Who are these people who are so bold as to come to dinner with Jesus?

Tax collectors were not humble civil servants like the people at the end of Canada Revenue’s 1-800 number. Rather they were local people who worked under contract to gather the huge assortment of taxes and duties levied by the Roman government on their people. Observant Jews reviled them for several reasons:

First, they were in league with the hated occupying forces—collaborators with the enemy.

Second, the system lent itself to considerable abuse, and tax collectors often grew very rich on the backs of the ordinary people.

Third, they handled Roman money, which was imprinted with images of the emperor, and as such was blasphemous under the Torah.

No self-respecting observant Jew would voluntarily associate with a tax collector, and would certainly not eat at the same table as him.

The term "sinners" may refer to people known for flagrant sins, such as criminals and other immoral people, but it is more probable that it has wider interpretation. To strictly observant Jews like the Pharisees, many of the "people of the land" were unclean and sinful, simply because their occupations made it difficult if not impossible to fulfill all the requirements of the Law. The first witnesses to Jesus’ birth—shepherds—were in such a position, and there are many others, even bankers, whose profession requires them to charge interest, which is forbidden under the Law. People in this kind of situation may have been in the majority—the margins of Jewish society were well populated.

Jesus is dining with ordinary people, who have perhaps come to his table on this day because of the mercy he showed to Matthew.

"If Matthew can be accepted, then so can I."

If we are honest with ourselves in this church (or many others), we know that we tend to be like the Pharisees—not welcoming people whom we deem to be insufficiently holy. Different churches have different ideas of "holiness," which sometimes have less to do with God’s standards than they do with human ones.

When the Pharisees challenge him on the holiness of his table fellowship, Jesus challenges them according to God’s standards, quoting the prophet Hosea:

We should not take this as an attack on Jewish religious practices. Rather, it is a challenge to get our priorities right—before all to be merciful, as God is merciful.

The word "mercy" in the Hebrew Bible is hesed, which can also be translated as "steadfast love" or "loving kindness." It is God’s defining personal quality, the basic element of God’s holiness, to which God’s people are called to aspire in all things.

Jesus eating with sinners and challenging the Pharisees shows us this loving kindness in action—seeking out those who need God’s help. The Pharisees do not see themselves in this light: they don’t need God’s help, because in their own eyes they are already doing everything God requires of them.

There is an irony in Jesus’ words, which seems to be entirely lost on the Pharisees: denying our need of God by self-justification demonstrates that very need. There is none so blind as the one who will not see.

When Jesus calls Matthew, he "opens the table," welcoming all who know their need of God to come and dine with him. Jesus welcomes us—every one of us is welcome to his table, in whatever state and condition we may be. The party is "come as you are." Jesus challenges us as a church, as individuals, and as a community, to extend the same mercy to others as he has shown to us.

The Pharisees would have asked, "Who is worthy of God’s welcome?"

To which Jesus responds, "Who is not?"

The God who is ever merciful, showing steadfast love to his people to the thousandth generation, calls us to be like him, as we have seen in his Son at Matthew’s table.

May the table of this church, the tables of our homes, and the tables of our city, be places where all who seek may find God and know the healing power of his love in word and deed.