Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist: An Anglican Perspective

Feast Day: September 21

The Anglican calendar is ordered by a hierarchy of holy days, each carrying a different weight of observance. At the top stand the seven Principal Feasts, the highest-ranking days of the liturgical year. Below them are the Red-Letter Holy Days appointed in the BCP 2019 with their own Collects and propers. The Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist, observed on September 21, is one of these Red-Letter Holy Days. The BCP appoints his Collect on page 632 and his readings in the Holy Day lectionary on page 732. The Collect directs the Preface of Apostles, whose full Proper Preface heading is Apostles and Ordinations.

Matthew is remembered by the Church both as an apostle and as the evangelist through whom the Holy Spirit gave the Church the Gospel that bears his name. That Gospel stands first in the New Testament canon, opens by tracing Jesus through Abraham and David, contains some of the most sustained teaching of our Lord recorded anywhere in Scripture, and closes with the risen Christ sending his disciples to make disciples of all nations. Yet Matthew’s own story begins far from any place of obvious spiritual promise. He is sitting at a tax booth when Jesus sees him and says, “Follow me.” (Matthew 9:9, ESV) Matthew rises and follows. The man who had lived within a system built around revenue and gain is called into the service of a Kingdom in which grace cannot be bought, discipleship cannot be calculated, and the Lord himself calls sinners to his table.

The Biblical Portrait

The appointed Gospel for the feast is Matthew 9:9-13, Matthew’s account of his call. Jesus sees him sitting at the tax booth and says simply, “Follow me.” Matthew tells us, “And he rose and followed him.” (Matthew 9:9, ESV) The restraint is striking. Matthew does not describe an inner struggle, a period of deliberation, or a negotiation over what obedience will cost. Jesus calls, and Matthew follows. His response is real and immediate, but the first action belongs to Christ.

Tax collectors worked within the revenue system of Roman rule and were widely despised because such systems created opportunities for abuse and because those who served them could be regarded as collaborators with occupying power. The Gospels repeatedly group tax collectors with “sinners,” showing how socially and morally compromised the occupation appeared to many of their contemporaries. Jesus does not merely call Matthew away from the booth. He sits at table with him. Matthew tells us that while Jesus reclines at the house, “many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.” The Pharisees ask, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Matthew 9:10-11, ESV)

Jesus answers, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:12-13, ESV) Matthew’s feast therefore begins not with the celebration of a naturally qualified apostle but with the mercy of Christ toward sinners. The physician comes for the sick. The Lord calls the tax collector. Grace precedes discipleship.

“I Desire Mercy, and Not Sacrifice”

Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6: “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” He will use the same text again in Matthew 12:7. Jesus is not rejecting the worship God himself commanded or setting mercy against faithful obedience. Hosea exposes religious practice severed from covenant faithfulness. Outward acts of religion become hollow when those who perform them do not reflect the mercy and steadfast love of the God they claim to worship.

Matthew’s own call becomes an enacted commentary on the verse. The Pharisees see the wrong people at the table. Jesus sees sinners for whom the physician has come. This does not mean sin has become unimportant. Jesus does not call Matthew in order to leave him unchanged at the booth. Mercy calls him out. The same Christ who eats with sinners also says, “Follow me.” Grace receives the sinner and then begins to reorder the sinner’s life around Christ.

The Church must therefore resist two opposite errors. We must not imagine that holiness means standing far enough away from sinners to remain untouched by their need. Neither may we redefine mercy as the refusal to call anyone out of sin. In Matthew 9, mercy and discipleship belong together because both come from the same Lord.

Matthew and Levi

Mark and Luke call the tax collector Levi, while Matthew’s Gospel names him Matthew. The Church has traditionally understood these accounts to describe the same man, known by more than one name, and the close parallels among the three narratives make that identification natural. Mark says Jesus saw “Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth” and said, “Follow me.” (Mark 2:14, ESV) Luke likewise calls him Levi and describes a great feast afterward in which tax collectors and others recline with Jesus. (Luke 5:27-32) Matthew gives the same essential story but names the disciple Matthew.

