Forward Movement is an official, non-profit agency of the Episcopal Church whose mission is to create compelling content for Christian living. Since 1935 we have published the quarterly devotional Forward Day by Day, as well as pamphlets, booklets, and books that encourage and nourish people in their lives of prayer and faith.
TUESDAY, September 21 Saint Matthew
Matthew 9:9-13. The Pharisees…said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”…But when [Jesus] heard this, he said, “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.”
Saint Matthew was a tax collector. In those days, that job called for a man who was a cross between a traitor and a profiteer. Matthew handled the idolatrous coins of the Roman Empire, as the agent of an unwelcome conqueror. He collected duties on merchants’ goods for an employer who had bought tax privileges at public auction. This system made petty cheats out of everyone working in it. Everyone in this business was dishonest; no one was worthy to be a disciple of Jesus, a man who “had nothing.”
And yet this same careful soul guarded the treasures of Jesus’ sayings with an inspired economy and wrote them down. The same careful hand that once had taken the outrageous fees of the customs house now combed the Old Testament for references to validate the claims of the early church.
Jesus’ power to see greatness in small men made small men great. Can a Christian ever say of anyone that he is hopeless? (1944)
PRAY for the Anglican Peace and Justice Network (APJN) and the Diocese of Huron (Ontario, Canada)
Ps 119:33-40; Proverbs 3:1-6; 2 Timothy 3:14-17
View the daily Lectionary Readings at Satucket.com.
Or view the Bible passages at Biblegateway.com.
A Meditation for Pentecost
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