TRINITY 15

Although this Sunday is Trinity 15, Monday is the Feast of Saint Matthew and as a result we are keeping this day as the Feast. Why do we have Saints is a question that a young boy once asked me. In the Creed that we say every Sunday we state an that we believe in the Communion of Saints. A communion is a fellowship of individuals or a community and a community has about it a sense of relationship. In the Book of the Revelation we have the picture in words of all the faithful gathered around the Throne of God. The images in the Scriptures are full of this fellowship gathered around the Throne and Altar of God. Saint Paul speaks of the Church as the Body of Christ and in his First Epistle to the Corinthians in the twelfth Chapter we find his discussion about the Church. In his understanding he points out that the elements in the Church are interconnected and interdependent. Our value and worth come from our relationship with the body and our life as well. It is through Baptism that we are grafted into the Church. The Church is the Body of Christ in the world. It is by the lives that we live that we witness to the truth of the Gospel. We are all saints and although we have our flaws what makes us saints is our Baptism. As a result, a Saint is anyone who is baptized. The Church down through the ages has seen fit to set aside the lives of some of the baptized in a list of the names of these persons as examples of holy living. Consequently, we have a Calendar that provides us saints days through the year. The Saints are chosen usually because they exemplify in some way aspect of Christ’s Life. The Saints are also heroes of the Faith because they have stood up to evil and in spite of temptation have resisted the desire to do evil. Why was Matthew chosen as a saint? It is Matthew who sat at the Seat of Custom as a tax collector for the Romans. As the Gospel tells us our Lord approached him and simply said “Follow me.” Matthew got up from his table and followed the Christ. But why Matthew? Here was a man who worked for the Roman oppressors, a man who was believed to be a thief, because tax collectors very often skimmed off some of the tax for themselves. He was chosen because the Christ saw in him what others had failed to see – his humanity. The British Army liberated a concentration camp in Germany at the end of the war. One of the British Officers came across a woman sitting outside one of the prisoner huts. When he asked what was inside she said that she would show him. As she stood, he held the door open for her. She said that that act gave her courage and hope because for the time in a long time, someone had treated her as a human being. He had shown respect by opening the door and stepping aside so that she could enter first. Sometimes the most important thing that we can do for each other is to treat each other as human beings. It is Matthew who writes the first Gospel and scholars tell us that he writes it for the Hebrew nation. It is the most readable of all the Gospels and teaches that our Lord is both God and Man. In other words, it is his humanity that is emphasized in this Gospel and it is the Gospel that is most organized. Matthew writes his Gospel in the 70’s and is considered the first Gospel to be written. Matthew makes it clear that our Lord is a descendent of Abraham and of the Royal House of David. Outside of the Gospel records there is very little known about Matthew. Some sources tell us that he preached the Gospel in Ethiopia, but aside from this the record is silent. Our Lord calls Matthew to servanthood. In fact he calls us all to the same servanthood. Who do we serve? Do we serve the world? Do we serve each other? Do we serve God? It is only be serving God that we can hope to serve the world and each other. We are instruments of God’s Grace and it is only through our faithfulness to him that we can ever hope to serve the world. Matthew served God in his generation and continues to do so in the Paradise of God. Hopefully we as instruments of God’s Grace will join him in this world and in the world to come in faithful service.