Friday of Week 13 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Matthew 9:9-13
The cure of the paralytic is immediately followed by the call of Matthew, named Levi by Mark and Luke in their versions of the story. Matthew/Levi was an unlikely disciple; he was a tax collector. Tax collectors were among the most despised group of people in Jewish society of the time. Tax collectors never can be particularly popular, given their distasteful job, but in Jesus’ time they were collecting taxes for the hated and pagan colonial ruler. As such they were seen as collaborators and traitors to their own people and to their religion. The Romans had the custom of farming out the collecting of taxes to volunteer agents. These individuals paid up-front the amount that the Romans demanded, and then had to get the money back from the people. In doing so they often collected more than they had paid the Romans. This was their ‘commission’, but there was often an element of extortion and corruption in the whole practice.
Now Jesus invites one of these despised people to be his follower. It is an example of Jesus’ looking beyond the exterior and the stereotype to the potential of the real person inside. Immediately after this, Jesus is seen sitting “in the house” having dinner with his disciples when they are joined by a number of tax collectors and other public sinners. It is not clear whether the ‘the’ refers to the house where Jesus was staying or Matthew’s house. In either event, it was bound to attract the notice of Jesus’ critics.
And indeed some Pharisees, seeing this, are shocked. They ask the disciples (not Jesus):
Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?
For the Pharisees, if Jesus is a man of God and a teacher, how can he be seen in the company of people who are religiously unclean? To be in their company is to become contaminated and unclean also.
Overhearing them, Jesus replies:
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.
Jesus turns the tables on the Pharisees by looking at the situation from a completely different perspective.
The problem is not of Jesus’ becoming contaminated by the sinful and the unclean, but rather their becoming healed by his presence and influence. The legally-minded (the ritualists) are only interested in themselves; those governed by love (the merciful) think primarily of the needs of their brothers and sisters. There is no need for Jesus to spend time with the virtuous, i.e. with the already converted; it is those in spiritual and moral deprivation with whom he needs to spend his time.
The lesson of today’s reading is extremely relevant for our own day. When looking for potential followers of Christ, where do we tend to look? How many times have we heard people wonder why God picked them as Christian leaders – as priests, religious or lay people? When we look at the Twelve Apostles, they were indeed a strange bunch: full of faults, fragile in their faith, but in the end they started something extraordinary.
Is it not true that a great deal of our pastoral energies in our churches are directed at those already converted? Is it also not true that those most in need of experiencing Christ’s love and healing may be found in places where we are hesitant to go? Perhaps we should have courage and look for people in such places…Christ will be with us when we go there.