The Call of Matthew

The call of Matthew is told in all three Synoptic Gospels in nearly the same words — Christ passing the customs-post, the single command “Follow me,” and the immediate rising and following (Matt. 9:9; Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27–28). This file examines the call narrative, the long-standing identification of the “Matthew” of the First Gospel with the “Levi” of Mark and Luke, the banquet that follows, and Matthew’s place in the lists of the Twelve.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)

The Call at the Customs-Post

All three Synoptic Gospels place the call immediately after the healing of the paralytic at Capernaum and tell it with striking economy. In Matthew: “As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he rose and followed him” (Matt. 9:9). Mark gives the same scene: “And as he passed on, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he rose and followed him” (Mark 2:14). Luke: “After this he went out, and saw a tax collector, named Levi, sitting at the tax office; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he left everything, and rose and followed him” (Luke 5:27–28). The threefold agreement — the setting at the telōnion, the bare imperative akolouthei moi, the instantaneous response — makes this one of the most firmly attested incidents in the Gospel tradition, and Luke’s addition, “he left everything,” underlines the totality of the break.

The Fathers dwell on the immediacy. Chrysostom contrasts the call of Matthew with the slower obedience of others and reads the publican’s rising as the work of grace meeting a will prepared: Christ “drew” him by a power that worked inwardly, and Matthew “delayed not, nor procrastinated,” but abandoned his gains at once (John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew, Homily 30 [on Matt. 9:9]; NPNF I/10). The brevity is itself theological: the Gospel will spend chapters on the teaching of the Kingdom, but the call to follow needs only a word and an answer.

Matthew and Levi: the Identification

A question of identity attends the call, because the man is named differently across the three accounts. Matthew names him “Matthew” (Matt. 9:9) and later, in the apostolic list, “Matthew the tax collector” (Matt. 10:3); Mark and Luke name the man at the booth “Levi” (Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27), Mark adding “the son of Alphaeus.” Yet Mark and Luke, when they come to list the Twelve, name “Matthew” and not “Levi” (Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15), and none of the three lists includes a “Levi” among the apostles. The ancient and overwhelmingly dominant reading harmonizes the data by taking Matthew and Levi to be two names for one man — the tax-collector called at Capernaum, known both as Levi and as Matthew (the latter perhaps a name taken at his call, as Simon became Peter), who is the Matthew of the apostolic lists. The early Church received this identification without serious dissent: the Gospel’s title “according to Matthew,” the placement of the call in the same Capernaum context in all three, and the absence of any separate “Levi” among the Twelve all point the same way. [Disputed: a minority of modern critics — e.g. some who follow the third-century Heracleon as cited by Clement of Alexandria, *Stromateis* 4.9, who lists Matthew among apostles who did not die a martyr's death, and a few moderns noting that the First Gospel alone substitutes "Matthew" for "Levi" — have questioned whether Matthew and Levi are the same person, or whether the First Gospel deliberately attached its own evangelist's name to the call-scene; the traditional identification of the two as one man remains, however, the consensus of the Fathers and of most scholarship (Davies–Allison, *Matthew* ICC I, on 9:9).]

The Banquet and “Mercy, Not Sacrifice”

The call issues immediately into a meal, and the meal into controversy. Matthew (telling it of himself in the third person) records that “as he sat at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples” (Matt. 9:10); Mark and Luke specify that it was Levi’s own house and a “great feast” he made (Mark 2:15; Luke 5:29). The Pharisees and their scribes object to the company — “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Matt. 9:11) — and the Lord answers with the saying that gives the call its meaning: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9:12–13, quoting Hos. 6:6). The banquet thus stages the Gospel’s central claim in narrative form: the Physician sits among the sick, the Caller among the called, and the meal of the publican becomes a figure of the Kingdom’s table opened to sinners. The Orthodox reading sees here both the model of repentance — the immediate abandonment of an unjust trade — and the model of evangelism — the new disciple’s first act is to bring his old companions to Christ.

Matthew Among the Twelve

After the call Matthew appears in the New Testament only in the lists of the Twelve. All four lists name him: “Matthew the tax collector” (Matt. 10:3); “Matthew” (Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15); and “Matthew” again in the upper room after the Ascension (Acts 1:13). The detail that the First Gospel alone adds the brand “the tax collector” to his name in the list has been read since antiquity as a stroke of the evangelist’s own humility — he will not let the reader forget what he was when he was called (Chrysostom, Hom. Matt. 30; NPNF I/10). Matthew is regularly listed in the second group of four, often paired with Thomas, and Mark’s identification of Levi as “son of Alphaeus” has prompted the further question whether Matthew was a brother of “James the son of Alphaeus” (Matt. 10:3); the Orthodox synaxaria sometimes call them brothers, though the Gospels do not say so explicitly and the point is uncertain. [Disputed: that Matthew and James "the son of Alphaeus" were brothers rests on the shared patronymic (Mark 2:14; Matt. 10:3) and is asserted in some synaxaria, but the Gospels nowhere state it and "Alphaeus" may name two different men; the relationship is traditional, not established.]

Beyond the lists the canonical record is silent: Matthew’s later mission, his Gospel, and his death all belong to the testimony of the post-apostolic Church (treated in Sections 05–09). What Scripture gives is the call and its meaning — the publican who rose at a word, left everything, brought his fellow-sinners to the table, and took his place among the Twelve, remembered ever after as “Matthew the tax collector,” the man whom mercy made an apostle.

References

The Holy Gospel according to Matthew 9:9–13; 10:3. With parallels Mark 2:14–17; 3:18; Luke 5:27–32; 6:15; Acts 1:13. Cited by chapter and verse.
John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew, Homily 30 (on Matt. 9:9). Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 10.
Clement of Alexandria. Stromateis 4.9 (apostles who did not die by martyrdom). Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 2.
Davies, W. D., and Dale C. Allison. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. ICC. Vol. 2 (on 9:9). Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991.
The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church, November 16. Trans. Holy Apostles Convent, Buena Vista, CO.