OUR GOD HAS A SOFT HEART

While Jesus was at table in the house of Matthew, the tax collector,

many tax collectors and sinners came

and sat with Jesus and his disciples.

The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples,

“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

Jesus heard this and said,

“Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. 

I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” 

Matthew 9:9-13

 

It is good to remember, from time to time, that Jesus was constantly at odds with the religious establishment of his day. Jesus hated what religious authorities were doing to religion. Rather than facilitating a love connection between God and his people, they were always blocking such a love connection by building legal walls between God and his people.

The religious establishment was always looking for people to exclude from God’s love. Jesus was always looking for people to include in God’s love. The religious authorities were always announcing who was unworthy in the eyes of God. Jesus was always announcing that everybody was worthy in the eyes of God.

                     Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

Why would a holy man, a rabbi, a religious teacher like Jesus, hang out with, eat with and socialize with public sinners, riff-raff, failures and marginal personalities? Surely, he knew that such behavior would be misinterpreted, that people would talk, that it would appear that he was condoning their sin and that his reputation would be tarnished? He ate and drank with these religious losers so often that he earned the nicknames of “glutton” and “drunkard.”

Either he was naïve and reckless, or else his actions were meant to send a message.  When Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners, he was not just slumming for the fun of it or merely shocking people to get their attention. He was sending a message and his message was very simple: all people are created in the image and likeness of God, all people have dignity and worth in God’s eyes, no matter what they do or fail to do. He was teaching people that more important than their love for God, was God’s love for them. God’s love, Jesus said in word and deed, was gratuitous – given without condition, given regardless!  Jesus knew that those who experience this unconditional love would be led to conversion, freely choosing to change their ways to please the God who loves them so much.

                       Why does you teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

Jesus knew that the fruitless, hair-splitting, gnat straining theological discussions of religious authorities, their endless liturgical detail, their heartless judgment or their angry polemics would never bring people’s hearts to God.  On the other hand, their approach was driving people further and further away from God. By eating with tax collectors and sinners, the scum of church and society, Jesus gave them the message that God was willing to eat with them, and by eating with them, affirming their basic dignity and worth. Jesus was the first to love the sinner, while hating the sin. 

Can you imagine how powerful that message was to people who had never felt good enough for God, people who had never been able to measure up, people who had always felt marginalized and kicked to the curb by the religious establishment. For them, the message of Jesus was “good news.” Hearing it was like finding “a buried treasure.” They knew that that kind of love was not something they had worked for or earned.  They knew that it was a pure gift from heaven, and finding it, was like stumbling onto a treasure trove. Hearing that totally unexpected “good news” was, to them, like finding “the rarest pearl of all,” something so precious that they had to give everything they had to possess it.

This same “good news,” the “good news” that we are loved by God without condition, changed my life many years back. I grew up hearing the opposite, which led me to believe that God loved me when I was good, quit loving me when I was bad and started loving me again when I shaped up. That message did not motivate me to love God, it just made me want to avoid God. Avoiding God made any kind of loving relationship with God impossible. Besides, who wants to be in a loving relationship with a God, who is always judging and condemning you? Who wants to snuggle up to a mean and moody God?  I came to realize that this is exactly why Jesus sought out tax collectors and sinners to eat with: so that they would know of this love, and knowing this love, they would respond with love. 

Ever since I discovered this unconditional love, I have been driven to preach it, to tell as many people as I can, especially those among us who are judged, either by themselves or others, as not good enough in God’s eyes. Like the marginalized people in the gospels, I have witnessed hundreds of people being liberated from years of guilt and fear when they heard this “good news.” There is nothing like knowing that we are good enough for God, just the way we are. From that starting point, we can become a contributing partner with God in self-creation, in becoming all that God wants us to be. Judgment and condemnation kill the possibility of a real relationship with God. 

Preaching this message threatens some people, especially those who have anointed themselves as true preservers of our religious tradition. They have angrily questioned my orthodoxy, even my faith. They aggravate, but they will not dissuade.  I will keep preaching this message because I know it is the message of Jesus.  Sadly, it seems like these critics have not learned what Jesus knew, that judgment and condemnation might make the one doing the judging and condemning feel righteous, but it does not motivate sinners to change. It fact, it probably hardens them in their choice against change.  The real reason Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners was the fact that he knew, in the words of St. Francis de Sales, that “one drop of honey attracts more bees than a barrel of vinegar.”