The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

Today is the festival of St Matthew. We don’t know whether the author of the Gospel is the same man as the disciple nor how he died. But whatever the truth of the matter, the belief that the disciple was the author of the Gospel and that he was martyred in Ethiopia for crossing the king who was lusting (somewhat anachronistically) after a nun, provided the late Sixteenth Century Italian painter Caravaggio with the subject matter of three of his best known, and perhaps best, paintings in a chapel of the church of St Luigi in Rome. I say they are among his best known, but just in case, you should have a copy with your pew sheet.
Caravaggio is known, among other things, for the intensity and immediacy of his paintings; aggressive or quizzical portraits, often charged with erotic energy; or dramatic scenes capturing a critical moment. It’s this ability to condense a narrative into its crucial moment, frequently one of recognition, and self recognition, that makes Caravaggio an astute interpreter of the Gospels.
In the Gospel story it is so often an individual’s encounter with God, in the form of Christ, that is his or her conversion, healing, call or other manifestation of Salvation. Matthew the tax collector is a prime example of this.
Such encounters often involve healing, although there is usually a more or less explicit spiritual overtone to the healing, as forgiveness and liberation into new life. But Matthew belongs to a special type. The malaise from which he needs release is like that of the Rich Young Man who asks Jesus what he should do; he is a punctilious observer of the law, but wedded to his wealth and the World. Matthew is a tax collector like Zacchaeus in Jericho who climbs the sycamore tree to see Jesus. But Matthew differs from Zacchaeus and the Rich Young Man in that Jesus calls him- God takes the initiative in his life. And we see this in Caravaggio’s painting; the light pierces the room, like the first light ever, one of God’s first initiatives for his newly created world. The light bursts in and its source is behind and above Jesus. The fact that Jesus’ companion in front seems to be almost restraining him only adds to the force of the intrusion into Matthew’s den.
We see Matthew caught between his past and his future; caught with a hint of uncertainty, but the uncertainty is not whether he will accept the call from the hand pointing at him, but whether it can really be meant for him. He sees in that moment of astonishment the futility of his former existence and the irresistible imperative behind that pointing hand.
We see that past life, and with it all the worldliness of wealth, in the supporting characters around the counting table. They are based on genre paintings of, on the one hand, early banks or counting houses and on the other, scenes of card players and especially card cheats (and Caravaggio himself had painted such a picture of card sharpers). Such scenes exploit the ironic potential to the full as we can se the cards which the other players cannot.
The flash young men with their shapely calves and feathery hats are Matthew’s bully boys; thugs who persuade their unfortunate victims, ever so charmingly, to cough up just by threatening to use those elegant swords. The bespectacled old clerk behind Matthew is a more conventional type of avarice, focussed on counting the money. His younger companion is so absorbed that he doesn’t even look up to see the gesturing intruder. Matthew’s world is ephemeral, obsessed with the value of money hoarded for its own sake or spent on transitory trappings; this is what Matthew realises as that languid but compelling hand points at him. He sees his life in its true perspective.
Salvation has to be in part retrospective; healing and forgiveness entail recognition that something is wrong. But salvation is also forward looking; it’s full of hope and mission. We tend to think of it in temporal and even special metaphors- as Heaven is somewhere beyond on both time and space and yet the kingdom of heaven is also something attainable here and now and, as Jesus tells us, something that has arrived.
I have mentioned Jesus’ pointing hand in the painting. You may find it curiously familiar, and the reason is that it is inspired by the hand of God, as he creates Adam, seen on a thousand postcards of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painted by Michelangelo. The hand points to a rather limp Adam, ready to be galvanised into existence by the creative charge jumping from God’s hand to his. Adam is ready to be invigorated and made into what he is meant to be because as God creates, he names; he makes things as they are ordered to be and as their names tell them what they are meant to be. This is what is happening to Matthew. Salvation is like creation; it allows the individual to be what he or she should be and this is true liberation and real healing.
We can see that liberation in Matthew as he writes his Gospel, apparently to the dictation of a bossy young angel encircled in the swirls of fantastic white cloud like cloth, while Matthew below poses in his orange toga (oddly, but I think irrelevantly, reminiscent of a Buddhist monk’s robes). This is his moment of fulfilment and glory and appropriately it is placed above the altar of the chapel.
There is however a shadow of concern on Matthews face, both as he writes what the angel dictates and as he stares open-eyed at his creator bursting into his life in the tax booth. There is, as I have said, uncertainty as his own hand points disbelievingly to himself. This disbelief is fuelled by his both his own understanding and apprehension, and the irony implicit in our position, as we know, as it were what the cards say and what the future must be. Matthew realises that while following Jesus will release him from his worldliness, and allow him the freedom to be what he has the potential to be, the experience may not be pleasant and it may not end well. It did not end well for Adam; and it will not for Matthew, and yet it is irresistible. Jesus is quite explicit that following him means taking up a cross- and we can see that stern command in his expression as he summons Matthew. But we know that the cross will lead in the end to the glorious rebirth of the resurrection.
On the wall opposite the scene in the tax booth, is the chaotic depiction of Matthew’s martyrdom; a wild dysfunctional scene dominated by a beautiful youth about to murder an old man. The scene is saved by another gesturing angel stretching out, as Michelangelo’s God stretched out, to reach Matthew and give him the final victorious palm of martyrdom.
The painting of the martyrdom makes explicit- perhaps a bit too explicit- the concern and hope in the younger Matthew’s face on the opposite wall. That face and that scene are so striking because, of course, they speak straight to us; we are being called; like Matthew the tax collector, we are stuck in a materialist world that we have chosen or allowed ourselves to fall into, but we too have been beckoned out of that world. Caravaggio’s Matthew can tell us something about how we can, and should respond to that call. Amen.