Turns out I was a week ahead in yesterday’s Water Daily – we’re in an earlier passage from Matthew’s gospel this week, one with two stories. Today we’ll look at the first, which is very short as stories go: As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
Brevity may be a virtue in writing, but this is a little too short. Why did Jesus call this tax collector – had he had his eye on him for a while, or was it a spontaneous movement of the Spirit? Why does Matthew (called Levi in another gospel) get up without a question, a word, a goodbye, and follow Jesus? Where do they go? What’s going on?
It seems Matthew (the author of the gospel, who was probably not the subject of the story) is less interested in these questions than in the impact this invitation had on the people around Jesus. This mixing with notorious “sinners” like tax collectors was getting Jesus a bad rep: And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax-collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax-collectors and sinners?”
Why should they care who Jesus eats with? Because there was a strain of “holiness” teaching running through Jewish scripture and practice that asserted that even associating with anything or anyone unclean put your own purity at risk. This strain raises its legalistic head in ultra-conservative circles of any religion, and is usually accompanied by a conviction that the person doing the judging has no sin of which to repent. In the eyes of the Pharisees and scribes, constantly trying to discern whether he was a charlatan or the real deal, Jesus was tainted by his willingness to hang around the “sinful.”
But there is another way of thinking that we also find in the Hebrew bible, which invites “outsiders” to become insiders, encourages the faithful to welcome the stranger and alien, the “unwhole” and the impaired (who were not welcome in the temple courts). Jesus clearly saw there was more good to be done inviting the “unholy” into transforming relationship, and went so far as to suggest these were his true mission: But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
Do you tend to categorize people as “good” or “bad?” Which do you feel like on most days – the righteous or a sinner? Have you been offered a friendship in which you experienced healing and a feeling of becoming more worthy of love? Have you ever invited anyone else into such a transforming relationship?
We are called to mercy, not a slavish devotion to rules and ritual. Our Good News proclaims that Jesus has passed by each one of us and said, “Follow me,” no matter whether or not we felt worthy of that invitation. We become worthy as we walk with him.
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