Scripture Sunday: Call and Creation

by Ashtyn Adams

Matthew 9:9-13 (NRSV)
9 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. 10 And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Caravaggio’s The Calling of Saint Matthew (1600)

This is one of my favorite pieces of Baroque art in which Caravaggio powerfully evokes the grandeur, tension, and intensity of the calling of St. Matthew from this week’s lectionary text. Tax collectors held one of the worst occupations in first century Judea, collaborating with occupying Romans to fleece their own people with unjust taxes. Here, Matthew is hunched over, so absorbed in money that he fails to notice the intruder who thrusts his hand into the dark room. One of the figures points to Matthew with a bemused expression, gesturing, “Who? Him?” as the light beams out from Christ and penetrates the darkened room. Christ’s outstretched hand mimics Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam, and we, the viewers, are present to Genesis 1 all over again, witnessing vocation and discipleship as a repetition of creation, light shining into the darkness.

Carivaggio required defense by his ecclesial patron because he dared to portray the calling of Matthew as a contemporary event happening in 17th century Rome. There were no halos around Christ or Matthew to indict their saintliness. They were dressed in fine attire, looking like ordinary, everyday Italians; how could this be a “Christian” painting?

Yet, I, and others, think Carivaggio had it right. We should shamelessly apply this biblical story to ourselves and our time. We are the sinners too preoccupied by the demands of our consumer capitalist culture to perceive Christ’s searing, demanding, and electing gaze. We are implicated in acts of injustice against God’s people and planet. We prioritize profit and convenience over and against the flourishing of creation. Just this week, the senate approved the Mountain Valley Pipeline in the debt ceiling deal. The fossil fuel pipeline will cut through the Jefferson National Forest and hundreds of streams, damaging wildlife and rendering the Appalachia community further dependent on dirty energy. 

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The injection of carbon into the atmosphere will contribute to the human greenhouse effect, causing rising sea levels, droughts, flooding, and other extreme weather patterns which burden and pain communities worldwide. We are already experiencing it, as the Canadian wildfires rage, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes and putting millions across the East Coast at risk as they inhale harmful air. We have succumbed to Empire-thinking which sanctions violence and puts the immediate interest of the state above all else. Where are our eyes looking? We are in a dark room, the sick in need of a physician. ​

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We should shamelessly apply this biblical story to ourselves and our time. We are the sinners too preoccupied by the demands of our consumer capitalist culture to perceive Christ’s searing, demanding, and electing gaze. We are implicated in acts of injustice against God’s people and planet. We prioritize profit and convenience over and against the flourishing of creation.

One of my professors, Dr. Will Willimon, told me Caravaggio’s painting depicts the human implications of the mystery of God’s incarnation, the oddness of it. This painting gets at the sense that incarnation keeps happening, God keeps intruding into human history to come alongside us. I believe God is here, now, with us in the Anthropocene and determined to heal the sickness among us, the sickness we have inflicted onto creation. Jesus says to Matthew, “Follow me.” He does not say love me, or believe in me or worship me, but follow me. Though a scandal, the incarnate God enlists and commissions the scoundrels for discipleship. Senators like Joe Manchin, who included the Mountain Valley Pipeline in the debt ceiling agreement to line their own pockets, are not excluded from it. There is hope that the Messiah is a friend of tax collectors and sinners, that our complicity with Empire in the age of climate change is not the end of our encounter with the living God. Yet, in order to begin anew with Jesus, Empire must be left behind. Matthew reminds us that no one can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24).

If God is already incarnating, intruding, and turning his gaze toward someone like you and me, and like Joe Manchin, then he anticipates our response to the call beyond the idols of money, power, and pride that we cling to. Will we shift our focus and look up? Will we accept the call? In the 21st century, following Christ the physician, learning what it means that God desires mercy, must include a dramatically altered way of living with the environment around us. It must include a radical commitment to stop climate change. It will not be easy, but we might be transformed along the way, and we might have the privilege to say we accepted the call to restore creation, that we were caught within the Lord’s gaze.

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Ashtyn Adams is a Seminary Intern at Creation Justice Ministries. Ashtyn earned her B.A. in Religion from Pepperdine University and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Divinity at Duke University.

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