To You Who Are Beloved of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Matthew 9: 9 As Jesus was walking along, he
saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to
him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
10 And as he sat at dinner in the house,
many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his
disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to
his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and
sinners?” 12 But when he heard this, he said, “Those who
are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go
and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come
to call the righteous but sinners.”
The
promise in Genesis is made to Abram (even before God changed his name to
Abraham). The piece we hang our presence
on is at the conclusion of verse 3, “…in you all the families of the earth
shall be blessed.” That is us, among
others.
Our
passage in Matthew shows Jesus doing that work.
His work began among His people, God’s Chosen. It is something that the leadership in
Jerusalem is watching. And then Jesus
makes a point.
“Tax
collectors and sinners”, Bible-speak for ‘riff-raff’, for the unwelcome, those
who have made bad life decisions, the people on the other side of the tracks, those
people who, in the eyes of the Pharisees, are unworthy.
Apparently,
theirs was an early version of “See Something, Say Something”, because these
are not the sort of people that Jesus ‘ought’ to be caught having dinner
with. They are sinners. And tax collectors (a special brand of
treacherous in occupied Israel).
Jesus’
response is cutting, to say the least. “Those
who are well have no need of a physician…”
In other words, “I am not here for YOU.”
Jesus is here for those who are not well, who, in the eyes of God, are “ill”
with sin.
But
Jesus is not done. The Pharisees, the
teachers of the Bible of Jesus (alongside Jesus), they would recognize Jesus’
work in fulfillment of the promise to Abram.
So they’d recognize Jesus’ second cut, one that runs deeper. “Go and
learn what this means, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”
It
is from Hosea, the prophet who calls “BS” on the practices of ancient Israel when
they turned away from God for their own benefit. The second part of the verse in Hosea goes,
“(For I desire)…the knowledge of God rather than burnt sacrifices.”
Israel,
blessed by God and in a good economic situation in the time of Hosea, has
gotten very good at following the letter of the law for their own desire and
benefit. Because they forgot they needed
God, the Giver of all. They’d forgotten the spirit of that law, the knowledge
of God. What is the knowledge of
God? Most basically, that God is love.
Jesus
has not come to call the righteous, but the sinner. In speaking to the Pharisees, Jesus is not
telling them something new, but reminding them.
They are the ‘righteous’ and they should know better. More than knowing better, as leaders of the
people, as those who claim to be scholars of the bible they share with Jesus,
they should be doing this work. Most
especially INSTEAD of critiquing Jesus for it.
While
this will not endear Jesus to the leadership of the people, it is the people,
not their leadership, that Jesus has come to serve.
Pastor Pete
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