A young college student referred by his concerned professor came to my office to tell me that he felt “numb.” It was discovered that his father had been using the Internet to view child pornography. He had been caught in an FBI sting and the newspapers were reporting the details of years of Internet abuse. This was his father, the man he admired and depended upon. His pain and fear were all over his face. He remembered that he went with his mother and brother to visit his dad in the county jail and all he could do was go up to his dad and tell him that “he loved him.” His mind was cloudy and his emotions swirling with shame and forgiveness, hope and terror. His worse fear was that his dad was being transported to a federal facility. Now he worried himself sick thinking about what the other prisoners might do to his father once they discovered his crime.Last night, I shared the fears of this young man with our college students and read this verse: “As he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples.”
(Matthew 9:10)
I love imagining this scene. Can you not see it in your mind? Try. Jesus saw Matthew collecting taxes for the Roman occupiers. Matthew was a despicable man by any terms, disdained by the Romans and hated by the Jews. He was a schemer, a quisling cheat. Yet Jesus called him. Talk about scandal in the Church—than more scandal. Matthew, with his ill-gotten money, throws a dinner party. That was bad enough, but there was a final scandal; the guests turn out to be as bad as Matthew himself, tax collectors and sinners, and they ate with Jesus. Can you image what that room looked like with a guest list like that, a bunch of cutthroats and low lives eating with Jesus?
In our communities there are barriers between races, classes or other status groups, the separation is maintained by means of a taboo on social mixing. You do not share a meal or a dinner party; you do not celebrate or participate in entertainment with people who belong to another social group or worse accused of some hideous sinful behavior.
And yet here was Jesus, saying that for him barriers between people do not exist. In fact, he had a habit of disregarding barriers as he touched an untouchable leper, healed a gentile’s servant, cured a foreign woman’s daughter, and mischievously told the story of the socially bad Samaritan who was morally good, or I can imagine visit this young’s man dad in prison.
Anyway, looking around at the crowd eating with Jesus leaves no doubt about the message. There are no barriers with Jesus. No one is excluded from the love of God, “no matter how bad they are or have been.” All the Matthews down through the ages are welcomed to the banquet if they but get up immediately and follow him even at the last minute.
Many people and Catholics worry about this verse in great seriousness, “To judge the living and the dead.” Deep in our hearts we simply want to hear, I don’t want justice, I want love.” The message from this gospel is that: “There is only love.
God prays for us as we reflect: “Praise be to the Lord, for he has heard my cry for mercy.” (Psalm 28:6).
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends who missed another Penance Service or feel uncomfortable with confession. They are numb by the feeling that they are unwanted or worse that there sins are unforgivable. Jesus come to these tortured souls and sits down by our side and heal us. Mother Teresa said of the lepers she treated, “We have drugs for people with diseases like leprosy, but these drugs do not treat the main problem, the disease of being unwanted.” And there stands Jesus who wants our disease and all and us.
