The following is a transcript of Bishop Caggiano’s homily, given Saturday afternoon, September 21, at St. Matthew
My dear friends, I think it is fair to say that paying taxes has never been popular in any nation, time, or culture. Unfortunately, those who beautifully do their work to collect taxes oftentimes get the ire and anger of those who may not wish to pay as much as they are asked to pay. I think that’s universal.
But in the time of Jesus, those who were tax collectors were particularly disliked for two other reasons. The first is that the entity, the state for which they were collecting taxes, was the oppressor. Matthew collected taxes for the Roman Empire Empire, the Roman Empire, which had robbed the Jews of their liberty and occupied their land. Those who collected taxes for Rome were considered to be traitors.
If that is not bad enough, Roman law was very strange. Can you imagine that the law said the minimum tax, that is, the minimum amount the tax collector had to hand over to authorities. But the law would not prosecute that person if they tried to collect more than the law prescribed, and they kept the difference. We call that extortion in the modern world. They called it ordinary life. You could imagine Matthew sitting at his post would have had many people walk by, muttering things under their breath that I could not possibly say in church today.
And yet Jesus did not walk by. Jesus refused to cast him away. Jesus refused to cancel him out. Jesus saw not only what he was, but what he could become in His power and grace. And to imagine that he chose Matthew as one of the Apostles must have caused turmoil, to say the least, among the people who heard of it.
For you see, my friends, every Sunday we gather to worship the Lord, who is a forgiving and merciful Lord, who never gives up on any of His children, no matter how astray they are, no matter far they have wandered. No one is junk before God. No one is lost before God, and God gives up on no one.
And today is the proof from the hand of the Savior and Redeemer. So now the challenge for us is an obvious one. You and I gather here to ask for the grace of the Holy spirit and to receive the body, blood, soul, divinity of Jesus the Lord, so that we might not pass by those who otherwise the world tells us, Just don’t bother. They’re extortionists, only interested in their selves and their self-interest.
They’re traitors to the things we believe in and the values we hold. They may disagree with us in the things we believe or the lifestyle they live or whatever else it may be. And we’re tempted in a world that wants to divide us to simply say, Write them off. What the Lord says is, No, take another look.
For you, I, we in this church, live, move, breathe in His name. We are his living presence in the world. You and I are called to imitate His holy example, even when it is difficult to do. And so the challenge the Lord is giving us tonight is to say, We pass by no one. We ride off no one. Not easy to do.
But if that were not enough, my friends, allow me to go one step deeper. And this is where it may hurt. Certainly for me, it will hurt. But allow me to ask all of us in this church, who is the tax collector in your life? Who is the one that you have or I have just simply written off? We’re not talking about theory. We’re not talking about society. We’re talking about a living, breathing person that we have walked by and said, I am done.
Can you picture that person in your mind today? Perhaps that person is the tax collector for you and me because they really have betrayed us. They really have hurt us. Their gossip has destroyed our reputation. Or perhaps they have taken that which rightfully belongs to us. Or they’ve hurt the people we love, and sometimes that’s harder than when they hurt us. Perhaps that person is someone who has bitterly disappointed us or has made life choices that we fundamentally disagree with, and they refuse to listen to the reason we wish to give them.
Or simply, it is someone who has extorted us and our goodness and our patience and our forgiveness. We’ve forgiven, and we’ve forgiven, and we’ve forgiven, and we’ve forgiven again and again, and they come back again and again. Finally, what we can say to ourselves, enough is enough, enough is enough.
Is there such a person in your life and mine? Because if there is, the challenge of tonight’s gospel is to ask the Holy spirit for the grace to do what our humanity would not do by itself. To ask for the grace of the Lord so that we might one day stop at his or her table and to reach out to that person, and to allow that person an opportunity to not simply be a person in our eyes for that which he or she has already done, but to dare to imagine that we could walk with them to become the person that they were meant to be.
If you’re sitting there, my friend, saying, The Bishop needs his head examined, if he thinks, I’m going to do this. The truth is, I may need my head examined, but that’s a different story. Truth is, None of us in this church could do that alone. But with the power and grace of the Holy spirit, who will dwell here in just a few moments and dwells in you and me every moment of every day, with His power and grace, we can.
St. Matthew was chosen and gave his life for Jesus. My friends, who is it in our lives that perhaps unbeknownst to them is waiting for us to stop at their table and call them to follow Jesus?