Sunday
June 11
St. Matthew’s ‘Workquake’
By Marsh Chapel
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Good morning! I’m so glad to be back with you at Marsh Chapel, and to participate in this sermon series on Matthew and the Cost of Discipleship.
The writer Sue Monk Kidd reminds us of the root of the word “crisis,” in her essay “Crossing the Threshold.” She writes:
“A crisis is a holy summons to cross a threshold. It involves both a leaving behind and a stepping toward, a separation and an opportunity.
“The word crisis derives from the Greek words krisis and krino, which mean ‘a separating.’ The very root of the word implies that our crises are times of severing from old ways and states of being. We need to ask ourselves what it is we’re being asked to separate from. What needs to be left behind?”
~ Sue Monk Kidd, from the essay “Crossing the Threshold,” in “The Dance of the Dissident Daughter”
In our gospel reading for today, Jesus encounters three people in crisis. For two of these, the leader of the synagogue whose daughter has died, and the woman with the hemorrhage that won’t stop, these are health crises, and they are acute. Jesus is their last hope. The leader of the synagogue is in the middle of an emergency: his daughter is already dead, but he has faith that if he can just get Jesus to lay hands on her, she will live again. For the woman with the hemorrhage, we are told in the Gospel of Mark where this story also appears that she had seen many doctors, who had not been able to help her at all. For both the synagogue leader’s emergency and the woman’s debilitating chronic illness, Jesus is their last shot at healing. And he does raise the man’s daughter from the dead, and the woman’s touch of his cloak does stop her hemorrhages.
These are such dramatic and powerful stories, that it would be easy to skip over Matthew, there in his booth. Matthew doesn’t actually say anything to Jesus that is recorded here, or ask anything of him. Instead he responds, immediately and whole-heartedly, to Jesus’ invitation to follow him. And that’s how we know he is in crisis: because he just leaves his booth by the side of the road, and never goes back! He has one brief encounter with Jesus, and he leaves his old life behind, for good! There’s a lot of talk in the media these days about so-called “quiet quitting”; this is “loud quitting”!
Now we are reading the Gospel attributed to Matthew, and this is Matthew’s story. It’s just a few verses, and Matthew himself doesn’t say anything in words. But walking off the job communicates a lot. Matthew has had what the writer Bruce Feiler calls a “workquake.” Some of you may remember Bruce Feiler’s bestselling book Walking the Bible from a number of years back. He also recently wrote a book called Life in the Transitions, where he coined the word “lifequake,” to describe points of crisis where our lives seem to open up and rupture, as in an earthquake. In Feiler’s new book, The Search: Finding Meaningful Work in the Post-Career World, Feiler focuses on “workquakes,” the crises or significant turning points that people have over the course of their careers. He urges his readers to examine their own “work story,” and, for those seeking deeper meaning and purpose from their work, to ask themselves questions about their past, present, and dreams for the future that can help them to chart a new course in their careers.
Perhaps Matthew is a good patron saint for these pandemic and post-pandemic times, when four and a half million people left their jobs in 2022, following a trend of what economists call “quit rates” increasing steadily and significantly for the past several years. Feiler argues that many Americans are now rejecting the narrow definition of success that was handed down “by parents, encouraged by . . . neighbors, [and[ reinforced by . . . culture,” questioning its values and challenging its assumptions. People are looking for other measures of achievement than “more, higher, better.” And, they are resisting unjust, inequitable, and discriminatory systems and structures in the workplace that devalue and demean their contributions. We are seeing a resurgence in the labor movement, not just on the factory floor, but in corporate behemoths like Amazon and Starbucks, and also, it should be noted, among graduate students and non-tenure track professors, including at the School of Theology of this very University.
What made Matthew walk off the job in the middle of his workday? It’s clear that Jesus was not offering him a competitive salary with benefits package. Quite the opposite! What kind of internal crisis was happening in Matthew’s life, that led to this abrupt and permanent break with his profession?
Since it wasn’t about money or status, it must have been about meaning and purpose. Maybe before Jesus showed up at Matthew’s booth, he had heard about this wandering rabbi and wonder-worker who preached that his mission was to bring good news to the poor, to heal, and to set prisoners free. Had Matthew’s toll booth become a prison?
And yes, it’s likely that Matthew was not, as the NRSV translates, a tax collector, but in fact a telones in Greek, a toll collector. That helps explain why Jesus meets him on the road, and why he’s in a booth! And for those of you youngsters in the congregation, there was a time when there were real live toll collectors inside the toll booths . . . and when you paid tolls with actual coins. Does anyone else remember manually rolling down the car window, in order to toss quarters into the toll booth receptacle?? Good times.
I will not share all the scintillating details with you from the lengthy article I read on first century taxation, except to say that Matthew, as a toll collector, was probably more of a lower-level functionary collecting smaller tolls and taxes, rather than someone with more clout in the direct employ of the Roman empire.
Which begs the question: “toll collectors and sinners”??? What’s with that recurring biblical phrase? Apparently, toll collectors were notorious for being dishonest. They were the used-car salesmen of the ancient world. And while they generally not big shots, it probably didn’t help their reputation that they were functionaries in the Roman Imperial system.
