6-2-26 - Tainted By Association

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

The story about Jesus calling Matthew from his tax booth to become a disciple is about as short as a story can be – two sentences. 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.

Matthew (the author of the gospel, who was probably not the subject of the story) does not tell us why Jesus called this tax collector, nor does he give us a clue as to why Matthew gets up and follows without a word or question. Perhaps the gospel writer 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? Well, 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,” whether or not we felt worthy of that invitation. We become worthy as we walk with him.

© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.