Scripture never explicitly says, Levi is Matthew, so the identification should be recognized as the traditional harmonization of the Synoptic accounts. It is nevertheless ancient, straightforward, and consistent with the evidence. In the list of the Twelve, Matthew’s Gospel calls him “Matthew the tax collector.” (Matthew 10:3, ESV) He does not hide the occupation from which Christ called him. The old vocation remains visible in the apostolic list as a testimony to grace.

That detail is especially fitting beside the Collect, which asks Christians to forsake “all covetous desires and inordinate love of riches.” Matthew’s former occupation does not mean that every tax collector was necessarily driven by greed, but money, gain, and possession become a particularly pointed theme when the Church remembers the apostle whom Christ called from a revenue booth.

Matthew the Evangelist

The Church has from very early times received Matthew the apostle as the evangelist associated with the Gospel that bears his name. The BCP stands within that received tradition when it commemorates him as Apostle and Evangelist. One of the earliest surviving witnesses is Papias, writing in the early second century and preserved by Eusebius. Papias says that Matthew wrote or collected the logia in the Hebrew language and that each interpreted them as he was able. Later writers such as Irenaeus, Origen, and Eusebius continue to associate Matthew with the Gospel received under his name.

The precise relationship between Papias’s statement and the canonical Greek Gospel has been debated, especially because the surviving canonical text is Greek. That question need not dominate a devotional article. The important historical point is that the attribution to Matthew is early and persistent, and the Anglican calendar receives him without embarrassment as Apostle and Evangelist.

Matthew’s Gospel is deeply rooted in Israel’s Scriptures. It begins with Jesus as “the son of David, the son of Abraham,”placing him within the covenant history of Israel from its opening sentence. Matthew draws upon the Old Testament with remarkable frequency and repeatedly uses fulfillment formulas such as “This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet.” The Gospel is often observed to contain five major concentrations of Jesus’ teaching: the Sermon on the Mount, the Missionary Discourse, the Parable Discourse, the Community Discourse, and the Eschatological Discourse. Readers have long noticed that this pattern invites comparison with the five books of Moses. The comparison can be illuminating, especially in a Gospel so deeply concerned with fulfillment, but Matthew himself does not tell us that he deliberately constructed a new Pentateuch.

The Gospel also preserves some of Jesus’ most searching teaching about money and possessions. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth.” (Matthew 6:19, ESV) “You cannot serve God and money.” (Matthew 6:24, ESV) The rich young man is called away from possessions that have mastered him, and the parables repeatedly expose the danger of wealth becoming a rival lord. Read on Matthew’s feast, these teachings carry an additional pastoral resonance. The evangelist through whom the Church hears them is remembered as a man whom Christ himself called away from the tax booth.

From Abraham to All Nations

Matthew’s Gospel begins within Israel and ends with a mission to the nations. Its first chapter traces Jesus through Abraham and David. Its final chapter places the risen Christ on a mountain commanding the Eleven: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” (Matthew 28:19, ESV) The movement is not from Israel being discarded to a wholly unrelated Gentile religion. It is from the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel toward their appointed extension to the nations through Israel’s Messiah. The Son of David and Son of Abraham is also the risen Lord to whom “all authority in heaven and on earth” has been given. (Matthew 28:18, ESV)

The Great Commission therefore provides a fitting horizon for Matthew the Evangelist. The Gospel given to the Church is not merely a record to be admired but a Word sent outward. The apostles are commanded to make disciples, baptize in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach the nations to observe all that Christ commanded. The final promise is equally important: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20, ESV) The Lord who saw Matthew at the booth and called him is the Lord who remains with the apostolic Church as the Gospel goes to the world.

The Appointed Readings

The BCP 2019 appoints Proverbs 3:1-12, Psalm 119:33-40, 2 Timothy 3:1-17, and Matthew 9:9-13 for Saint Matthew. Proverbs 3 calls God’s people to wholehearted trust: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5, ESV) That is an appropriate wisdom text for a feast centered upon the call “Follow me.” Matthew’s obedience means entrusting his future to the one who calls rather than securing it through his previous vocation.

