The Least-Exclusive Club
Matthew 9:9-13
I’m not much of a joiner by nature. I have no interest in joining private clubs, fraternal societies, civic organizations, or things of that nature. However, about a year ago I was invited to speak about the church at a meeting of the Rotary Club. At the conclusion of the meeting, as all the guests were leaving, one of the members (I believe it was the former mayor of Haverstraw) suggested to me that I ought to join the Rotary Club. I looked at him with a deadpan expression and quoted Groucho Marx, saying, “I would never belong to any club that would have me as a member.” He got the joke but seemed unamused.
“Membership has its privileges” was an iconic advertising campaign from American Express years ago, which suggested that using an American Express card instantly elevated the user to VIP status. Waiting in line is for suckers! The fashion brand “Members Only,” whose racing jackets were all the rage in the 1980s, suggested exclusivity in its very name. Both campaigns played to our desire to be recognized as standing apart from the crowd. They promised that if we paid with this credit card or wore this jacket that we would be seen by others as different, as special, as privileged.
Typically, membership into any sort of club or organization requires, at a minimum, an application and perhaps an initiation fee. Hey! Membership has it privileges…and also its price.
By that measure, the Christian Church is the least-exclusive club there is. We’ll take anyone. No application. No initiation fee. No references needed. All that’s required is to acknowledge the obvious—that you’re a sinner in need of forgiveness—and that Jesus Christ is Lord. It doesn’t matter where you come from or what your background is. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done—for better or for worse. Your achievements count for nothing here, the same for your failures. You can’t earn your way in, nor can you fail your way out of being accepted.
To a culture that prizes stories of self-made success, like the thriving business that began in a basement, such easy acceptance may not sound appealing. But believe it or not, it’s good news! It’s good news to know that what we do does not define us. Actually, what defines us has nothing at all to do with us. What defines us is the mercy and love of God for sinners, as revealed in Jesus Christ.
That mercy and love are on full display in today’s reading from Matthew, as Jesus invites to his table the desperate and the despised, sinners and tax collectors—the type of social and moral outcasts that a reputable rabbi ought to know better than to associate with. The Pharisees certainly knew better. That’s why they’re taken aback and demand to know from Jesus’ disciples just what on earth he’s doing associating with such riffraff. What kind of moral teacher hangs out with moral degenerates?
Of the twelve disciples, the Gospels provide origin stories for just five of them. Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus encounters two pairs of brothers in quick succession—Peter and Andrew and then James and John. Both pairs of brothers are fishermen. Jesus invites them to leave their boats behind and follow him, and that is what they do. Now here in chapter 9 we hear the calling story of Matthew. Matthew is no fisherman. His hands are not coarse from pulling and lifting fishing nets swollen with fish. His hands are soft from collecting and counting money because Matthew works for Ancient Rome’s version of the IRS as a tax collector.
It’s good news to know that what we do does not define us.
Now, no one likes paying taxes. I pay estimated taxes quarterly. Every three months it pains me to see more than half my paycheck go to paying my federal and state taxes. But I’m not complaining because I know that my taxes fund programs and services that serve the common good, like Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, and foreign aid (what little remains of it, anyway). But Jews living in Roman-occupied Judea in the first century didn’t feel so sanguine about paying their taxes. For one, taxes were imposed on them not by their own government but by their Roman occupiers. Running an empire is expensive. Roads and bridges must be built and maintained. Borders must be guarded. The military must be supplied.
As Americans, we might get upset when our tax dollars fund reckless foreign wars with no clear objective, but imagine how you’d feel if your taxes directly served the occupying power that ruled your nation. Your hard-earned money being spent to fund your own occupation and to buy grain to feed the citizens of the occupier’s capital! This nation, which is about to celebrate its 250th year since independence, was born from such outrage.
Imposing taxes was one thing, collecting them in an empire as vast as Rome’s was another. The government didn’t collect taxes themselves. They outsourced the work to private contractors who bid for the right to collect tax. These contractors paid the Roman government a fixed sum upfront for the full amount of tax that was due. They then recouped what they paid to Rome by collecting tax. But they didn’t stop there. Whatever they collected above and beyond that upfront payment was profit.
