Matins Devotion: April 16, 2026

Luke 5:17-39

Tax collectors in the days of Christ’s earthly ministry had a rather bad reputation. First, tax collectors were known for being rather thuggish. They weren’t accountants as we might think of them, but more along the lines of mafia goons, shakedown artists who would often use threats of governmental power and violence to extract from people more than they owned. And second, those who worked as tax collectors worked for a foreign power that was imposing itself on your nation, preventing you from being independent. They were oppression lackeys, to put it simply. And so, for the Jews who hungered to see the kingdom of David restored, you can see why being a tax collector, especially being a Jewish tax collector like St. Matthew, was such a reprehensible thing. You’re a bully and a traitor.

And so, it’s a fitting thing that Matthew (or Levi as Luke calls him here) finds salvation in Jesus Christ, the gentle and faithful Savior. When the Pharisees grumble that Jesus is eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners at Levi’s home, Jesus responds by telling them that it’s the sick who are in need of a physician, not the healthy. And so Jesus gives all who run to Him the healing of His righteousness.

When we have been cruel and imposing, when we’ve used whatever power we have to make people feel small and helpless, Jesus came to us brimming with the power of God, but power that He used not to destroy us, but to save us. When we were like tax collectors extracting money that didn’t belong to us, Jesus gave us the free gift of His salvation. He allowed lawless men to open His veins and He gave us the priceless treasure of His righteousness. 

When we lived in service of idols, when we made ourselves soldiers in the war against our God, Jesus Christ gave us His faithfulness by giving up His life for us upon the cross. And rising again on the third day, He showed us that we now had the right to leave behind our days of tax collecting for Rome and live forever as faithful children of His Kingdom. Tax collectors made apostles, sinners made saints. That is the mercy of Jesus Christ, our crucified but risen Lord.