Today’s Gospel reading begins with the call of Matthew, as told by St Matthew in his Gospel. Many people think it was a sort of signature.
Years ago, I did a class in the primary school in my previous parish on the call of the disciples, and I rather majored on Matthew’s call.
I made a lot of Matthew being a collector of taxes. I should have realised that 9 year olds (bless them) have not a clue what taxes are.
Anyway, I waxed lyrical about collecting taxes and Matthew at his seat of custom, and then I asked them to do a drawing.
As I went to look round the drawings they were doing, I noticed several of them had a man sitting at a stall with a whole cavalcade of black cabs. I should have realised, as many had fathers who were black cab drivers. The children thought Matthew was a collector of TAXIS!
The call of a tax collector, our Gospel writer, Matthew, for this year focuses our minds on calling, and this is what I would like to dwell on.
Ten days ago the Pope issued a significant teaching document on AI, artificial intelligence. Coincidentally there was a debate in the House of Lords on Friday on it as well, introduced by the Archbishop of Canterbury. You may remember Fr Matt Harbage, when he was here signalled that we needed to on the alert about the significance of what was coming, and now it is with us.
The Pope’s Teaching document Magnifca Humanitas has been recognised to be not just significant but seminal, and sits in a vital tradition, that of Christian Social thought.
Archbishop Sarah’s impressive speech on Friday, drew very much on this tradition too. I am remiss because I have not spoken enough about Christian Social thought, and there is much to mine in it.
Pope Leo’s choice of name is significant.
Leo XIII had the heart of his time as Pope a real interest in late 19th society, and its best ordering. His Encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891 changed how Catholicism engaged with the world, economic systems and the workplace.
In the late 19th c there was a convergence of thought in this area amongst Christians which was ahead of the ecumenical movement. Currents in Anglican Thought aligned naturally with Catholic social teaching. Someone called FD Maurice, Professor at King’s London, and later Charles Gore, Bishop of Oxford, founder of the Community of the Resurrection, were in precisely the same groove. The Roman Church picked up the ball and ran with it in the generation which followed.
Christian Social thought is not to be confused with Christian Socialism.
Christian Social thought centres on a Biblical understanding of humanity’s relationship with God and itself its main strands are:
- Human dignity
- The Common Good
- Solidarity
- Subsidiarity
- The preferential option for the poor – which is rooted in the Magnificat, Mary’s hymn at the start of Luke’s Gospel.
- The dignity of work and workers’ rights
- The care for creation
Magnifica Humanitas starts where Leo XIII started, with a full statement about fundamental human dignity. The human potential for divinity, made clear in the creation story, where we are made in God’s likeness underlines our destiny and beauty, and how nothing else created can take this from us.
Archbishop Sarah quoted a later Anglican Thinker in this field, arguably one of the greatest, William Temple, Archbishop during much of WWII, who :
“described a central occupation of Christian social thought as being ‘man’s dignity, tragedy, and destiny’.”[She continued] ‘I have spoken today of humanity’s inherent dignity, but it is our fallenness, the tragedy, which makes technology’s power so seductive and the risk of its abuse so often our story. In the Christian tradition, there is a call that overrides the lust for power – it is the call to service.
So what are we called to?
Matthew’s story reminds us that the Church exists because Jesus still says, “Follow me” to unlikely people like tax collectors or me and you.
Hosea’s words from the first lesson which Jesus quotes as the rationale for the call of Matthew, remain searching for every generation of Christians. “I desired mercy, and not sacrifice”.
God’s desire for mercy asks whether our worship, leads to compassion and the proclamation of human dignity. Jesus underlines the dignity of the outcast, honours those who are shamed and challenges those divided to cohere.
Perhaps the deepest lesson of these readings, as we contemplate calling, in a world of intricate complexity, is that mercy is not one Christian virtue among others. Mercy is participation in the very life of God. We show mercy because we have received mercy. Matthew could never forget that he sat at the tax booth when Christ called him.
Whether we collect taxes or taxis or the inanities and ephemera of this world, we are called to give them away, to serve others, and in showing mercy to seek to proclaim the one who confers upon each of us a sovereign dignity. He calls us to offer mercy not sacrifice, because his mercy is his sacrifice of himself.