"I did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners."
As we celebrate the feast of St Matthew, tax collector turned apostle of Jesus, we could reflect on our Lord's attraction and attachment to sinners. In the Jewish religion at the time of Jesus, either one wasn't a sinner or was a sinner. It might have had a moral connotation, but it certainly signified a social category.
The majority of the people in Palestine of Jesus' time belonged to the lower class, who were poor. All sorts of people belonged to this class, such as orphans and widows, the blind, the crippled, and the mentally ill. Having no other means of livelihood, people with physical and mental handicaps became beggars. To this class also belonged outcasts. One can be an outcast without necessarily being poor economically. Such were tax collectors and sinners. The tax collectors were Jews who collected taxes from fellow Jews for the Roman Empire. They made their living by charging an extra amount. They were considered traitors who became wealthy by collaborating with Roman authorities at the expense of their own people. The sinners who are grouped with the tax collectors were not ordinary sinners. These were people who deliberately and persistently transgressed the requirements of the law. Included in this group would be money-lenders who charged interest on loans advanced to fellow Jews. Also in this group of sinners were prostitutes.
Yet, Jesus apparently associated with such people at dinner parties. The Pharisees charged that Jesus was "a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners" (Luke 7:34). It's not hard to see why the Pharisees and others were upset that Jesus had table fellowship with people who were morally questionable. These individuals were profiting by disobeying the command of God and betraying their own people. They were what the Old Testament calls the wicked, unworthy to be part of the people of God.
What infuriated the Pharisees was that Jesus had accepted this category of the wicked as they were, and was freely having dinner with them without requiring that they first clean up their lives. Jesus' message was not, "Straighten up your life and keep the law." Rather, his message was, "The kingdom of God is yours; you are included." By eating with them, he was extending to them the kingdom of God.
When we read about the protest of the Pharisees, we are quick to condemn them and to side with Jesus. But if Jesus were physically present in our world today, would we as church people be comfortable if he spent his time with cheats and swindlers, thieves and 420-s, LGBTQIA+? Would we be okay if he rejoiced and danced at the Supreme Court's decriminalization of same-sex? Would we not be infuriated if he constantly went to their dinner parties and just occasionally turning up at ours? Jesus seems completely fit for an excommunication case! But that is whom we follow. A man who shattered all boundaries, who loved without boundaries, who broke all possible rules just to befriend a person, just to express God's boundless love and forgiveness!
When we pray the second part of the "Hail Mary": Pray for us "sinners," do we really mean it? Before participating in the Holy Communion we say "I am unworthy." Do we really mean this? Or do we add mental footnotes to our unworthiness: But I am not like that murderer, or that rapist, or that criminal. I am a sinner, but not like "that" sinner.
Pope Francis when asked in his first interview after being elected Pontiff, "Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?" he told us: “I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech.” Before hearing confessions in St Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis kneels in confession himself—because one cannot accompany a suffering world without acknowledging one’s own faults.
We are part of the evil that we are fighting against. We are part of the sin that we condemn. There is a certain amount of projection on my part when I am able to see sin outside of me. If we don’t own our own evil, we will always project it elsewhere and attack it there. Our Lord by "eating with sinners" is inviting us to a greater integration and also integrity, which is often a willingness to hold the dark side of things instead of reacting against them, denying them, or anxiously projecting them elsewhere.
Welcome to the communion of sinners!
