On my first visit to the city in China where we lived for many years, I was invited to join a small group of people for dinner. One of that dinner group was a local artist who became a dear friend of our family’s, though I never saw the others again.
Mandarin was the shared language around that table. As I made a comment, I heard the only other foreigner, a guy from Germany, tell his Chinese girlfriend that it was strange hearing me speak Chinese with an American accent. She looked at him and said, “Well, you speak Chinese with a German accent!” Having discovered something he didn’t know about himself in front of everyone else, he sat quiet for the rest of the meal.
It’s hard to picture a more awkward meal conversation, though, than the one where Jesus ate at the house of Matthew, the tax collector. As I’ve been watching The Chosen series, I’ve gained a new appreciation for this guy who became one of Jesus’ closest followers. Much of The Chosen is historical fiction, an attempt – albeit a very good one – to flesh out the skeleton of the Gospel narratives.
The character of Matthew definitely comes to light in these episodes. He may or may not have been on the autism spectrum as The Chosen presents him, but as a tax collector for the hated Roman occupiers, he certainly was an awkward fit among Jesus’ disciples. We modern viewers struggle to understand what it meant for a man who had been collaborating with Rome to be invited into Jesus’ inner circle.
On a Sunday morning this past October, I spoke to a congregation in rural Sheridan, Oregon. Jon Stewart, the pastor of New Hope Church, was teaching a series on the various dinners referenced in the Gospels. He gave me my pick of what he hadn’t already covered, and I was immediately drawn to the story of Matthew’s call in chapter 9 of his eponymic Gospel.
Here we see Matthew sitting at his tax collector’s booth doing his job, likely without a hint of generosity but perhaps with a generous measure of extortion thrown in. Jesus passes by and calls out to Matthew, “Follow me.” Matthew does just that, right then and there.
As a result, Jesus winds up being hosted to dinner at Matthew’s house. Another Gospel writer, Luke, calls it a great banquet – and I’m sure it was. Certainly, Jesus and Matthew and Jesus’ other disciples were there, as were a crowd of tax collectors and sinners, people we can assume were friends and acquaintances of Matthew’s.
These other guests were the worst sort to hang out with if you are wanting to be the Jewish Messiah. Here Jesus was, having dinner with this most unsavory lot! People who associated with the hated invaders. People who were the worst offenders of the faith.
During the meal, Jesus is confronted by less sordid people who have not been invited, but who happen to see Jesus and this despicable lot eating together. Having lived in Asia I can picture such a not-so-private setting where the meal party is visible to uninvited outsiders, perhaps in an open-air patio. And I can envision those outsiders inserting themselves into the setting, not to join them, but to critique. Neighbors can be nosy and undiplomatic.
The group to confront Jesus first are the Pharisees. Afraid to be seen with tax collectors, they pull a couple of Jesus’ disciples aside and ask them why their teacher is eating with such despicables. Jesus overhears them – their intrusion is hard to miss – and tells them that it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
My first thought, two thousand years after the fact, is that the Pharisees are the ones who are sick. That’s because I’ve been conditioned to see the Pharisees in a bad light, as self-righteous moralists, which is how they are generally presented in the Gospels.
But that would not have been obvious to anyone gathered there, unless maybe Jesus himself. The Pharisees were considered the most righteous, spiritually healthy people in all of Israel. Yet it is clear they did not understand Jesus or his mission. So, he told them he did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. If you think you are righteous and these tax collectors and sinners are not, well, then I came for them and not you, he is saying.
Then Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6 where the ancient prophet says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” The prophet is saying we need to be in covenant relationship with God, not just going through ritual motions that make us look righteous, all while oppressing our neighbors, flirting with anyone and anything but God, and living self-centered lives. As the Israelites in Hosea’s time were inclined to do.
Being in covenant relationship with God means we prioritize God’s values. In other words, it’s not how right you think you are, but how right you behave toward those on the outside, those who are in the margins, those who are the most vulnerable. You don’t prove your love for God by how much you give up (fasting) but by how well you reach out (mercy).
Then a second and entirely different group shows up. It’s hard to know if this is during the banquet or after, but in Matthew’s Gospel it comes right on the heels of the encounter with the Pharisees. These are the disciples of Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist. They too are offended to see Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners. John was a firebrand for truth and, as is often the case with followers, they tended to share the zeal of their teacher without their teachers’ discernment.
