Tax collectors from time immemorial have not been the most honored or venerated individuals in society. I think it would be fair to say that in Biblical times and specifically at the time when Jesus physically walked this earth, they were one of the most despised classes of people – right up there with lepers and prostitutes. Now, why was this the case? Aside from the obvious, tax collectors in Roman occupied Palestine made their living by charging more that the prescribed tax. While the tax itself was onerous enough, the added ‘personal’ surcharge made it an unbelievable burden on the folks they extorted.
My friends, holding that image in your mind, you can see why the contemporaries of Jesus were astounded and pious Jews were literally scandalized when Jesus dared to befriend tax collectors, like little Zacchaeus in today’s Gospel, or even Matthew whom he called to be one of his apostles. This certainly was not the way to ‘win friends and influence people!’ What in the world was Jesus doing?
We must never forget that Jesus was a master teacher and all teachers know the effectiveness of dramatic examples in getting a point across to their students. And so it was for Jesus. Entrusted with the ‘good news’ of His Father, Jesus came to upend so many of the traditional values that had come to be enshrined in the religious culture of His time. There is one enigmatic line in the Gospels that captures the radicalness of Jesus’ message, “The last shall be first and the first shall be last!”
At the heart of the good news is indeed a preferential option for the losers, the outcasts, the broken, the wayward, the sick in soul and the sick in heart. It is as if the good Lord relished those moments when He left his disciples with their mouths gapping as he reached out to pardon prostitutes, embrace lepers, dine with tax collectors, forgive a thief hanging next to him on the cross. In the minds of his contemporaries these individuals did not ‘deserve’ mercy or forgiveness. But it is precisely there, my friends, we find the truest and deepest meaning of the term ‘grace.’ For in these and countless other encounters in the scriptures, the free and totally unearned gift of God’s ‘amazing grace’ is poured lavishly on these daughters and sons of His loving and merciful Father.
And so, my friends, what brokenness do you want to put before the amazing grace of God’s unfailing love this day? What darkness that might haunt us do we want the light of God’s grace to illumine and make new? Whatever it might be, it is there that the good news will come alive for us this day!