You can also read this on Medium (with pictures included) here: https://medium.com/@emilystepp12/reinterpreting-the-calling-of-st-matthew-in-the-time-of-coronavirus-855d0a995226
There’s no escaping them — the internet and regular TV programming has been inundated with ads from companies like Apple and Amazon. No doubt you’ve all been getting emails from every business you’ve ever interacted with about their “improved worker safety” measures and the like. Amazon in particular, with their “heroes” ad has garnered a lot of attention.
On the surface, these ads and notices seem… mostly harmless. You might be tempted to think “That’s nice, they seem to care about their workers in this hard time, good for them.”
And it would be nice — if it were what is really need right now.
Let me be clear: it’s good to thank and honor all the essential workers that are keeping things running as they are. We shouldn’t lose that spirit, especially in times like these. But to simply give them a pat on the back and then not put it concrete measures to establish paid sick leave, a living wage, and other things which the Coronavirus has been a blacklight for? That, to me, is a grave error.
A good way to illustrate this may be in Caravaggio’s painting, The Calling of St. Matthew.
The painting depicts a moment of action, frozen in time; following with the events of the biblical story, Jesus (seen in the far right side of the frame) points to the then-tax collector Matthew, calling him to follow him and become his disciple. Matthew himself is seen at the opposite end of the frame, and is the only one looking down at the table. He is surrounded by, presumably, other tax collectors (all understandably surprised to see Jesus among them).
Notice that this depiction of Christ is hardly that of a heavenly figure; you’ll notice that most of his face is obscured, and only by looking closely above his head can a halo been seen. This Christ is not some powerful, bearded man come down from on-high — it is a man in need of people to help him.
Upon closer inspection of Matthew, I noticed that while he appears to be counting money, unaware of who has entered the room, his face reveals a surprising amount of emotion.
This might just be my own interpretation of Matthew’s expression, but his eyes seem to convey the type of panic and/or embarrassment that comes with realizing that everyone in a room is looking at you. In this moment, he seems to have just recognized that the man called Jesus is pointing at him.
In the biblical story, Matthew is a tax collector; a man of wealth, much-disliked in the community of Jesus’ day (and indeed, of our own time). Yet Jesus calls him to do such work as tend to the poor and the sick, and to feed the hungry.
This is where my illustration comes in; imagine, if you will, that instead of Matthew sitting there, it was Jeff Bezos, or the Koch brothers, or any one of the billionaires that might have made ads about their “hero” employees.
In Christianity there is the idea that followers of Jesus’ teachings desire to be like him, to help the poor, the sick, the hungry, and so forth. You might then be able to see yourself in Jesus — if only as one who wants to help the less fortunate.
If we are like Jesus in this painting, we call upon the richest in our society to do something. Granted, I doubt that St. Matthew was so rich as to be able to end poverty, but he could very well have done something. In the same way, we might also call upon the likes of Jeff Bezos to use their power and wealth to promote and enact real, concrete change in their businesses.
Make no mistake, helping others is something we can all do. But these things revealed by the blacklight that is the Coronavirus —
The fact that the American welfare system is at best, messed up, and at worst fundamentally broken,
The fact that the American healthcare system requires significant restructuring,
The systematic inequalities related to this virus that are arising in minority neighborhoods,
The lack of safety or living wages for those essential workers at full-time jobs—
All of it can be fixed. It should be fixed. It must be fixed.
The government has its own important place in this, there’s no doubting that.
But if these large companies can’t or won’t give their workers better working conditions, paid sick leave, and a living wage, then as people who desire these basic rights for those less fortunate, we must call on the likes of Jeff Bezos and like Jesus to Matthew say,
“Follow me.”
And if anyone should question you, I encourage you to reply as Jesus does in the Bible,
“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.”
It is not the billionaires who need a tax cut, but the poor and the middle class.
Thank you to all the essential workers putting their own lives at risk to give a semblance of “normal” life to those who are privileged enough to be able to work from home, or have savings to scrape by on.
It is my hope that the richest and most powerful among us will be called or feel called to do some real good, and to help those less fortunate than them.
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