The system incentivized corruption, and those responsible for actually collecting the tax were perceived as especially worthy of contempt. That’s because they tended to be Jews themselves. As Jews collecting tax on their fellow Jews to support the Roman occupation, they were regarded as traitors and treated as social outcasts.
And yet Jesus approaches one particular tax collector named Matthew and invites him to become his disciple. “I could use a man like you. In fact, you are just the sort of man I’m looking for. Follow me.”
The Gospels, even this one that bears the name of the subject of this passage, rarely tell us what’s going on in the minds of the featured players. We’re not privy to what Matthew is thinking when he hears the invitation from Jesus. Does he think it’s a joke? Is he intrigued? We can’t say definitively. We’re simply told that Matthew got up and followed Jesus.
While Matthew’s motivation in following Jesus is unclear, Jesus’ motivation in calling Matthew leaves us no doubt. Jesus is drawn to the least, the last, and the lost. You and I would probably go out of our way to avoid going Matthew’s way. Our instinct is to avoid what we imagine will be an uncomfortable interaction. But Jesus makes a beeline for Matthew. Perhaps that’s what Matthew sensed in Jesus that compelled him to drop everything, presumably including his tax records and the tax revenue he had collected. He’s so used to being looked upon with contempt that when he is treated with compassion he responds with reflexive eagerness.
Not only is Jesus drawn to those on the margins, they, in turn, are drawn to him. The scene quickly shifts from Matthew’s tax booth to a house (presumably Matthew’s house) where Jesus and Matthew are joined around the dinner table by many tax collectors and sinners. It’s a rogue’s gallery of reprobates—collaborators and criminals, gamblers and prostitutes—people who, for all intents and purposes, wear scarlet letters that mark them as sinners.
In the eyes of their society, their sin defines them. What they’ve done is who they are. Their sin trails them like a shadow.
Perhaps you believe the same about yourself—that you are nothing more than the sum of your past mistakes or failures. But if you believe that, you are deceiving yourself, because that is a lie. What you’ve done does not define you in the eyes of Jesus Christ. The only thing that defines you, ironically, has nothing to do with you; rather it is what God has done for you in Jesus Christ that is your defining trait. God has claimed you as God’s own and invited you to the Lord’s table to feast on a full-course dinner of grace.
The only thing that defines you, ironically, has nothing to do with you; rather it is what God has done for you in Jesus Christ that is your defining trait.
Now, you’re not the only guest. In fact, you might be surprised at some of your dinner companions. They don’t exactly have sterling reputations. I’m referring not just to the tax collectors and sinners—for who would not think us the worst of sinners if our private thoughts were made public? I refer to those guardians of decency the Pharisees, these paragons of performative morality who are scandalized when they see the company that Jesus keeps.
It’s easy for us to view the Pharisees as narrow-minded, judgmental hypocrites. That’s how they’re often portrayed in the Gospels. They demand that people follow the letter of the law while they extend to themselves the widest leeway. They keep score of every moral failing in others while tabulating their own righteousness. They lack the self-awareness to see that they are sinners just as much as the tax collectors and others who have gathered around Jesus’ table.
And here’s the irony: for all their objections to the company that Jesus keeps, the Pharisees are also welcome at the table. They’re not excluded. They’re on the guest list, but so is everybody else. That’s because Christianity is the least-exclusive party there is. Everyone’s invited because we’re all sinners in need of God’s grace. Whether we are Pharisees sitting next to tax collectors and sinners or tax collectors and sinners sitting next to Pharisees, we are in good company…for in Jesus Christ we are not defined by our past because by his grace he is making us new.
What greater proof of that is there than Matthew himself? After the story of his calling, Matthew does not appear again in this or any other Gospel. And yet one of the four Gospels is attributed to this former tax collector. He is not remembered for what he did but for who he became in Jesus Christ. The same is true for you, you saints of the Church.