It starts small. A slight adjustment to a number here, a conveniently forgotten expense there. A little pay under the table. Who notices, right? Tax season rolls around, and the temptation creeps in—who would even notice? The system feels rigged anyway, and wouldn’t a little extra refund be harmless? A justification here, a rationalization there, and before long, the lines between right and wrong blur.
Maybe that’s why Matthew’s story hits differently. Because compromise rarely happens all at once—it happens in increments, in the slow, steady drift from conviction to convenience.
There he sat, the weight of wealth stacked in neat, soulless rows before him. The tax collector’s booth was both a fortress and a prison—his security and his shame. He had made his choices. He had taken what wasn’t his. He had worked the system, and the system had worked him.
He wasn’t proud of it, exactly. But it was survival. And wasn’t that justification enough?
Then, the dust swirled. The shuffle of sandals, a murmur through the crowd.
Jesus.
Matthew had heard of him. A rabbi with a reputation for the impossible. Healing lepers. Giving sight to the blind. Eating with sinners.
And now, impossibly, Jesus was walking toward him.
Matthew braced himself. He had learned to absorb the loathing of others. But Jesus didn’t hurl condemnation or demand a defense.
Instead, two words:
“Follow me.”
No prerequisites. No conditions. No five-step plan for redemption. No “Sinner’s Prayer.” Just an invitation, offered in the very space where Matthew’s compromise was most evident.
And something in Matthew broke open. Maybe it was the way Jesus looked at him—not past him, not through him, but at him. Maybe it was the way Jesus stood there, as if this moment was exactly where he was meant to be, as if Matthew—tax collector, traitor, lost cause—was exactly who he wanted.
So Matthew did the only thing that made sense in that moment. He stood up and walked away.
And isn’t that the absurd, beautiful truth of how grace works?
Jesus doesn’t wait for us to clean up our act. He doesn’t require that we first untangle all the mess we’ve made. He steps right into the middle of it—into our doubt, our guilt, our participation in things we wish we could undo. He sees the ledger of our lives, with all its moral ambiguity, and still says, Come.
How often do we assume we need to fix ourselves before we are worthy of being called? That we need to have the right answers, the right behaviors, the right reputation before we can really belong?
But Jesus shows up at our tax booths. At our places of shame, compromise, and half-hearted faith. And he doesn’t demand perfection. He just asks us to get up and walk.
Where is your tax booth today? That place you feel stuck? That story you keep telling yourself about how you’re not enough, not ready, not worthy?
Maybe today is the day to hear those two words anew.
Follow me.
And maybe today is the day you stand up and start walking.
Grace and Peace,
Andrea