The Humanity of the Villains: A Sermon for the Feast of S. Matthew

Proverbs 3:1-6
Psalm 119:33-40
2 Timothy 3:14-17
Matthew 9:9-13

St. Thomas's Anglican Church
Toronto, ON

+In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit

One of the themes that is a constant throughout the Gospels is that Jesus chooses to associate himself with unsavoury figures. Not only that, he brings people like them, like Matthew into his inner circle, and makes them integral to his ministry. It is something that is repeated so often that the significance of it is diminished because it is so common. Yes, Jesus interacted with tax collectors and sinners, so what? We hear it and then we move on. Yet when Jesus reaches out to these people and reaches out to embrace the common humanity that they share with each other, we see people being transformed and their humanity being restored. The divine person of Christ who shares our humanity reaches out like a physician to heal the person.

There are plenty of stories of figures who have been transformed by the power of Christ into a new person. We revere people like S. Dismas, the good thief crucified next to Jesus, S. Paul, S. Francis of Assisi, and of course S. Matthew. But consider that these people have a particular honorific attached to them, and when we write their names in a sartorial function, we put an S-T next to their name denoting an almost larger than life status to them because of their saintly status. We cannot possibly be like them, and indeed though we as Christians may celebrate the lives of transformed sinners, we fall into an old habit that seemingly denies the possibility of such an occurrence.

We are enculturated to see people as being defined of varying degrees of impurity and of being marked in some way by who they are and what they do. Though this is certainly a very old thing that we do, it seems that our contemporary society and culture hypercharges this practice. There always has to be the “bad guy”, there always has to be the villain. The villains of our stories and of our lives are always evil, born defective, defined by their evil actions, and will always be considered evil. The criminal is always a criminal, the sinner is always a sinner, and the tax collector is always a tax collector.

And if there is a villain, then there always needs to be a hero! The hero is always good, always right, and even when they do make a mistake, it’s okay because they are good because they were born good and righteous, and they do not carry the epitaph of sinner for they are righteous. When we consider the ways our identities are cultivated by the media, advertising, consumerism, and in the very cultural air we breathe, so long as we have not been marked as a sinner in society, we are the heroes of our own stories. We are perpetually good and correct. In the most perverse way, this model of society makes us the most “Saintly” or “Christ-like” because we are always good just as a saint or Christ are good!

Maybe we need to hear more closely the words Jesus says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” Jesus came for the sake of those we have labeled as the villains and those rejected by society because he sees in them the humanity that we forget that they have.

Why is a tax collector such a reviled person in the Gospels? They are one of the few visible faces of the otherwise faceless Roman Empire that were contracted to collect the taxes, fees, duties, and customs from the people of the empire. They are part of the mechanism that ensures that the empire kept running, and a visible image seen by the oppressor of conquered and colonised people. Matthew, and other tax collectors, are then the ever-present reminder to the Jewish peoples living in Judea and Galilee that they are a conquered and colonised people. And the job of the tax collector meant extracting the wealth and value of the labour of the person they collected money from.

If we want to transpose this onto our own lives, then a good analogue might be the manager or supervisor at work who has the job of ensuring the value of your labour is extracted for the sake of a faceless and invisible corporate or government entity. And you cannot do anything about the faceless and invisible entity, but you can be mad at the person who is doing this to you, and so you are vindicated, you are the hero and they are the villain

Consider though that the tax collector makes their livelihood from the money that is collected in taxes. The very nature of their job forces them to inevitably take more from people than what is owed to the state because they too need to survive. In this arrangement, the tax collector can easily be incentivised to take a little more here or there, justifying it because there might be some need in their lives, and little by little, the shaving off the bit at the top to survive becomes defrauding and extorsion, and there is nothing to be done. Everyday people cannot stop paying taxes because the tax collector has the backing of soldiers to ensure taxes get paid, and the empire does not care so long as it gets what it needs to administer itself. Sure, the tax collector could stop collecting taxes, but there are few alternatives for them, and they still need this thing called money to survive. There are always reasons to people’s actions, and those actions do not define who they are!

Now let me be clear, this does excuse the hurtful or destructive actions the people do whether that be the defrauding done by an ancient tax collector, or the harm done to us by another person. Nor does this mean we just turn over and accept the harm done to us. We don’t wave our hands and go “oh well”. Jesus calls on them to stop and repent of their wrong doing and to follow him. But if we truly want to understand why Jesus called Matthew to be his disciple, and why he associated himself with tax collectors and sinners was because he saw within them the thing that people blinded by their own righteousness could not—their humanity. Jesus sees that, and offers a new way of being for the tax collector by following him and abandoning their wrong doing

And that is what makes Jesus’ actions so baffling, even today, because Jesus sees the reality that even those branded with the epitaphs of tax collector and sinner, that the victimiser can also be the victim, and that even the most heinous can be redeemed and restored because that person is a person and if we dare call ourselves Christian, then that means we have to believe that empathy, compassion, and love have the power to transform anyone no matter how callous, distant, or even evil because that was what Jesus did. He lived with them, worked with them, and offered a chance for them to abandon those actions which distanced themselves from others while protecting them from those who could not see past the actions of their past.

It is hard work, and it is the labour we choose to adopt if we call ourselves Christian, but when Jesus says that he will draw the whole world to himself, that means the whole world! Everyone shares in the same humanity that Christ brought onto himself, and therefore are granted the same promises of his divinity. This means there is hope, even for those like us who think of ourselves as righteous and the heroes of our own story.

Amen