Pentecost 2

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Pentecost 2
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: June 6,1999

TEXT: Matthew 9:9-13 - "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"

ISSUE: Who do church members and Americans shun and condemn? How does Jesus respond in his culture and ours?
The theme of this Sunday seems based on how God demands mercy and compassion with not so much concern for proper righteous liturgical law abiding citizens and church members. Jesus' association with the tax collectors and sinners, his emphasis on healing the sick and out casts, and his association with them may be as shocking for us as it was for his own time.
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"Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" Why does he indeed? In Jesus's time that was a very significant question. I would suggest that it is as important for the modern church to be able to answer that as it was for the pharisees.
Matthew tells us that Jesus was in the area of Capernaum, a town which was now his own, a kind of home base. He is reported (4:13) to have moved there after John Baptists martrydom, leaving Nazareth behind as Jesus began his own ministry. Capernaum was a fairly busy town, and probably one of the larger towns on the Sea of Galilee. There was apparently a fair amount of tradesmen there and certainly fishermen.
Jesus had called several fishermen from this area, and now he calls Matthew, a tax collector to follow him, and to be one of his disciples. It is interesting to me that Jesus does not say, "If you are going to be good, follow me." or "Repent, and follow me." or "If you believe what I believe you can follow me." He just says, "Follow me." - at least according to this account. Since Capernaum was a busy seaside town it is likely that Jesus who had fishermen disciples would call a tax collector, because a part of the job was to sell rights to fishermen to fish in Lake Galilee and then to collect taxes on their catch. Fishermen had, of course, no elite status, and were taxed so highly that they were most always poor economically, as well as poor in terms of the status in the community.
A tax collector was even worse off. Tax collectors really got a very bad rap. The taxes they collected went to the Romans, so they were seen to be something of traitors to their own people. Tax collectors were the male equivalent of whores. ("The God of Jesus," Stephen J. Patterson, p.67) The Roman government demanded an exhorbitant amount of taxation. Their were taxes on about everything, including tolls at bridges, ports, border crossings. But the economic and political situation being what it was a man sometimes had to do work that was available and could not always find work that was reputable and that gave him standing in the community. You had to eat in order to live, so some did what they had to do, and were victims of what life had dealt them.
Tax collectors also had a reputation for being dishonest. It was thought that they would over charge in order to become rich. The system worked this way: first a tax collector paid the government up front for the job of collecting taxes on imports and exports, or for giving out fishing rights. It was then up to them to recupe what they had put out to get the tax collecting job. So they were reputed for being dishonest and extortionists. Some may have done been, but historical records indicate that very very few tax collectors ever got rich. And they never gained status in the community. They remained shunned and excluded. Some are reported to have never regained what they put out in the first place to get the job. It was a gamble. Their shamed reputation must have been the result of the very small percentage of the elite and wealthy, because the poor had little or nothing to tax. Sometimes, maybe, the affluent are the biggest complainers.
Tax collectors were also considered impure because they dealt with materials in caravans that was considered unclean, and the they touched and dealt with Gentiles. So the job was not only considered traitorous, it was also ritually unclean.
Jesus does the strangest thing, he selects and invites a shamed and dishonorable tax collector to become one of his disciples. I wonder why he does that? Of course another question might be, why does Matthew the tax collector follow this itinerant preacher anyway. Traveling around was also considered deviant behavior at the time, and it was very dangerous. You carried a walking stick to help beat off wild animals, wild dogs, and bandits. In certain seasons it was extraordinarily hot to travel by day, and dangerous at night. but Matthew leaves the custom house to follow Jesus. Why?
We are given the impression that Matthew now follows Jesus home for dinner. And gathered around the supper table are more tax collectors and sinners. Supper time, and invitations to banquets in this period was very special in the middle eastern culture of the first century. You only ate with people who were of your own rank, or higher if you could manage it. Who you were seen with and who you associated with was most important to the maintaining of your own honor and status in community. Men never ate with women, or vice-versa. Meals were political, ritualisitic, ceremonial, and to eat with poor sinners was to risk becoming yourself unclean. It just wasn't done, but Jesus did it. Why did he do that?
Now who were these sinners? Sinners were the expendable people in the world of that time: tax collectors, the mentally ill, drunks, the prostitutes, beggars, blind, deaf and mute, paralytics, people who held no land, lepers (skin diseased), artisans (carpenters, tanners, shepherds, the landless, and those who couldn't keep all the laws by virtue of their status in life.) These were the people thought to have no self-worth.Sinners and the expendable people were the people that Jesus had his supper with. Why did he do that? "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners? the Pharisees asked. Which may well mean to say, Why does the teacher eat with the sickies, the lost, the least, the least, the forlorn? What's the good of that?
Jesus takes a stab at answering the challenge to his honor and replies with a challenge: Those who are well have no need for a physician, but those who are sick." . . . . the lost, the least, the disenfranchised, the condemned and judged. "Go and learn what this means: "I desire mercy, not sacrifice," For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners. Jesus is not the slightest bit concerned with religion and the cultural protocol of his time. He is not concerned with their sacrificial system. He is concerned with justice, and mercy, and compassion. He does not run around being pious and religious and giving handouts. He lives with and associates with, and loves the very people who are the expendable outcasts, and the people whom the society condemned and excluded. There was the belief at the time that the Messiah would provide a great Messianic Banquet. Well, here it is, and look whose there. It's really quite startling.
In Jesus' time, physicians may have studied illness and disease but they rarely attempted to heal anybody. If they did and the person died they were themselves liable and could have been put to death. Furthermore, healing was not so much curing as it was restoration of meaning and purpose to life. It was restoration to the community. Jesus does what the physicians of the time would not do. He associates with the sick, the judged, the condemned, the alienated. He touches and befriends them with mercy and compassion. He gave them a new sense of belonging and self-esteem which was not based upon cultural standards. He invites them out of the world into the Kingdom of God that Jesus felt himself to be a part of. Anybody can spare a dime for the poor and the disenfranchised but Jesus moves in with them and invites them into his community of mercy, meaning, and compassion.
Obviously our culture is considerable different from the time of Jesus, but it is not without its prejudices and its exclusiveness. Both as individuals and as members of the church, we might well ask ourselves who is it that we exclude, shun and condemn from our lives and from our community of faith? And I guess we might also ask, How would Jesus Christ respond in our world and who would be called to "Follow" and sit at the table with him today?
Why does the teacher, our Lord, eat with tax collectors and sinners? And would we be there at the table with them?