"Perfect Service"

Pastor David Hansen

Festival of Saint Matthew

September 24, 2006

Text: Matthew 9:9-13

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. 

I don’t know how much you know about the process we use in the Lutheran Church to determine who has been called to the office the ministry of Word and Sacrament.

It starts before you even enter Seminary.  You have to submit letters of recommendation, submit to a full day of psychological testing, and a background check.  Then you sit down for a long interview with the synod candidacy committee.

All that is just to get the process started.  You then have to pass the test of seminary education, being evaluated by both the seminary professors and the synod committee.  Your theological understanding, your personal life and habits, your devotional life – every aspect of your life is examined and scrutinized for four years.  I am real disappointed that I am done with that process.

But seriously, I got to thinking about our process for selecting pastors because it seems that Jesus could have used some sort of screening process for his apostles.  Think about it:

You’ve got Peter – outspoken and brash, and quick to lose his temper.

Then there’s James and John – more concerned with personal success, with who will be first in the kingdom, than with more important spiritual matters.  Not to mention that their mother pulled Jesus aside for a talk about their future status.

There’s Thomas – unable to trust anyone except his own eyes.

And we all know what happened to Judas.

And of course, there’s Matthew, whose feast day we celebrate today.  Matthew who probably didn’t have a religious bone in his body before he met Jesus.  Matthew the tax collector.

Even today we cringe when we hear that job title, “tax collector.”  But it was so much worse in the ancient world.  Palestine was an occupied country at the time, and being a tax collector meant that Matthew worked for the Romans.  It would be like a Palestinian today working for the Israeli government – we wouldn’t expect him to spend much time walking through town without an armed guard.

But it gets even worse.  Roman tax collectors were expected – even encouraged – to take a little off the top for themselves.  So if Rome needed twenty dollars from you, the tax collector could say you owed fifty, and keep the extra for himself.  And if you refused to pay this padded tax bill, to jail you went.

Tax collectors were the most despised people in Jewish society – hated more than the Romans, the Samaritans, or anyone else.  They were turncoats collaborating with the Romans, they were cheats and liars, and they lived high on the hog while their fellow Jews barely had enough to get by.

And our Lord called Matthew, the tax collector.

It makes you wonder just what in the world Jesus was thinking.  I mean, Palestine was just bursting at the seams with more qualified candidates than this.

There were the temple priests.  They knew all the right rituals, they had all the political connections, and they were used to dealing with people.  They would have been perfect.  But they were not called as apostles.

Or there were the Pharisees.  They knew the Scriptures inside and out, they knew all the theological lingo, and they were trained as teachers.  They would have been perfect.  But they were not called as apostles.

Or even the Essenes, those Jews that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls and lived out in the desert like John the Baptist.  They had real spiritual discipline, they were withdrawn from the taint of worldly affairs, and they knew about sacrifice.  They would have been perfect.  But they were not called.

Because Christ did not call the perfect people.

Instead we get Matthew, the tax collector.  A man of questionable moral character, a man hated by everyone, a man who didn’t have his life straightened out, who didn’t have all his ducks in a row.  Matthew, called by our Lord.

I am reminded of a young man who was sure that there was no way God could use him.  This young man was convinced that he was too flawed – too sinful – too imperfect -- for God to use in any way.  He went to his pastor repeatedly to find out how he could be perfect, how he could become worthy of God’s call. 

The young man became very disheartened as he failed at every attempt to become worthy of God’s call.  The one day, this man realized what Saint Matthew knew – that God does not call perfect people, God calls imperfect and flawed people.

Thus, young Martin Luther answered God’s call.  Even after he answered that call, Luther never was perfect – he remained flawed and sinful.  But now, he was a flawed, sinful man in the service of the Gospel.

Almost every religion teaches that we must first move toward God in order to be worthy of God and God’s call.  The closer we come to perfection, these religions teach, the more likely we are to experience the divine.

Our Lord, our God says, “Those who are righteous have no need of a physician, but those who are sick … I have come not to call the righteous but sinners.”

Perfect people need not apply.

But broken people,

People who struggle with sin,

People with flaws and imperfections,

People with “a past,”

Are daily being called by God.  People like Saint Matthew.  People like Martin Luther.  People like you and me.

Whether we work as pastors, ranchers, teachers, accountants, or anything else – Christ calls us as the imperfect people we are to serve God in every way that we can.  And if Christ calls us, he will give us the ability to do whatever we are called to – despite, and sometimes because of, our imperfections.

We all have our downfalls.

Maybe your prayer life isn’t what you would like it to be.

Maybe you struggle with a particular temptation.

Maybe you aren’t always the person you know you should be.

Maybe you think you are too old, or too young, or that you don’t know Scripture well enough. 

But none of that compares with Matthew the tax collector.  If God can use Matthew, God can use you too.  If God can call Matthew, then God is calling you too.

Our God calls us, with all of our imperfections, flaws, and sins.  As a congregation and as individuals, we will find that when whenever answer God’s call, God will not be defeated by our flaws.

Christ tells us, “I have come not to call the righteous but sinners.”

Christ is calling you to serve your neighbor

To feed the hungry in this community

To serve this congregation

To spread the Gospel, to live a gospel-filled life.

Christ is calling you … will you answer?

Christ is calling this congregation

To serve this community in every way that we can,

Calling us to new and exciting ministries and missions.

Christ is calling us … will we answer?

Or will we wait until we are “perfect” before we answer?

Saint Matthew answered Christ’s call that day so long ago.  He knew he was flawed and sinful, that he was not perfect, but he answered the call anyway and followed Christ.  And Matthew’s life was never the same: one of our four Gospels is attributed to him, he spent the rest of his life in service to God, and through his service, Matthew changed the world.

And so today we celebrate the festival of Saint Matthew, and we remember that God calls imperfect and flawed people to lives of service, so that through their service they can change the world – so that through our service, we can change the world.

And for that, this very imperfect and flawed servant says thanks be to God.