Having demonstrated Christ's Lordship in the natural, supernatural and moral realms with a group of miracles, it is hardly surprising that Matthew should follow up with some implications of that Lordship. The plan of the paragraph is as follows:
1. THE CALL OF MATTHEW
Discipleship
... rests on Forgiveness
... requires Obedience
... restores Fellowship
2. THE COMPLAINT OF THE PHARISEES
Discipleship is
... Righteousness
... Repentance
3. THE QUESTION OF JOHN'S DISCIPLES
Discipleship is.. Celebration
... Newness
... Exuberance - let joy be unconfined!
Three things about discipleship stand out in Matthew's call.
1. Discipleship rests on forgiveness
In the healing of the paralytic, Matthew has just shown us that Jesus has divine authority to forgive sinners. Now we see Him calling Matthew, a sinner, to discipleship. His discipleship began in forgiveness; it was a gift of grace.
Tax-collectors like Matthew were heartily despised and hated in those times. The Jews regarded them the way the Dutch, say, regarded traitors in the second world war who went over to the Nazis; a man who collected taxes for Rome had gone over to the enemy, fleecing his own countrymen for selfish, greedy gain. That is what you did if you became a tax-collector; your whole life was an infamy. You were not fit company for the Son of God. But the Son of God invited Matthew into His company! He could only do that by forgiving the man. That is the first thing Matthew says about discipleship:
Discipleship is a gift of grace.
To use Paul's language in Romans, it depends on "the grace of God and the free gift in that grace of the one Man Jesus Christ." (Rom. 5:15). The Son of God befriends us. He elects "not to count our trespasses against us." That is where discipleship begins. It depends, not on a man's fitness for it, but on Christ's call.
Christ's call of Matthew was in the highest
degree an offence. Hence the protest the Pharisees made: "If
scoundrels like Matthew are rewarded with a place in the Kingdom,"
they wanted to know, "where does that leave decent, honest folk like
us?"
"Out in the cold!" said Jesus.
Discipleship rests on grace, not merit. Understand it well. None of us deserves it. That any of us becomes a disciple at all is a miracle of grace. And the fellowship we have with each other as disciples is a fellowship in that miracle. That is what the feast in Matthew's house means.
2. Discipleship requires obedience
We are so familiar with the Gospel
narratives telling us how Jesus said "Follow me" to this one and that
that we forget how unprecedented a thing it was for a rabbi in those
days to do that. Rabbis did have disciples (who followed respectively
three paces behind their teacher), but no rabbi would dream of
'soliciting' followers the way Jesus did. It simply wasn't done. The
situation in the first of the discipleship paragraphs was the normal
thing - the disciple took the initiative, saying "I will follow
you."
The point is: Jesus is not a modest Rabbi. He is Lord. He commands,
and we obey. That, too, is how discipleship begins. The initiative is
Christ's, not ours. You do not choose to be a disciple; you get
chosen. As Jesus said to them all later, "You did not choose me, but
I chose you." (John 15:16) Jesus is Lord; and we are all picked men,
whose task is to follow.
If you are a disciple, you will live as Jesus tells you.
3. Discipleship restores fellowship
Matthew threw a party for all his old friends, and they found themselves sitting down at table with the Son of God. That was another miracle! It was the first time in years any of them had sat down with someone with a reputation to lose by doing so.
When Matthew sat down at his desk in his tax office, he threw in his lot with sinners. When Jesus sat down at Matthew's dinner table, He threw in His lot with sinners, too. But with what a difference!
Table fellowship then implied a pledge of
friendship. Even today among the Bedouin, it is a recognised
obligation that "you do not raise your hand against a man whose
hospitality you have enjoyed." To offer hospitality is "to offer,
peace, trust, brotherhood and forgiveness." In a meeting one of my
Brisbane congregation attended, Miss Aileen Coleman, a Red Sea
Mission missionary, told of one who had offered shelter to a desert
wanderer. Two men who had been pursuing him arrived a little while
after, and demanded that he be handed over because he was a fugitive
from justice. The Arab replied, "I cannot betray him; he has shared
my table."
"But," they said, "he has committed murder."
"I am sorry," the Arab persisted, "I cannot deliver him up to you; he
has shared my table."
"But," they said, "the man he murdered was your son."
The Bedouin visibly struggled within himself, but finally, choking on
the words, he said, "I cannot give him up to you. He has shared my
table."
It meant that much to share table fellowship in first century Palestine. You were bound by it to mutual loyalty and honour. So our Lord's table fellowship with sinners was more than a big-hearted gesture (as though their life style was of no concern to Him), but an acting out of the Gospel and the sinners' response to Him Who offered it, so they became a pledged fellowship of forgiven men.
That is what the Church is. We are to 'see' each other clothed, not in the dress of our past misdeeds, but in the mantle of God's forgiveness through Christ. The Church is a community of grace. Not shared interests or doctrines bind us together, but Christ. We have no right to say, "I can't relate to him or her." That is what the Pharisees said. We must 'live' the forgiveness in which we live.
