9. Matthew

9.  Matthew

Like waking up from the longest dream, how real it seemed
Until your love broke through
I was lost in a fantasy that blinded me
Until your love broke through.
(Keith Green)

For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ. Philippians 3:8

Gaining Christ. Bliss. Everything else, according to Paul, is garbage, or dung or scheisse, once you have him. The Second Testament of the Bible is full of stories of those who heard the voice of love and who followed it across the border into a whole new land.  Matthew is one such example, a man who followed and then wrote it all down as he saw it so we could have our appetites whet for encounter too.

In his BC life Matthew was a tax collector, but apparently tax collectors did more than collect taxes in those days, they also traded in commodities. Now I’ve met a lot of commodities traders in my city, and I know what that means in 2019 at least. They have the freedom of the city because they know people. They can get what is needed.

Whatever commodities Matthew traded, and whatever little baggies it was collected in, if Matthew was ever to leave all that behind it would be all that: power, influence, protection, and money. In leaving he would be crossing the border from all he had been known as, and all that he had known.

When Matthew met Jesus it seems that the loss was inconsequential to him. He left it all behind without hesitation. There was something swirling around this man that meant he left behind his post, position and power in response to those two words ‘follow me’. It was as if he woke up. Bliss.

There are many words you can use to conjure up a feeling of bliss. Words like pleasure, happiness, ecstasy and joy all go some way towards describing it. Advertisers use images of white sand, warm sun and blue sea, a slowly unwrapped bar of chocolate, pot of yoghurt (who are they kidding) or the scent of freshly washed laundry. Whatever word or image works for you, one thing seems evident to me: you must be fully awake to experience bliss. For anyone who has ever experienced insomnia, falling asleep can be incredibly pleasurable, but once you’re out cold the experience surely levels. Bliss is fully awake.*

This can seem pretty risky when I think about it. I remember one of our housemates, who had previously lived on the streets, telling me that she turned down rare offers of a meal. It caused too many problems. The trick was never to eat too much at once or your stomach would stretch. If you kept your stomach tiny, she said, the hunger was less painful. Bliss, pain, hunger, being satisfied, all risky things because they involve feeling, they wake you up and once you’re awake you have to deal with stuff so sometimes it’s easier to stay asleep.

Matthew crossed the border without knowing beforehand what this new land looked like. He wandered off the map without googling who people thought this Rabbi really was. He didn’t have to wait long to hear the manifesto laid out. Up the mountain he went, with crowds of the intrigued and curious, invited closer by the one who must have captivated him instantly.

I wonder if Matthew knew he was hungry before he met Jesus, or if the waking up woke everything up in him including an appetite and a thirst for right relationship with God. Maybe he’d had his fill of unrighteousness, of all that is decaying and corrupt, so once he was invited into the righteousness of God it was all the sugar he craved.

On that mountain Jesus said to all his listeners :

“Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Matthew 5:6

Happy or blessed or blissed out are those, he said, that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for a taste of the goodness and justice of God. They will find their whole-body craving fully satisfied. More than that, the word for satisfied carries a sense of fruitfulness. The satisfaction you experience becomes a well-spring of life blessing everything around you.  I love that this waking up, this craving, is an earthy and physical whole body whole life experience that changes both me and the world around me.

On the mountain-top Jesus gave them eight ways to journey through life in a state of bliss, and they all start with desire. These eight teachings ask me: is my desire for Him awake, and do I yearn for Him with my whole being?

Many wise bliss-tasters over the centuries have pointed out, in their own way, that spiritual work is more about letting go than adding to. My problem is that the artificial sweeteners and refined sugar that I dull my appetite with make me sleepy and I soon forget what pure Jesus-honey tastes like. To name the distractions, the sleeping-pills and ditch them feeling that wide-awake surge of hunger gives me a window and a space to crave what is true and real and satisfying and fruitful. I’m a consumer who wonders why I invite the rollercoaster of emotions and body pain that comes because I want autonomy over the food and drink I choose. I forget that I’m not truly choosing, or truly free. I’m blown about and this dulls my thinking. I don’t want to live on the edge of the promised land, with only one foot in the upside down kingdom of God where bliss awaits. I don’t want to remain a border-dweller, my mind and body dulled and my veins connected to the saccharine-mountains that keep me asleep.

There’s still a cry in me : Unplug! Wake up! Feel the pain, the longing, and then the satisfaction. I know that if my appetite is fully turned towards right relationship with God I will be satisfied, and that satisfaction will be fruitful. It extends out of me into something others can both see (fruit is visible) and feast on.

Welcome to the Kingdom of God where we get to create and plant and grow stuff too.

Matthew chose Jesus before he heard and understood what this new land would look like. Fully awake he walked through the doorway, watching and recording and trading in a whole new bunch of kingdom commodities. His experiences and words have invited countless others, including me, into the blessing, so that we can taste and see that He is so good. Ps 34:8


If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world. C S Lewis 



* As an aside, there are ways to be fully awake whilst asleep. You might want to step into Song of Solomon 5:2.