"Follow Me"

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew

 sitting at his tax collector’s booth. 

“Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him.

 So Matthew got up and followed him. - Matthew 9:9

It all sounds so simple. Matthew is sitting at his work desk, Jesus walks by, says a few words, and Matthew leaves everything behind and goes off with Jesus, never to return. 

Scholars believe this wasn’t the first time Matthew saw Jesus. Perhaps Jesus passed by him multiple times on his way in and out of town. Perhaps Matthew saw Jesus going by and wanted something more out of life and Jesus just might be the one who could help him find it. Perhaps, other people were following Jesus and their lives looked changed for the better, and Matthew wanted that for his own life. Perhaps Jesus just had the answers to the questions Matthew was asking.

Whatever it was about Jesus that day, Matthew made a decision, a choice that would shape the rest of his life and all his other decisions. Not by words, but with actions, Matthew said, “I will follow you wherever you go,” by getting up and following Jesus, and Matthew did exactly that for the rest of his life. 

Matthew was not his original name; that was Levi. “Matthew” means “Gift of Yahweh”, a name given to him perhaps by Jesus when he started this new life. It was not unusual for someone to have their name changed like that – Simon become Peter, the “Rock”, you remember. “Gift of Yahweh” is a great name to have. What a gift from Jesus to have that new name. 

Matthew is noted for inviting his friends to meet Jesus soon after he started following Him. Matthew’s friends were considered “sinners”, and people were mad at Jesus for being at a party with people like that. Matthew did not seem to be bothered at all by that, He had experienced grace and wanted his friends to experience the same thing. So he threw a party where they could meet Jesus; he was living a deployed life. 

For the next 3 years or so, Matthew followed Jesus around and probably took a lot of notes. Many scholars believe his Gospel story of Jesus, The Gospel of Matthew, was first written in Aramaic, his heart language and later translated into Greek, all from the notes he took day by day, perhaps in a journal. It was important to Matthew to get the story of Jesus out and to get it right. He wanted people to know Jesus and be able to respond to Him the same way he had – to get up and follow Him. 

Little is known of what happened to Matthew after Jesus ascended into heaven. Some stories suggest he lived in Jerusalem for 12 years and then traveled extensively telling the story of Jesus until he ended up in Ethiopia where he probably died around the year 60AD. He was a long way from Capernaum where he first met Jesus. Following Jesus was an adventure that shaped his whole life beginning the day he got up from his desk and joined Jesus on the way. 

If you are a follower of Jesus, you are on a journey with Jesus and you, too, have a story to tell. The story unfolds from your journeys with Jesus, where He found you and then where He led you, and where He is leading you now. It is an adventure story full of grace and mercy, sacrifice and wonder, people to meet and serve and love and know. It may have some rough spots, but there are blessings too, good things that you receive along the way. You have probably learned a lot, experienced a lot, and wandered a lot here and there, and been transformed... a lot. That is the Jesus way. 

This year, our theme is Deployed 25, going where Jesus calls us to go and doing what He calls us to do, all the time doing it with Him through the Holy Spirit. Through this life of following, you are developing a story to tell or multiple stories that make up your one big story, and it is in those stories that you can help others discover Jesus, just as Matthew did in his book on the life of Jesus, simply stating what he saw and heard – what he witnessed along the way. 

Matthew was deployed by Jesus into the world, and the details of this story are mostly a mystery today to us, just as our lives with Jesus may be a mystery to others. However, we get to live our own stories and choose to share them with others, giving them a glimpse of the Jesus, we know and follow, and perhaps they too will make the same choice, as Jesus says to them, ‘Follow me and be my disciple.” 

May we all do as Matthew did that day: when Jesus says, “Follow Me” may we get up and follow Him wherever He goes and then tell that story to others, as we are deployed by Him to a lost world.