Today’s story in Matthew’s Gospel appears in all three Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell a variation on the story of Jesus calling a tax collector (Matthew refers to this tax collector as Matthew, while Mark and Luke refer to the individual as Levi). As people often could be referred to by multiple names (such as Simon Peter), Church tradition has generally inferred Mattew and Levi to be referring to the same person: a tax-collector who Jesus called to follow Him.
Already we see in this example of Jesus calling Matthew Levi the tax collector that God’s purposes often involve calling those who society would consider unworthy. Tax collectors, as you may have often heard, not only collected money for the Roman occupiers, but also acted to extort their own people (the Jewish people under occupation, in this case) in order to collect more wages for themselves. These individuals were seen as traitors to their people and living on ill-gotten gains. And yet, as we see throughout the Gospels, Jesus calls these disreputable figures in order that God’s designs may be fulfilled through them. Often, the story of Zacchaeus the tax collector, is told. But one of Jesus’ own apostles, Matthew, also called Levi, is important enough to be recounted in all three Synoptic Gospels, and is attributed as the author of the Gospel according to Matthew.
As if this story weren’t enough about our Lord engaging in a close relationship with an individual who was considered essentially a social outcast, the Gospels all follow with an account of Jesus sitting at dinner with tax collectors and sinners, as well as Pharisees, the rabbinic figures who interpret the Law. In these accounts, the Pharisees ask why Jesus, who is supposed to be a spiritual teacher, is violating laws surrounding ritual purity by polluting himself with such company. Jesus responds “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 not come to call the righteous but sinners.” I can feel the biting in the phrase “Go and learn what this means.” The Pharisees, known for their scholarship and interpretive tradition of the Books of Moses, and from whom will come Rabbinic Judaism, prize their learning. So Jesus telling them to go learn what this means: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” which references Hosea 6:6, shows that for all their book learning and tradition, these religious leaders do not know the true basis of Scripture, that God is love and that one should love one’s fellow human as they love themselves.
So, Jesus calls the tax collector to be one of his apostles and regularly dines with tax collectors and sinners. Today in the United Church of Canada, we commemorate Church Union, which occurred one hundred and one years ago. As we saw in the slides, we saw a symbol of the United Church ethos, called “A Place at the Table.” Jesus’ ministry always sought to bring people to the table, to draw the circle wide, to build a longer table to include the Other, who self-righteous religious leaders have often excluded. Therefore, we see how the importance of Jesus dining with tax collectors and sinners shows our Lord’s ethos of inclusion.
Who are the tax collectors and sinners in our lives, and how can we walk with them as Jesus’ apostles and eat dinner with them? Now, I would never include such good, church-going people such as yourselves among tax collectors and sinners (and of course I am joking, for we are all sinners), but who in our lives are the tax collectors and sinners? I think of how the tax collectors were known for extorting their own people and I think of all the extortion violence in the news here in Surrey. How can we live the mercy of Jesus in the face of such horrible crime? Likewise, the addiction crisis in British Columbia is overwhelming, as it affects countless people, those who are suffering directly, as well as their families and the broader community. How can we truly show God’s love in Jesus Christ to those who society, made of up “good” people, has abandoned or deemed to be irredeemable? Such a painful and difficult subject has no easy answer, but Jesus doesn’t offer us easy answers. He eats at the table with those whom society has cast out. As eating is one of the most intimate and communal activities humans engage in, our Lord eating with tax collectors and sinners is a powerful statement of God’s love and presence. In his own words: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick… For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”
So, let us continue to live out the way of Jesus, to show forth God’s love to those that people with good standing in society rejects. Thanks be to God.