A Poem Inspired by Matthew 9:9
Beside the dusty road to Capernaum,
where sea winds carried salt and rumor alike,
a booth of weathered wood stood sentinel,
its ledgers open to the sun's indifferent eye.
Matthew sat within that narrow kingdom,
fingers stained with ink and Roman silver,
counting tribute from his kin, the price
of peace enforced by foreign spears.
Each coin that clinked was both his gain
and their quiet wound, a daily sacrament
of separation, of belonging nowhere
except to the empire's cold arithmetic.
He had grown accustomed to the averted gazes,
the muttered curses trailing like shadows,
the space that opened around him in the market,
as if sin were contagious and greed a plague.
Yet in the silence between transactions,
a deeper hunger stirred, unnamed, unvoiced,
a whisper that no ledger could record,
a longing for something beyond the weight
of accumulated wrong.
Then came the footsteps on the path,
measured, unhurried, purposeful.
A man approached, no herald, no retinue,
only the dust of travel on his sandals
and eyes that held the weight of galaxies.
He paused before the booth, not in judgment,
not in accusation, but in recognition—
as though he had always known the place,
the man, the moment.
Jesus saw Matthew.
Not the tax collector, not the collaborator,
not the name whispered in contempt,
but the hidden image, the soul beneath
the armor of occupation and compromise.
In that gaze was neither scorn nor pity,
but a love so absolute it needed no explanation,
a grace that did not bargain or delay.
Follow me.
Two words, spoken softly yet with authority
that bent the air around them.
No sermon preceded, no demand for repentance,
no list of prerequisites or proofs of worth.
Only the command, simple, direct,
carrying within it the power to create
what it required.
And Matthew rose.
The stool scraped back against the floor,
the quill fell from his hand, ink pooling
like a final signature on an old life.
He left the booth standing open to the wind,
coins scattered, records unfinished,
the machinery of his former world
abandoned without a backward glance.
In that single motion—rising—he chose
the unknown over the familiar,
the Master over the mammon,
eternity over the temporary security
of counted wealth.
What passed between them in that instant
no eye could fully witness, no tongue describe:
a spark of divine election igniting,
a heart long frozen cracking open
to receive the impossible invitation.
The booth remained, a hollow shell
beside the road, while the man who sat there
stepped into a new trajectory,
one that would lead through dusty villages,
storm-tossed seas, upper rooms,
and finally to the writing of words
that still call others to rise and follow.
O sovereign Caller, who seeks in unlikely places,
who speaks to the despised and the distracted,
whose voice can summon from the midst
of ordinary compromise and daily compromise
a disciple unforeseen.
In Matthew's rising let us see our own
potential awakening, the booth we occupy—
whether desk or doubt, habit or hidden shame—
left empty when Your follow me
pierces the routine and claims the heart.
For grace does not wait for readiness
nor demand prior perfection;
it arrives unannounced,
looks with eyes that know us better
than we know ourselves,
and speaks the word that sets us free
to leave everything
and walk into the company
of the One who came for sinners,
who calls the lost by name,
and turns collectors of debt
into heralds of forgiveness.
So may we, hearing that same summons
across the centuries, rise today—
not tomorrow when conditions improve,
not when guilt has lessened or worth increased—
but now, in the midst of whatever booth confines us,
stand, turn, and follow
the feet that once paused before a tax collector's stall
and changed forever the direction of a life.
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