Who would Jesus sit with in your community? Are you sitting with them?
BY DERMOT COTTULI
Matthew 9:10-13
Later, Matthew invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. But when the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with such scum?”
When Jesus heard this, he said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do.”
Most of us today find ourselves cheering Jesus on because for us, we think it’s a badge of honour to be known as a friend of sinners. Why? Because as Jesus rightly pointed out, it was those who weren’t well who needed a doctor. We find it difficult to understand how the Pharisees could have been so blind to their prejudices and yet we run the same risk of being just as hypocritical as the Pharisees were.
Times have changed and to understand why the Pharisees were so upset and the actions of Jesus were so radical we have to contextualise it, we have to bring it forward into our current cultural and religious setting and find something that will illicit the same response from modern day Pharisees that Jesus faced back in his day. And that isn’t an easy task to do but I believe wholeheartedly it’s something that we MUST do if we’re to truly understand the heart of God toward all of humanity and not miss the lessons that God has for us when blinded by our own prejudices.
If we were to read the passage in Matthew and change tax collectors and sinners to gay people and transgenders I wonder how many of us would find ourselves sitting with the Pharisees rather than the people that Jesus came to reach?
I wonder how many people would push back and say it’s different and try to justify themselves and their stance with Scripture? Because don’t for a minute think that the Pharisees weren’t justifying their actions in the most rigorous ways possible, in their own minds and with each other.
What did Jesus say when he noticed the Pharisees arcing up?
13 Then he added, “Now go and learn the meaning of this Scripture: ‘I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices.’
He took that straight from Hosea 6:6, a prophet from their history that the Pharisees revered.
Hosea 6:6
I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices.
I want you to know me
more than I want burnt offerings.
Would anyone complain about the people you’re sitting with?