The passage also warns against an interpretation of discipleship built purely upon human calculation. Jesus does not first present Matthew with a cost-benefit analysis. He calls him. The wisdom text teaches the Church the posture in which such a call is received: acknowledge the LORD in all your ways and trust him to direct the path.

Psalm 119:33-40 gives the feast an even more explicit prayer: “Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain!” (Psalm 119:36, ESV) The Psalm and the Collect resonate almost perfectly. Both ask God to reorder desire away from gain and toward faithful obedience. That prayer is especially important because covetousness is not overcome merely by deciding to become less materialistic. The Psalmist asks God to incline the heart. The BCP asks Christ to grant us the grace to forsake covetous desires. Scripture and Collect place transformation where the Gospel always places it: beneath the prior action of God.

Scripture Breathed Out by God

Second Timothy 3:1-17 culminates in Paul’s declaration, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” (2 Timothy 3:16, ESV) In its immediate context, Paul reminds Timothy of the sacred writings he had known from childhood, which refers principally to the Scriptures of Israel. Yet the apostolic Church also came to recognize the writings of the New Testament within the canon of Holy Scripture, including the Gospel according to Matthew.

That makes the reading particularly fitting for an evangelist. Matthew is not honored merely because Christians remember his personality or admire his apostolic career. Through the Gospel bearing his name, the Church continues to hear the God-breathed Scriptures by which God teaches, reproves, corrects, trains, and equips his people. The reading also protects the Church from treating Scripture as raw material to be reshaped according to every age. Scripture is God-breathed. Christian proclamation therefore begins with reception. We are entrusted with a Word we did not create.

That theme fits Matthew’s Gospel beautifully. The evangelist repeatedly presents Jesus as the fulfillment of what God had already spoken through the Scriptures, and at the end Jesus sends the apostles not to invent a new message but to teach the nations “all that I have commanded you.”

The BCP 2019 Collect

The Collect on page 632 prays: “Lord Jesus, you called Matthew from collecting taxes to become your apostle and evangelist: Grant us the grace to forsake all covetous desires and inordinate love of riches, that we may follow you as he did and proclaim to the world around us the good news of your salvation; for with the Father and the Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and for ever. Amen.” The prayer is distinctive because it is addressed directly to Jesus Christ. The Church speaks to the same Lord who stood before Matthew and said, “Follow me.”

The Collect also begins twice with divine initiative. Christ called Matthew, and Christ must give the Church grace. Only after those actions do the verbs of Christian response appear: forsake, follow, proclaim. Matthew’s immediate obedience is real. Christ does not follow for him. Matthew rises. He leaves the booth. He becomes a disciple. Yet the sequence begins with Christ’s call. In the same way, the Church truly must forsake covetous desire, follow Christ, and proclaim salvation, but the Collect teaches us to ask first for grace. This is the order of the Gospel. Grace does not render obedience unnecessary; grace creates, enables, and sustains obedience.

Forsaking Covetous Desires

The Collect does not ask merely that Christians become less interested in money. It speaks of “covetous desires and inordinate love of riches.” The problem is desire disordered away from God. Money is not intrinsically evil, nor is every possession evidence of covetousness. Scripture contains examples of faithful believers who possess wealth and use it rightly. The danger comes when riches become a rival source of security, identity, control, or hope.

Matthew’s Gospel addresses this repeatedly because Jesus does. The Lord teaches that treasure reveals the heart, warns that anxiety can enslave the disciple, says that God and money cannot both be masters, and tells his followers to seek first the Kingdom of God. The Collect therefore turns Matthew’s call into an examination of the whole Church. Every Christian may not sit at a literal tax booth, but each of us possesses some place from which Christ may need to call us: a desire, security, ambition, possession, status, or habit that has begun to function as a competing lord. The prayer asks for grace not merely to recognize such loves but to forsake them.

