Combine the greed of an embezzling executive with the presumption of a hokey television evangelist. Throw in the audacity of an ambulance-chasing lawyer and the cowardice of a drive-by sniper. Stir in a pinch of a pimp’s morality, and finish it off with the drug peddler’s code of ethics, and what do you have?
A first-century tax collector.
According to the Jews these guys ranked barely above plankton on the food chain. Caesar permitted these Jewish citizens to tax almost anything—your boat, the fish you caught, your house, your crops. Tax collectors made a handsome income by giving Rome its due and pocketing the rest.
Matthew was a public tax collector. Private tax collectors hired other people to do the dirty work. Public publicans, like Matthew, just pulled their stretch limos into the poor side of town and set up shop. As crooked as corkscrews.
His given name, Levi, was a priestly name (Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27–28). Did his parents aspire for him to enter the priesthood? If so, he was a flop in the family circle.
You can bet he was shunned. The neighborhood cookouts? Never invited. High school reunions? Somehow his name was left off the list. The guy was avoided like group A streptococcus. Everybody kept his distance from Matthew.
Everyone except Jesus. “‘Follow me and be my disciple,’ Jesus said to him. So Matthew got up and followed him” (Matt. 9:9 NLT).
Matthew must have been ripe. Jesus hardly had to tug. In short order Matthew’s shady friends and Jesus’ green followers were swapping e-mail addresses. “Then Levi gave a big dinner for Jesus at his house. Many tax collectors and other people were eating there, too” (Luke 5:29 NCV).
What do you suppose led up to that party? Let’s try to imagine. I can see Matthew going back to his office and packing up. He removes the Hustler of the Year Award from the wall and boxes up the Shady Business School certificate. His coworkers start asking questions.
“What’s up, Matt? Headed on a cruise?”
“Hey, Matthew, the missus kick you out?”
Matthew doesn’t know what to say. He mumbles something about a job change. But as he reaches the door, he pauses. Holding his box full of office supplies, he looks back. They’re giving him hangdog looks—kind of sad, puzzled.
He feels a lump in his throat. Oh, these guys aren’t much. Parents warn their kids about this sort. Salty language. Mardi Gras morals. They keep the phone number of the bookie on speed dial. The bouncer at the gentlemen’s club sends them birthday cards. But a friend is a friend. Yet what can he do? Invite them to meet Jesus? Yeah, right. They like preachers the way sheep like butchers. Tell them to tune in to the religious channel on TV? Then they’d think cotton-candy hair is a requirement for following Christ. What if he sneaked little Torah tracts into their desks? Nah, they don’t read.
So, not knowing what else to do, he shrugs his shoulders and gives them a nod. “These stupid allergies,” he says, rubbing the mist from one eye.
Later that day the same thing happens. He goes to the bar to settle up his account. The decor is blue-collar chic: a seedy, smoky place with a Budweiser chandelier over the pool table and a jukebox in the corner. Not the country club, but for Matthew it’s his home on the way home. And when he tells the owner he’s moving on, the bartender responds, “Whoa, Matt. What’s comin’ down?”
Matthew mumbles an excuse about a transfer but leaves with an empty feeling in his gut.
Later on he meets up with Jesus at a diner and shares his problem. “It’s my buddies—you know, the guys at the office. And the fellows at the bar.”
“What about them?” Jesus asks.
“Well, we kinda run together, you know. I’m gonna miss ’em. Take Josh for instance—as slick as a can of Quaker State, but he visits orphans on Sunday. And Bruno at the gym? Can crunch you like a roach, but I’ve never had a better friend. He’s posted bail for me three times.”
Jesus motions for him to go on. “What’s the problem?”
“Well, I’m gonna miss those guys. I mean, I’ve got nothing against Peter and James and John, Jesus . . . but they’re Sunday morning, and I’m Saturday night. I’ve got my own circle, ya know?”
Jesus starts to smile and shake his head. “Matthew, Matthew, you think I came to quarantine you? Following me doesn’t mean forgetting your friends. Just the opposite. I want to meet them.”
“Are you serious?”
“Is the high priest a Jew?”
“But, Jesus, these guys . . . Half of them are on parole. Josh hasn’t worn socks since his bar mitzvah . . .”
“I’m not talking about a religious service, Matthew. Let me ask you, What do you like to do? Bowl? Play Monopoly? How’s your golf game?”
Matthew’s eyes brighten. “You ought to see me cook. I get on steaks like a whale on Jonah.”
“Perfect.” Jesus smiles. “Then throw a little going-away party. A hang-up-the-clipboard bash. Get the gang together.”
Matthew’s all over it. Calling his housekeeper and his secretary and firing up the grill. “Get the word out, Thelma. Drinks and dinner at my house tonight. Tell the guys to come and bring a date.”
