The Church of Saint Matthew - Saint Paul’s West Side

The gospels are not biographies of Jesus. They are reflections on the life and the teaching of Jesus that come out of local communities of faith. And those communities of faith are communities that have lived some distance from the time of Jesus' ministry.  The gospel according to Matthew was probably written around the year 80. So it's 50 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, and it wa...

The Lord be with you.    The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew Jesus said to the scribes and to the Pharisees, "Listen to this parable. There once was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a fence around it and he dug a vat and he raised a tower. And then he leased the vineyard out to tenant farmers and he went off on a long journey. When harvest time came, he sent his serv...

The gospel passage today begins with Jesus telling a story about a father who asked his sons to go to work, go into the vineyard today, work. One said “Yes,” and didn't go. And one said “No” and did go. You see, to be a disciple of Jesus is not a spectator sport. We're not here just to watch Jesus, or just to be impressed by Jesus, or even to be overwhelmed by the works of Jesus.  That's not what...

The Lord be with you.   And with your spirit  The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew Jesus said to the scribes and the Pharisees, "What do you think about this? There once was a man who had two sons. He went to one of them and he said, 'Go and work in the field in the vineyard today.' And the young man said, 'I will not go.' Later on he thought better, and he did go. The father w...

Today we celebrate our patron's feast, St. Matthew. The gospel is a very short description of Matthew being called. Jesus ends up in Matthew's house. He ends up for a meal and He's there with His disciples, and sitting around the table are a whole variety of people, none of whom are the kind of people that your mother would want you to hang out with. Jesus is there with them. He's eating with them...

The Lord be with you.   And with your spirit  The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew As Jesus walked by, He saw a man named Matthew at the tax collector's booth. He said to him, "Follow me." Immediately Matthew got up and followed Jesus. Now later that day Jesus was in Matthew's house with His disciples, and they were at table. And joining them at table were tax collectors and pr...

In one sense, the gospel story is about justice. We have the king, the land owner who has lent money out to servants, expecting a return on that loan and had a right to call that loan in. And he did, he was settling accounts. And there was one servant who had borrowed an extensive amount of money, so much money that he was clearly unable to repay. And so the King was going to ask that justice be d...

The Lord be with you.   And with your spirit  The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew Peter approached Jesus and asked, "If my brother sins against me. How many times must I forgive him, as much as seven times?" And Jesus says, "Not seven times, but seventy-seven times." And this is why the kingdom of God can be compared to a king who went about settling accounts with his servants...

The gospel reading today and for the coming few weeks will be taken from the 18th chapter of St. Matthew's gospel. And the 18th chapter, if you will, lays out the order which should govern the life of the Christian community. It's in that chapter that Matthew records the teaching of Jesus about the community of faith, the church.  We learn very early in the life of the church in the second generat...

The Lord be with you.   And with your spirit  The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew Jesus said to his disciples, "If your brother should do something wrong to you, go and have it out with him face to face. If he listens to you, you've gained your brother back. If not, then take two others and go to him, that those two may be witness to what goes between you. And if he will not l...

This passage of the gospel falls immediately after the passage that was part of the gospel of last week. Remember, last week Jesus comes into the region and He says, "What do people say that I am?" And then Peter confesses, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God." And then Jesus changes his name. He says, From now on you're Peter," and He gives to him the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And...

The Lord be with you.   And with your spirit  The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew Jesus began to show his disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and there He must suffer at the hands of the scribes and the Pharisees and the chief priests. That He must be killed. And that on the third day, He must raise from the dead. Now when Peter heard this, he said to Jesus, "Lord, this wi...

What we're reading is really an instruction for any one of us who has responsibility over a community, or over the work of others. It's really an instruction about what it is to be in the Christian spirit, a leader. He tells Peter, "You have the power to bind and to loose." The leader is expected to focus on what we call the common good. That what holds all of us together, what all of us share tog...

The Lord be with you.   And with your spirit  The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew Jesus and His disciples came into the region of Cesarea Philippi. Jesus turned to them and He said, "What do people say about me? Who do they say that I am?" They said, "Some say you are John the Baptist come back from the dead. Others say, you're Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the prophets." Jes...

The gospel story today is about boundaries and about crossing boundaries. It's about life is not just either/or, life is really both/and. Matthew has a very difficult time in the community that he writes for. His community is located in places we know now as Syria, and the majority of the people in the community were Jews who were converted to Christianity. But a growing minority that was moving i...

The Lord be with you.   And with your spirit  The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew Jesus withdrew into the region of Tyre and Sidon and a Canaanite woman came up to Him and said, "Lord have pity on me. My daughter is tormented by a demon." Jesus ignored her and He walked on the way. His disciples said to Him, "Get rid of her, tell her to go. She bothers us." Jesus said, "I have...

The story is told about a young boy who was being prepared to be a sailor. He was taken aboard the ship and the older sailors taught him all the skills that he needed, all the activity that he had to undertake if he was to be a good sailor. And one of the things he had to learn was to how to climb the mast of the ship up to the crow's nest on top. And so one day he was doing that and everything wa...

The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew After Jesus had fed the people, He made the disciples get in the boat and precede Him to the other side. Jesus stayed there to dismiss the people, and after He had dismissed them, He went up to the mountain by Himself to pray. Later that day He was alone on the mountain, but the ship was far from shore and was being tossed about in the waves...

I really want to talk to the first communion people tonight, and you adults can also listen in. Yes, you'll probably learn something. When you were preparing for First Communion, you were told the story of what Jesus did the night before he died. Oh, He gathered his disciples together at a supper. We call it the last supper, and he took bread and he broke the bread and he gave it to them and he sa...

The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew. When Jesus heard that John the Baptist had been killed, he left the place he was and you went to a deserted place by crossing the water. When people heard what he had done, they followed after him on foot. And when he disembarked from the boat he saw this large crowd of people, and he had compassion on them. And he spent the rest of the day...

(Recording of the homily begins a minute or two late)   …The man sells all his resources and then he buys the pearl.  The pearl is the Kingdom of God.  The treasure if the Kingdom of God.  But the Kingdom of God is not some idea, some thoughts, some philosophy, some construct.  It’s not a physical thing; it’s not an institutional thing. The Kingdom of God is Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ is the trea...

Jesus said, the kingdom of God is like a treasure planted in a field, which a workman finds and then buries it. Going his way, he sells all that he has, and then he buys the field. Or the kingdom of God is like a merchant in search of precious pearls. And when he finds a truly wonderful pearl, with great joy he goes and sells everything and he buys the pearl. Then Jesus said to his disciples, do y...

The 13th chapter of St. Matthew's gospel contains a series of parables about the kingdom of God. And this is the first of those parables, the story of the wheat and the weeds. The word that is in the Greek text for the weeds really does not mean just ordinary, everyday garden variety weeds. It refers to a special kind of weed, which is called Darnell. Darnell is a pernicious weed. It's a poisonous...

The Lord be with you, the gospel of the Lord, Jesus Christ according to Matthew. Jesus said, the kingdom of God is like a man who planted good seed in his field. Then he went to bed and during the night an enemy came and sewed weeds throughout that good seed. His servants came to him and said, did you not sew good seed? How is it that there are weeds now growing in the field? And the man said, thi...

The gospel reading today comes from the very beginning of the 13th chapter of St. Matthew's gospel. There are seven parables that are found in that 13th chapter. The whole chapter is really a series of Jesus teaching in parables. This parable is the one that leads it off and we get a hint about what all of this is about. In the opening words, Jesus says, pay attention and listen. Then he tells the...