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Matthew 9:9-13: Merciful

Many people believed (as we know) that Jesus is the Messiah. The Messiah is expected to be the ruler of Judah and Israel and many people believed that the Messiah would overthrow the Romans. Matthew is a Judean who is a tax collector for the Romans. Strictly speaking he is more like a customs official but it is the same idea: he collects taxes for Rome.

The Romans – the Superpower at this time – control Palestine in Jesus’ day.  Palestine is an occupied territory. I observe D-Day and Remembrance Day with the veterans annually. For Judeans, Samaritans and other Palestinians paying taxes to the Romans would be the same as the Dutch or the French paying taxes to the Nazis in 1943. It would be like Afghanistan paying taxes to NATO or Iraq paying taxes to the USA. The Americans cited, as one of the reasons for their own revolution, the fact that they didn’t want to pay taxes even to support their own military. People generally aren’t so fond of paying taxes. As a Judean, for Matthew, collecting taxes from his own people to pay Caesar would be like collaborating with the enemy (cf. Matthew 22:15-22, Mark 12:13-17, Luke 20:20-26). This is what Matthew would have been doing in essence, as he was sitting in his toll booth (Matthew 9:9).

So here is Jesus, a celebrity preacher with a big following, who some people know is the Messiah and some people think will destroy the Superpower and free the occupied Palestine territories and Jesus invites himself over to one of the collaborators’ places for dinner. In the eyes of many of his followers and countrymen, he is associating with the enemy.

Jesus’ adversaries, the Pharisees, think they see a weakness in Jesus, so the Pharisees attack. If there were newspapers, internet and the like back then the headline on the 6-O’Clock News would read like verse 11: “Jesus eats with sinners and tax collectors.” Jesus has been caught associating with the opposition. This could be a political scandal on par with many in our world of political scandals today. It could make or break a career – and even more: it could lead to riots and a mob-mentality inspired execution.

Jesus overhears them and instead of running for cover, instead of denying his actions, like many contemporary public figures might be tempted to do, verses 12 and 13, “On hearing this, Jesus said, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’”

In The Salvation Army we are called to 'love the unloveable'; as Christians we are called to extend mercy and forgiveness even to those who attack and oppress us. How can you do this here today?
Presented originally to Swift Current Men’s Prayer Breakfast, Thursday 18 September 2014
 Read more daily blogs at: 
https://salvogesis.blogspot.ca/
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