(The Nationalist, 03 June 2005)
There’s a story in the gospel about Jesus having a meal with Matthew, a tax-collector, and with “sinners”. We’re not shocked by that, but maybe we ought to be. Tax-collectors were traitors, collaborators with an occupying empire, blood-suckers. They cheated their own people and used extortion against them in doing the overlords’ dirty work.
“Sinners” meant non-observant Jews, those who didn’t keep the rules. The equivalent in present-day terms might be people who don’t go to Mass or receive the sacraments, who live together outside marriage, and are on the pill. It also included prostitutes.
By eating a meal with them, Jesus associated himself with them. And he became ritually unclean; that meant he could not worship in the temple. By violating the rules, he scandalized the representatives of official religion. They wondered how someone who did such things could be a teacher of God’s law.
In response, Jesus quoted God as saying that he wants mercy and compassion, not (temple) sacrifice. He implied that, where God leads, we should follow.
Jesus saw potential in Matthew, the tax collector. He was saying that, even if a person has a past, they could also have a future. Jesus looked, not so much at what a person was, but at what they could be. He said, ‘I have come, not call the virtuous but sinners’.
Life is a hostel for sinners, not a hotel for saints. We are sinners who could yet be saints, and saints who are still sinners. A saint is someone who admits to being a sinner, and asks for God’s mercy. If we could save ourselves, we wouldn’t need Jesus.
Jesus chose the sinner, Matthew, to come and follow him. Matthew did so, and was changed by the experience. He lost a job but found a destiny. He became the writer of the gospel that tells the story.
For those in a hurry: ‘The human “I” knows itself properly only in encountering a “Thou.” It takes a life of “I-Thou” meetings to tell us who we are’. (Gerald O’Collins)