Follow and Proclaim

The second movement of the Collect joins discipleship and witness. Matthew followed Christ and was made an apostle and evangelist; the Church now asks for grace to follow the same Lord and proclaim the same salvation. Every Christian does not become an apostle in the particular New Testament sense, nor is every Christian called to the office of evangelist or ordained ministry. Matthew belongs uniquely to the apostolic company chosen and commissioned by Christ.

Yet the whole Church lives under the apostolic mission. Bishops, priests, deacons, parents, teachers, godparents, congregations, and individual Christians each bear witness according to their vocation. The Gospel received by the apostles is proclaimed through the Church to the world. That witness begins with following. Christian proclamation is compromised when detached from Christian discipleship. The Collect places the two together: follow Christ and proclaim his salvation.

The order also guards us from making proclamation about ourselves. The Church does not announce her own wisdom, moral excellence, or cultural importance. She proclaims “the good news of your salvation.” Salvation belongs to Christ before it becomes our message.

The Proper Preface

The Collect directs the Preface of Apostles. The full heading of that Proper Preface in the Eucharistic section is Apostles and Ordinations. It gives thanks through Jesus Christ, the great Shepherd of the flock, who after his Resurrection sent forth his apostles to preach the Gospel and teach all nations and promised to remain with them always, even to the end of the ages.

Few Proper Prefaces could fit Matthew more naturally. Its language echoes the Great Commission almost directly: the risen Christ sends, the apostles preach and teach the nations, and Christ promises to remain with them. The Preface also keeps Matthew’s ministry beneath Christ. Jesus is the great Shepherd of the flock. Matthew is sent; he is not the source of the mission. The Gospel is Christ’s before it is Matthew’s.

This is another grace-first movement. The risen Lord possesses the mission and sends the apostles into it. Their authority is received, their message is entrusted, and their confidence rests upon his promise to remain with them.

Matthew and the Apostolic Faith

The feast of an evangelist is necessarily a feast of received truth. Matthew does not invent Christianity. He bears apostolic witness to Jesus Christ. That matters in every generation because the Church is continually tempted to treat the faith as something provisional, negotiable, or perpetually open to reconstruction. Matthew’s Gospel does not give us raw religious ideas from which each age may construct its preferred Jesus. It gives the Church apostolic testimony to the Lord who actually called, taught, died, rose, and commissioned his disciples.

The Church therefore has a duty both to receive and to teach. Second Timothy tells us that God-breathed Scripture equips the servant of God for every good work, while the Great Commission commands the apostles to teach the nations everything Christ commanded. This does not mean the Church refuses to answer new questions or speak intelligibly within changing cultures. Faithful teaching always requires real pastoral wisdom. But the substance is received before it is applied. The Church does not possess authority to turn what Christ and his apostles have handed down in Scripture into optional preference simply because a culture finds it difficult.

Matthew’s feast therefore carries a quiet but serious challenge: the Church must love the historic, apostolic faith enough to receive it, live beneath it, and teach it faithfully without apology.

Matthew in Later Christian Tradition

The New Testament does not record Matthew’s later ministry or death. Later Christian traditions remember him preaching beyond Judea, but the destinations assigned to him vary considerably. Ancient writers connect Matthew first with ministry among the Hebrews and later with missionary work beyond them. Traditions eventually associate him with regions variously identified as Ethiopia, Persia, Parthia, Macedonia, Syria, and elsewhere. Ancient geographical terminology can also be misleading to modern readers, so these accounts cannot responsibly be combined into a secure missionary itinerary.

Traditions concerning Matthew’s death are equally varied. Much of later Christian memory regards him as a martyr, but not all ancient testimony agrees, and the surviving martyrdom stories differ about both place and manner of death. The circumstances of his death should therefore not be stated as settled history. The precise details need not carry the theological weight of the feast. Scripture and the Church’s received apostolic tradition already give us what is necessary to honor Matthew: Christ called him from the tax booth, numbered him among the Twelve, sent the apostles to preach the Gospel, and through the Gospel bearing Matthew’s name has given the Church an enduring witness to Jesus Christ.

