Jesus Loved Them, Part 1: Matthew, a surprising call to discipleship
Jesus loves me, this I know.
For the Bible tells me so . . .
Whenever she gets a chance, a resident at Evelyn’s care facility stands and leads the group in singing the song. Several join in, and then she ends with a brief exhortation that we must tell everyone they need Jesus as their Savior.
I’ve discovered she is a lifetime Christian. In her prime, she was a dynamic youth sponsor in her local church. Today she’s still proclaiming the driving force in her life, the remarkable, unrelenting love of Jesus.
For several weeks starting today, we’ll use this space to look at others who knew that love. Some were intimates of Jesus; some were encountering him for the first time. Some were desperate for his help; some were surprised by what he offered. At least one was wealthy, and another had lost everything. Some were religious; some were scorned by the faithful.
That last description probably applies to the person we meet today.
He was a tax collector, and the Jews widely despised tax collectors. These agents of the Roman occupiers, Jews themselves, colluded with the conquerors to collect a complicated variety of taxes. Jewish citizens had no choice but to pay whatever they charged, and they regularly collected more than was due and pocketed the surplus.
In the eyes of all around Jesus, his call of a tax collector was surprising if not unthinkable. But to any who have studied Jesus since then, his embrace of Matthew seems completely characteristic. “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance,” he said. And so anyone who discovers him today can realize he wants to call them, too.
It’s not that Jesus has no interest in the righteous. But upcoming devotions will remind us that the righteous often struggled more than others to accept him.
Some reading this also struggle.
Maybe it’s because, after a lifetime of faithfulness to him, they feel betrayed by what he has allowed to happen in their lives. They’ve been good; why should suffering be their reward?
Why should suffering be their reward?
Or maybe it’s because, after listening so long to the secular drumbeat reverberating in our land of abundance, they feel entirely self-sufficient. They’re not lost; why look for a savior?
Why look for a savior?
But others don’t see that much difference between themselves and Matthew. Long ago they relaxed with the fact that they’d never be good enough to earn God’s favor. Jesus said, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” And they’re at peace to be in the latter category.
We each can stand with Matthew and decide what Jesus’ call to him can mean for us. If nothing else, we can grasp that Jesus was never surprised by a world whose residents constantly fell short of the ideal. He built on the brokenness in Matthew’s life to construct something useful for all the generations to follow
We can look at what’s shattered in our lives and ask God to make something beautiful from everything that’s left.
Read: Matthew 9:9-13
Pray: Use me, today, God, in spite of everything not right about my life. Help me not to be wrecked by my losses but to yield them to your creative control.
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