You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Congratulations – you have made it through the seasons and festivals and holidays that span Christmas through Easter to Pentecost, and have arrived safely at that long stretch we call “Ordinary Time.” From now until Advent, minus a few feast days, we will hear stories from Jesus’ ministry and teaching. We have an opportunity to get to know him better, and to explore our own callings within his ongoing mission.
This week’s passage from Matthew’s gospel contains two stories. Today we’ll look at the first, which is very short as stories go: As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
Brevity may be a virtue in writing, but this is a little too short. Why did Jesus call this tax collector? Had he had his eye on him for a while, or was it a spontaneous movement of the Spirit? In the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), Jesus first calls four fishermen to be his disciples. John’s Gospel tells how Philip and Nathaniel got added to the corps. Did Matthew (named Levi in another gospel) come after them, or before? Did Jesus figure a financial guy would come in handy?
Perhaps a more important question is this: Why does Matthew get up without a question, a word, a goodbye, and follow Jesus? Like Peter and Andrew, James and John, he just walks away from his job, his livelihood, presumably his family. Had he already heard of Jesus, or seen him healing, or heard his teaching? Was he looking for a purpose? What was Jesus offering that these people were willing to walk away from their lives to go with him?
And that invites an even deeper question: What would it take for us to follow Jesus this completely? To be a disciple means to take on the discipline of a master. Are we willing to pattern our lives on the Way of Love that Jesus lived and taught?
Perhaps the only way to know the answer to that is to be able to say what it is we are yearning for in the depth of our hearts. When we know that what we yearn for is something that only God can satisfy, rather than all the things and people we chase, hoping they will fill the need, it’s not so hard to walk away. I am guessing that those people Jesus invited to join his mission knew he had something they needed and wouldn’t find anywhere else.
And walking away is not the only movement here. These people to whom Jesus said, “Follow me,” seemingly with no preamble or orientation program, were also walking to. They were walking to Jesus. And then they were walking with Jesus. If we think of it only as “walking away,” we may not want to leave our familiar circumstances and follow. When we experience the joy of walking with Jesus, into his always surprising, sometimes painful, transformative and transformational mission, we don’t even thinking about staying put, even when we don’t know where we are going.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
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