Matthew then has Jesus over to his house for dinner. (This is what the gospel of Luke says, in Luke’s version of the story.) But the low esteem in which his former profession is held causes scandal, and the Pharisees ask Jesus’ other disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with toll collectors and sinners?” And Jesus answers, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. . . I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
The counter-cultural thinker Alan Watts wrote, “See, I am a philosopher and if you don’t argue with me, I don’t know what I think. If we argue, I say ‘Thank You’, because owing to the courtesy of you taking a different point of view, I understand what I mean, so I can’t get rid of you.” I am not a philosopher, but I am from New Jersey, and so I can relate to this. (pause) I grew up in a place where ordinary conversation can seem pretty combative to people from other parts of the country!
And I think that Jesus is in a similar environment. In my years of reading the Bible and preaching, I’ve come to see these ongoing conversations between Jesus and the Pharisees in this light. Their discussions or arguments can get heated, in the way that the discussions of philosophers or political junkies get heated. The Pharisees, Jesus and his disciples, and here the disciples of John the Baptist show up too: they are all working out what they believe in constant conversation and argument with each other. They are debating each other, criticizing each other, and ultimately challenging each other. I see them more as frenemies, than enemies, through much of Jesus’ ministry. They have a lot in common.
So Matthew’s presence as a disciple causes scandal, and then John’s disciples pop over to ask why Jesus and his disciples don’t fast in the way that they do. And Jesus gives two parabolic answers, one pretty straightforward, the other not. First, he says they do not fast because no one fasts during a wedding celebration—Jesus is the bridegroom, and when he’s gone, his disciples will fast. Jesus’ presence has ushered in a new age, and his good news to the poor, healing of the sick, and release of the prisoners is a Messianic celebration.
And then he has two more sayings: “No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”
Okay, what? [This teaching is obscure enough, that the compilers of the Revised Common Lectionary edited it out of today’s reading; but I thought it was important enough to edit back in, and so you lucky folks get extra Bible to chew on today. Marsh Chapel, now with 20% more parables!]
Jesus has been challenged as to the kind of person he allows to join his disciples, and to how they practice their faith—and he gives this as an answer. Why, and what does it mean? And, what does it mean for us?
First, let’s notice what Jesus does not say: he does not say that new clothes are better than old clothes; and that new wine is better than old wine.
So here, Jesus is not saying that his new ministry and mission is supplanting or replacing the old. In fact, these are sayings about how to preserve the old garment, and the old wine.
These are sayings about craft: about the choices that a tailor and a vinter would make. A tailor would not sew new, unshrunk cloth to old preshrunk cloth, because it would further damage the garment instead of mending it. A vinter would not put new wine, that would still be fermenting and so creating gasses and expanding, into old wineskins: because the old leather has already stretched as much as it can stretch, and the skins would burst and ruin everything.
In other words, the new materials are flexible and elastic; they can stretch. They can adapt. The old cannot effectively receive the new, because the flexibility is gone.
Jesus is talking about craft, and the tradition of craft. Tailors make new garments, and repair old ones: cloth is precious, and nothing is wasted. Vinters make new wine, and age old wine, and sell both, at different prices. And, new wine ages and becomes old wine, and the craft of winemaking continues.
These sayings are not about replacing the old with the new. They are about carrying on the tradition and the craft.
Jesus is saying, new movements cannot be contained in the systems and structures of old movements. They need their own containers. They need systems and structures that can still adapt and change and change shape as necessary. And that this is not a break with tradition, but an essential part of carrying on tradition. Jesus is saying that he is not the kind of rabbi that the Pharisees are, and he is not the kind of prophet that John is. His mission and his ministry are different. And so are his disciples. And it is best not to try to force them into containers that won’t hold them.
His disciples are people like Matthew—people who have become dissatisfied, people who are searching for relationship with God, people who have come to a crisis point in their lives where they need to make a change. Who want to find purpose and meaning in their work and in their lives—who want to be on the side of the liberators and not the oppressors. Who are no longer fine with the status quo—because of who gets left out and left behind.
And the religious communities of Jesus’ day were not able to accommodate people like Matthew. In fact, they did not want those people around at all.
We in the Church are also having a collective lifequake, a collective workquake. We are in the midst of a crisis—of decline, but also a crisis of identity, and a crisis of formation. We are in a historical moment, made more acute and urgent by the pandemic, where it is not at all clear how our faith traditions will be carried on to the next generation. Churches are struggling and closing, longtime church members are dying and not being replaced, our church buildings are often too big and too old to maintain. Most of our congregations are in survival mode, with little energy for those outside their doors.
And Jesus says to us: stop trying to sew a new patch on an old garment. Stop trying to force the new wine into old wineskins.
Our systems and structures need to change. Completely. No more retrofitting; “redevelopment” is not enough. You need new containers, for what the Holy Spirit is doing in your midst right now. We need to think differently about community, about formation and education, about worship, about mission and identity and purpose, about leadership and responsibility and governance—and about buildings.
Or, you are going to lose it all. The craft, the tradition, the gospel, will not continue in the places they have been.
This is the cost of discipleship in our own day: do we hold on to what we know, and let nostalgia continue to corrode our congregations until there’s nothing left?
Or do we follow Jesus into a new way of being church? With new disciples, who weren’t there before—but who long for good news, healing, liberation—and authentic relationship with God.
It’s our choice.
“The very root of the word implies that our crises are times of severing from old ways and states of being. We need to ask ourselves what it is we’re being asked to separate from. What needs to be left behind?””
I’ll look forward to being back with you in August, to continue this conversation.
In God’s name, Amen.
-The Rev. Dr. Regina L. Walton, Denominational Counselor for Anglican/Episcopal Students and Lecturer, Harvard Divinity School
