13th Week in Ord. Time, Friday – 2nd July 2021 — Gospel: Mt 9,9-13
Companionship with Marginalized
Jesus calls Matthew to follow him. In turn, Jesus accepts hospitality in Matthew’s house. There he shares a table with his typical crowd, ‘tax collectors and sinners.’ Several rabbinic sources indicate tax collectors’ wicked reputation. The Pharisees perceive ‘tax collectors and sinners’ as natural companions (Mt 9,11), and Jesus himself compares them not to those who are well but to those who are sick (9,12).
Jesus is dishonoured for his companionship with tax collectors and sinners in the First Gospel. His opponents scorn the company that Jesus keeps (11,19), yet Jesus makes much of these tax collectors. When Jesus tells his disciples to love their enemies, he notes that “even the tax collectors” love those who love them (5,46). Later, Jesus admonishes the church to relate to unrepentant sinners as if they were Gentiles or even toll collectors (18,17). Confronted by hostile temple authorities, Jesus puts them in their place: even tax collectors and prostitutes enter the kingdom of heaven before these enemies who speak the will of God but do not live it out (21,31-32).
Jesus says the healthy do not need a physician while the sick do, that he has come to call not the righteous but sinners (9,13). Yet Jesus’ companionship with sinners appears to be just that, companionship and not treatment. Jesus has many harsh words to say in the First Gospel, but he directs none of them at sinners. His inaugural message is a call to repent (4,17), and he denounces the cities he has visited for failing to repent (11,20-21; 12,41). He pronounces woe against the scribes and the Pharisees (chapter 23). But in the First Gospel Jesus not once reproves sinners. He does not criticize them. He does not demand their repentance. He simply eats and drinks with them.