Later Christian memory of Matthew’s costly missionary witness nevertheless contributes appropriately to the feast’s character. He is remembered not as a detached author but as an apostle whose life belonged to the Lord who called him.

The Liturgical Character

Red is customarily used for Saint Matthew in Anglican worship. It fittingly reflects his apostolic witness and the Church’s traditional memory of costly service and martyrdom. The color need not depend upon certainty about the particular manner or location of Matthew’s death. The later accounts differ, while his apostolic witness is certain. Red therefore fittingly points to a life spent in the service of the Gospel and to the costly character of apostolic mission.

September 21 falls within the Season after Pentecost, so the red of the feast interrupts the green ordinarily associated with the long season and reminds the Church that its ongoing life and teaching rest upon the apostolic Gospel.

Observing the Feast

Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist, is observed on September 21. The Collect is found on page 632, the BCP directs the Preface of Apostles, whose full Proper Preface heading is Apostles and Ordinations, and the readings are Proverbs 3:1-12, Psalm 119:33-40, 2 Timothy 3:1-17, and Matthew 9:9-13. Red is customarily used in Anglican worship.

Begin with Matthew 9 and notice how quickly the story moves. Jesus sees. Jesus calls. Matthew rises. Then Jesus is at table with tax collectors and sinners. The Gospel does not allow us to separate calling from mercy or mercy from discipleship. Read Hosea 6 alongside the Gospel and consider what Jesus means when he says, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.” Ask whether Christian faith has become outwardly correct while growing impatient with the very sinners Christ came to call, and then ask the opposite question: whether mercy has been reduced to affirmation without repentance or following.

Pray Psalm 119 slowly, especially “Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain.” Do not assume the verse is only for wealthy people. Covetousness can govern the poor as easily as the rich because the issue is not merely how much we possess, but what the heart believes possession can provide. Then read 2 Timothy 3 and receive Holy Scripture again as gift rather than obstacle. The Church does not need to apologize for being governed by the apostolic Word. She needs grace to hear it, believe it, teach it, and live beneath it.

Then read the Great Commission in Matthew 28. The Gospel begins with Israel’s Messiah and ends with the nations. The same Lord who calls one man from one tax booth sends his Church outward toward the world. Finally, pray the Collect and notice its order. Jesus called Matthew. Jesus must grant grace. Then we forsake, follow, and proclaim. Do not reverse that sequence.

Conclusion

Saint Matthew’s feast is finally not a celebration of an unusually promising candidate but of the Lord who calls sinners into his service. Jesus sees the tax collector at the booth and says, “Follow me.” Matthew rises because Christ has called, and the rest of his Christian life grows out of that prior grace.

The transformation is not merely vocational. The man called from a world of revenue and gain becomes the evangelist whose Gospel records Jesus warning that no one can serve both God and money. The Collect takes that history seriously by asking Christ to give his Church grace to forsake covetous desires and inordinate love of riches. The Gospel does not simply change what Matthew does; it begins to reorder what he loves.

Yet Matthew is not called merely away from something. He is called toward Christ and then sent with Christ’s Gospel. The tax booth gives way to discipleship, and discipleship gives way to witness. The apostle through whom the Church receives this Gospel tells us that the risen Jesus possesses all authority and sends his disciples to the nations.

That entire movement begins with grace. Christ calls before Matthew follows. Christ gives before Matthew proclaims. The Church likewise cannot generate faithfulness from within herself. She must ask the Lord who called Matthew to grant grace now: grace to leave competing loves behind, grace to follow faithfully, and grace to proclaim without apology the salvation Christ alone has accomplished.

The Feast of Saint Matthew therefore gives the Church a fitting prayer for every age. May the Lord who called a tax collector from his booth incline our hearts away from selfish gain, root us in the apostolic Word, teach us to follow where he leads, and send us into the world with the good news of his salvation.