And so Jesus ends up at Matthew’s house, a classy split-level with a view of the Sea of Galilee. Parked out front is everything from BMWs to Harleys to limos. And the crowd inside tells you this is anything but a clergy conference.
Earrings on the guys and tattoos on the girls. Moussified hair. Music that rumbles teeth roots. And buzzing around in the middle of the group is Matthew, making more connections than an electrician. He hooks up Peter with the tax collector bass club and Martha with the kitchen staff. Simon the Zealot meets a high school debate partner. And Jesus? Beaming. What could be better? Sinners and saints in the same room, and no one’s trying to determine who is which. But an hour or so into the evening the door opens, and an icy breeze blows in. “The Pharisees and the men who taught the law for the Pharisees began to complain to Jesus’ followers, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’” (Luke 5:30 NCV).
Enter the religious police and their thin-lipped piety. Big black books under their arms. Cheerful as Siberian prison guards. Clerical collars so tight that veins bulge. They like to grill too. But not steaks.
Matthew is the first to feel the heat. “Some religious fellow you are,” one says, practically pulling an eyebrow muscle. “Look at the people you hang out with.”
Matthew doesn’t know whether to get mad or get out. Before he has time to choose, Jesus intervenes, explaining that Matthew is right where he needs to be. “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent” (vv. 31–32 NLT).
Jesus peppered the sentence with irony. Pharisees considered themselves spiritually “healthy” and “righteous.” In actuality they were unhealthy and self-righteous. But since they did not think they were sick, they saw no need for Jesus.
Matthew and the gang, on the other hand, made room for Jesus. As a result Jesus made room for them.
Do we?
One of the most difficult relationship questions is “What do we do with Levi?”
Your Levi is the person with whom you fundamentally disagree. You follow different value systems. You embrace different philosophies. You adhere to different codes of behavior, dress, and faith.
How does God want us to respond to the Levis of the world? Ignore them? Share a meal with them? Leave the room when they enter? Ask them to leave so we can stay? Discuss our differences? Dismiss our differences? Argue?
I wonder if the best answer might be found in the short admonition to “accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God” (Rom. 15:7).
This passage summarizes a thirty-verse appeal to the Roman church for unity (Rom. 14:1–15:7). Paul begins and ends the treatise with the same verb: accept. This verb, paralambano, means more than tolerate or coexist. It means to welcome into one’s fellowship and heart. The word implies the warmth and kindness of genuine love.
Paul employed the verb when he urged Philemon to welcome the slave Onesimus the same way he would welcome Paul himself (Philem. v. 17). Luke selected it to describe the hospitality of the Maltese to those who were shipwrecked (Acts 28:2). And, most notably, Jesus used it to describe the manner in which he receives us (John 14:3).
How does he receive us? I know how he treated me.
I was a twenty-year-old troublemaker on a downhill path. Though I’d made a commitment to Christ a decade earlier, you wouldn’t have known it by the way I lived. I’d spent five years claiming to be God’s son on Sunday mornings and buddying with the devil on Saturday nights. I was a hypocrite: two-faced, too fast, and self-centered.
I was lost. Lost as Levi.
When I finally grew weary of sitting in pig slop, I got wind of God’s grace. I came to Jesus, and he welcomed me back. Please note: Jesus didn’t accept my behavior. He didn’t endorse my brawling and troublemaking. He wasn’t keen on my self-indulgence and prejudice. My proclivity to boast, manipulate, and exaggerate? The chauvinistic attitude? All that had to go. Jesus didn’t gloss over the self-centered Max I had manufactured. He didn’t accept my sinful behavior.
But he accepted me, his wayward child. He accepted what he could do with me. He didn’t tell me to clean up and then come back. He said, “Come back, and I’ll clean you up.” He was “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Not just grace, but truth; not just truth, but grace.
Grace and truth.
Grace told the adulterous woman, “I do not condemn you” (John 8:11 NASB).
Truth told her, “Go and sin no more” (v. 11 NKJV).
Grace invited a swindler named Zacchaeus to lunch.
Truth prompted him to sell half of his belongings and give to the poor (Luke 19:1–8).
Grace washed the feet of the disciples.
Truth told them, “Do as I have done to you” (John 13:15 NKJV).
Grace invited Peter to climb out of the boat and walk on the sea.
Truth upbraided his lack of faith (Matt. 14:29–31).
Grace invited the woman at the well to drink everlasting water.
Truth tactfully reminded her that she had gone through five husbands and was shacking up with a boyfriend (John 4:18).
Jesus was gracious enough to meet Nicodemus at night.
He was truthful enough to tell him, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5 NKJV).
Jesus shared truth, but graciously.
Jesus offered grace, but truthfully. Grace and truth. Acceptance seeks to offer both.
Jesus found a way to accept the Matthews and the Maxes of the world. Here is hoping he will do the same through you and me.