Matthew 9:9 - Calling the Unacceptable

Matthew 9:9 (ESV)

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.

In Matthew 4 Jesus called Peter, Andrew, James, and John. They left their boats and followed Jesus. They watched him heal. They listened to him teach. They had the inside track to Jesus. Now in chapter 9 he calls a tax collector. Eating with Matthew and his friends the Pharisees were clearly offended. How could a Jewish Rabbi eat with unclean “tax collectors and sinners?” It makes me wonder what the first four disciples were thinking as they watched this unfold. What we do know is that Jesus hung out with those who were socially unacceptable. Sometimes I fear that we are a bit more like the Pharisees than like the disciples. Believers like to think of themselves as disciples, followers of Jesus. We like to think of ourselves as taking in whatever he is saying without question. Yet in our pursuit of holiness, how often have we cut ourselves off from the unacceptable and the broken? How often have we rejected the liberal, left-wing radical? By the way, that is how Matthew would have been viewed by the Pharisees. As a tax collector he was a collaborator with left-wing radicals. What Jesus did not choose were those who would have been considered solid, theologically astute, and biblically knowledgeable. He chose the uneducated and the uncommitted, but he did not leave them there. He trained them, challenged them, and called them to deep commitment. Those are the men who “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). As believers, let us not look for those who would make good Christians. Let us look for those whom God is calling, the uneducated, the broken, the philosophically and theologically confused, the left-wing liberal who just might be more open to the Gospel than we realize. God has always used the unusable to accomplish much for his glory Why would we think he would do it differently today?