A Sermon for the Feast of Saint Matthew
Given on September 21, 2025 at Saint Mary’s
The Epistle, 2 Corinthians 4:1-6 - The Gospel, St. Matthew 9:9-13
The Rt. Rev'd Stephen C. Scarlett
Matthew was a tax collector when Jesus called him to “follow me.” The collect and lessons for his feast focus on covetousness and our relationship with money. Tax collectors charged for their services and often collected more than what was fair. This is why John the Baptist instructed tax collectors to “collect no more than what is appointed for you” as a sign of their repentance (Lk. 3:13).
Matthew reoriented his life away from covetousness toward serving God. Our statue of St. Matthew picks up this theme. The coins that represent his tax collecting business are at St. Matthew’s feet. Matthew has taken up a pen to write his gospel. The collect applies this theme to us. We pray: “Grant us grace to forsake all covetous desires, and inordinate love of riches, and to follow the same thy Son Jesus Christ.”
Most of us aren’t called to leave our current profession to follow Jesus. Our challenge is to “forsake all covetousness and inordinate love of riches” and follow Jesus while living in the world and working at jobs whose ostensible purpose is to “make money.”
We can miss the real danger of covetous desire if we focus too much on isolated temptations. For example, sometimes we are tempted to want what someone else has or to simply want more. These temptations are a normal part of the spiritual battle. They will rise and wane in inverse relationship to the consistency of our prayer. When we feel distant from God, we become less contented and are tempted to pursue things instead as a substitute.
However, the more insidious forms of covetousness stem from the cultural tendency to evaluate everything in terms of money and to view making or saving money as the chief goal of any enterprise. This “economic mindset” breeds covetousness. It skips more important questions, like: Is the thing being made or done intrinsically good and does it honor God? Am I focusing my efforts on the quality of my work rather than on the results? How are both workers and customers being treated in the enterprise?
The degree to which we care mostly about how much money we make rather than about the quality of the work we do and how we treat other people is the degree to which we live in service to Mammon or money. This is the reason St. Paul exhorted first century slave workers to do their work:
Not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free (Eph. 6:6-8).
When we do our work for God, in the expectation that God will reward us, we experience a new kind of freedom. In contrast, when the quality of our work is determined by what someone can give us or how someone treats us, we are slaves to rewards and to other people. Someone else’s recompense or opinion determines what we do.
The first century servant workers in the quoted passage had little choice about their occupations. We have more freedom to leave one job and pursue another. This is good, but this kind of freedom can become another form of temptation. It can lead us to believe that we would be happy if we only had a better job. In reality, we discover that the new workplace also has greedy and ambitious people who don’t always care about others.
The point is not to discourage anyone in a job search. The point is that we can never escape the need to cultivate the virtues of contentment and detachment. Something will always be less than perfect in this world and our current circumstances. We will always be tempted to believe we would be happy if we just had the one thing we don’t have. God calls us to serve him, to do good work for his glory and for the good of others, wherever we are. God may put us in a difficult place precisely to be a witness for him—to show others what it means to work for Christ and not merely for money.
The spiritual discipline that begins to reorient our relationship to money is tithing. To tithe means, literally, to give the first tenth to God. We practice this discipline when we give back to God the first tenth of what he gives to us. Tithing is the perpetual discipline of letting go of our money and trusting God to provide for us.
This pattern begins in the first story of giving in the Bible in Genesis 4. Able gave God the first and best of his flock, and his offering was accepted by God. His brother Cain gave “an offering” that was, by implication, not the first and best. His offering was not accepted. Cain fell into the temptation to hold on to his possessions. He gave his offering grudgingly (cf. 2 Cor. 9:7). It did not represent faith and trust in God (cf. Heb. 11:4).
Talking about tithing always gets people’s attention. This highlights why it is so important. When we talk about money, we talk about what is culturally important to people. The demonic temptation to serve mammon is rooted in the temptation to separate our money from our duty to God. The monetary stuff of daily life is in one category and duty to God is in another. This belief is at the root of service to mammon.
I have learned this by observation in forty plus years of ministry. I’ve not observed anyone who embraced the discipline of tithing with sincerity, as part of an overall reorientation of life towards God, who did not experience greater freedom from the service of mammon and become more contented and detached from money as a result. Conversely, I have not observed anyone who rejected the discipline of tithing who did have a greater life-long struggle with attachment to things, and more anxiety about money.
To tithe is to habitually repeat the pattern of Matthew and Abel. When we receive our income, we let go of it and follow Jesus by offering the first and best to God in faith, trusting that he will take care of our needs. This is part of our Eucharistic offering. In the liturgy, we “offer ourselves, our souls, and our bodies to be a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice.” This rings hollow if the first and best of what God has given us is not part of what we offer. As Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt. 6:21).
God is always faithful to provide for those who come to him with faith. As Hebrews says, “Without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him (Heb. 11:6 ESV).