This was pledged friendship - covenanted fellowship. That too is what discipleship is about. That too is where it begins - in a fellowship that holds together in love the most unlikely people because Christ is at the heart of it.
The company of Christ's disciples is a pledged fellowship of the forgiven.
If there are disciples whose company we feel we cannot stand, Jesus will do not a thing to help us avoid them. We must live the forgiveness in which we live. To say, "I can't stand him, I can't abide her; there's no way in the world I can work alongside him, no way in the world I can get along with her" is Pharisee talk, not Disciple talk.
1. Righteousness
The second episode in this discipleship paragraph concerns the complaint the Pharisees made: "Why does He have table fellowship with bad people?" Jesus' answer was, "Because they need it."
People are to be evaluated, not by their morals or their manners, but by their need. "Those who are well have no need of a physician; it is the sick who do. Go away and don't come back until you've understood what it means that what God wants of us is mercy, not sacrifice - kindliness, not condemnation - relationship, not ritual."
"Mercy, not sacrifice" is a repeated theme in Matthew's Gospel, because it is of the very essence of the Gospel. Goodwill is what it is all about - God's goodwill toward us, and our goodwill toward each other. That is the meat of it.
"But it isn't righteous," the Pharisees
protested. "Be kind to bad people, and they'll presume on your
kindness to stay bad."
And Jesus said, "No. It's not a proper response from the bad people
that is lacking; what is lacking is enough kindness from the good
people to produce that response. When the love you show them is
immoderate enough, it will work."
In any case, righteousness as the Bible writers understand it is not so much a matter of being in the right yourself, as it is of putting right what has gone wrong. Righteousness is simply not righteous unless it is full of grace! "Give Thy righteousness to Thy Royal Son," the psalmist prays. (Psalm 72:1) And how is that prayer answered? With verses 12-14: "He delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and those who have no helper. He has pity on the weak and saves the life of the needy. From oppression and violence he redeems their life, and precious is their blood in his sight." That is what it means to be righteous. Goodness and goodwill go together; they cannot be separated. "The sun of righteousness rises with healing in his wings." Righteousness is not righteous till it goes forth to save.
2. Repentance
That sort of righteousness has its roots in repentance.
It was obvious (to anyone with eyes to see) that the sinners Jesus received had repented: it was with the Son of God they chose to sit. What the Pharisees failed altogether to see was that when sinners sat down at table with Jesus their sinner-hood ended and their sainthood began. They were blind to the fact that the company sinners had chosen thereby was God's company. They had opened their hearts to Him. There was a real change in them. If you sit down at table with the Son of God you have already turned your back on godlessness and welcomed godliness. To open your heart to Jesus is to have repented.
We complicate everything so unnecessarily. We want repentance to mean the same thing as penance. They are not the same thing. Penance is a way of paying for our sins; repentance is a way of turning from our sins to something better. Penance is a waste of time - we cannot pay for our sins; only Jesus can pay for them. Penance is a miserable business; repentance is a joyful business: we walk into a free world where Jesus is the life and soul of the party. Wherever the Bible speaks of repentance there is always a hint of joy in the air: angels rejoicing, laughter in heaven and peace on earth.
So to the puzzled question John's disciples asked: "Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not?" There was no joy in their religion. Their life said that religion is long faces, and starved bellies, and boring vigils.
"Nonsense," said Jesus, "it's a party; it's a feast. Who ever heard of people fasting at a wedding breakfast? Well, the Kingdom of God is a Wedding Breakfast, and I am the bridegroom. Let joy be unconfined."
Disciples don't fast; they celebrate. In Palestine a wedding feast went on for a week. It was an all-in, all-out celebration. Everybody conspired with an abundance of goodwill and merriment to make that week the best remembered week of their whole lives for the young couple. They were treated as king and queen of the village; their least whim was the whole village's command. For that week they transformed the couple's world, and made it new. That is the sort of send-off marriages ought to have.
For us too the bridegroom has come, and with His coming a new day has dawned, a new world has been born. The Son of God makes all things new; and where He goes he leaves behind Him a trail of gladness. Life with the Son of God has to be the most creative, the most free, the most adventurous life of all.
Toil? Yes. Hardship? Yes. Disappointments? Yes. All real adventures include those things ... and joy! For there is in Christ's Person and His Presence and His Purpose a vitality, an exuberance, an expansiveness that will not be confined within old moulds.
That is what Jesus meant by His little parables about patches and wineskins. He did not come to patch up our old clothes; He came with a whole new wardrobe. The point about the wineskins is the same; old wineskins go hard and lose their elasticity. You do not put new wine in them, because The process of fermentation, while the wine is new, will expand the gases so they burst the hardened old leather bottle. New wine is put in new wineskins because they are still supple and can expand. Jesus is saying, "The life I bring is new; it is a ferment. The old forms won't be able to accommodate it. It will demand new forms of expression; there will have to be new vessels to contain it."
Discipleship is a joyful thing.
If we do not find it so, we have not yet found the real thing. The Son of God is a marvellous companion.
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