus does not call the righteous, the impressive, or the put-together. He calls sinners. And He doesn’t just call them to clean up their act, He calls them to Himself.

Matthew would go on to follow Jesus, even being granted the privilege of seeing the Lord after His resurrection. He penned the Gospel that bears his name, using it to point others to the saving cross of Jesus. Church history gets murky after that. While the ancient authorities disagree where Matthew went and preached, the plurality record him making his way to Ethiopia and they all agree that he was martyred for the faith though the exact means is lost to history.[2]

Mercy, Not Sacrifice

Matthew’s first recorded act after following Jesus is to host a feast. And who shows up? Not the respectable elites. Not the religiously upright. No! Instead Matthew hosts a whole crowd of tax collectors and sinners.

This, of course, scandalizes the Pharisees. “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Why? Because the Great Physician has come to heal the sick. Because mercy is greater than sacrifice. Because the Son of God did not come to reward the good, but to redeem the lost, heal the sick, and bind up the broken hearted.

When Jesus calls Matthew, He shows that there is no sinner beyond the reach of His mercy. He can take a greedy tax collector and make him an apostle, a missionary preacher, and the Spirit-inspired evangelist, that is writer, of the first Gospel. That same mercy reaches you. Whatever your sins, whatever your failures, whatever guilt you carry Christ calls you into His redemption, mercy, and forgiveness.

The Gift of the Apostle

But Jesus does more than forgive Matthew. He also gives Matthew to His Church. That’s where Paul’s words in our Epistle lesson from Ephesians four come in: “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.”[3]

Here we must take a moment and discuss how this verse is often mistranslated. The ESV, which we read every week here in church is one such case. A better, more faithful rendering of these verses is the King James Version, which agrees with the Greek text here nearly perfectly. This version translates this as, “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.”[4] Now I know this is a tangential point, but it is important. The offices God gives are not in order to turn Christians into self-feeders or to equip them to go off on their own, rather, they are to bring Christians to perfect completion by the Word of God, to carry out the Word and sacrament ministry that God gives in the Church, and to edify the body of Christ. In other words, like Matthew and all the Apostles, your pastor and all the other offices that relate to it here that Paul describes are to serve you with Christ and His Word unto the goal of faith and your salvation

Matthew is not just a forgiven sinner. He becomes a gift of Christ to the Church. Through his Gospel, countless believers across the ages have come to know Jesus’s life and teaching. Through his faithful witness, the body of Christ has been built up and edified.

While this text deals with the specific vocation of the Office of the Ministry, a general insight cane be noted: service is true of every Christian vocation. You are not saved from sin with nothing to do, rather, you are also saved for service. Christ gives different offices and vocations to different people. Some are Apostles like Matthew. Others are pastors. But He also gives parents, neighbors, co-workers, friends their respective vocations. In each of these, Christ works through you to build up His body in love.

Growing into Christ

Paul says that all of the gift to us that is the Office of the Ministry serves one purpose: “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”[5]

Matthew grew up into Christ. He went from a man living for himself to a man whose words would point generations to Jesus. He went from a sinner isolated at a tax booth to a member of the Twelve, joined together in Christ’s body. He went from a social outcast, a traitor to his people to receiving place in the Kingdom of God.

And the same is true for you. You are called, forgiven, and placed into Christ’s body, the Church. Here you are joined to others, built up by Word and sacrament, so that together we may grow into Christ our Head.

Conclusion

The call of Matthew is much like the call of us all. Christ comes to us in our sin and says, “Follow Me.” He has mercy, not because we are worthy, but because He is gracious even unto the point of giving Himself into death. He makes the guilty clean, the lost found, the sinner a Christian. And He gives us to one another as gifts, so that the body may be built up in love until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God.

So rejoice with Matthew today: Christ came not for the righteous, but for sinners. Just as He came for Matthew, He came for you.

In the Holy Name of + Jesus. Amen.

The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

[1] Matthew 9:12-13 English Standard Version. All further quotations from Scripture are from the ESV unless otherwise noted.

[2] “St. Matthew,” New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, accessed on 9/18/2025 from https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10056b.htm

[3] Ephesians 4:11-12

[4] Ephesians 4:11-12 KJV

[5] Ephesians 4:14-15