Well, John also seemed to lack some of that balance but he had called – welcomed, actually – the tax collectors and the Pharisees to repent. He was an equal opportunity baptizer. Though he didn’t always fully understand Jesus’ mission either, he tempered his lack of understanding with trust that Jesus was indeed the Lamb of God and so must have known what he was doing, even if it was complicated.
Now, in this setting, John’s followers were just picking a fight – a culture war fight. They were probably acquainted with at least a couple of Jesus’ disciples who themselves had been disciples of John. Maybe they were miffed that these disciples had left John to follow Jesus, not understanding the close relationship and mission between the two cousins.
In any case, seeing the Pharisees confronting Jesus, these followers of John saw a rare moment when they and the Pharisees had something in common. They all fasted often and intensely, sometimes just to prove a point. And here is Jesus and his disciples acting like gluttons with tax collectors and sinners, of all people. Nothing makes you more contrary than when you’re faced with a feast you cannot eat and your stomach is empty.
And there’s nothing like having a person with messianic dietary syndrome show up at a feast. You know the kind – people who fuss that certain items are included in the bountiful spread. Maybe the chicken is not cage free. Maybe any kind of meat is offensive or anything else related to animal products. Maybe there’s red dye in the dessert. Maybe it’s just too much of a good thing. Whatever, they are party-poopers when it comes to holiday cheer. Grinches all!
Here John’s disciples find Jesus and his disciples feasting – I am sure Matthew has ordered a dazzling spread – and John’s righteously emaciated disciples are hiding their jealousy behind holy indignation. “How is it that we – and the Pharisees (of all people) – fast often but your disciples do not fast?”
First, they don’t question Jesus but go after his followers. Easier prey, I guess, having seen how Jesus has just silenced the Pharisees. Second, they point out how good the Pharisees are in comparison. This, my friend, is what sidling up to bullies looks like.
The Pharisees and John’s disciples are all engaging in what we call culture war talk. Just like today’s culture wars, this first century talk was a clash of cultural ideals and beliefs. What some people believed lined them up with God’s preferred customs. Gamesmanship of its usual nasty sort. Partisan trash talk.
Jesus refuses to talk their talk. Nor does he rebuke them, at least not directly. He doesn’t even try to out-culture war their culture wars. He just tells them that his disciples will fast in due time – when he is gone, that is. But now is the time for feasting because he’s present with them. Shifting away from all this cultural clashing, Jesus reframes the conversation. Call it polite redirecting.
Times are changing and the old structures are coming down. The culture wars of the day are passe, he is saying, because the kingdom of God is breaking in and altering everything. Jesus doesn’t use the phrase “kingdom of God” here, but he does allude to it, speaking of a new way of looking at things. A new way of operating.
Essentially he’s saying, “Friends, all your culture wars talk is getting old when something much grander is on the horizon.”
The way he explains it is a bit culturally obscure for our ears. All present, including tax collectors and Pharisees, his disciples and John’s, understand what he is saying. They know about patching old garments and putting wine in wineskins. Patches of new leather don’t attach well to old material and new wine tends to burst old wineskins.
Makes little sense to us today, but we probably do get what it means to try to install new software onto an old computer that can only handle the older version. The system crashes.
If anything is crashing, it is the kingdom of God colliding with the old ways – the ways of tax collectors, sinners, Pharisees, and John’s disciples alike. They’ve all got to adjust – enormously. Jesus is patient, but he won’t let the curmudgeons interfere with his feasting. For Matthew has come home to Jesus – and Jesus is inviting everyone else to do the same.
When we lived in Asia, we were often guests and hosts for people culturally, politically, and spiritually very different from us. We loved how relationships were built over feasting as tables were spread with copious dishes. Some of these mealtimes are among our all-time favorite memories as a family.
One family used to invite us over for the biggest holidays of the year. They lived only a mile and a quarter away from us, so we and our four kids would walk to their house through darkened, winding alleyways.
Prayer was unknown in this home, so the meal started only with a cheery greeting and a call to eat up. Dish after dish was served as all 9 of us crowded around their small round table on narrow stools. We shared stories, laughed, and ate till our stomachs were beyond full, though not nearly as full as our hearts were.
When we got up to leave, we all donned our winter coats, and they joined us for the mile and a quarter walk back through the brisk night air. In front of our house, their son pulled out small fireworks and shot them off to our kids’ delight. Then we said our goodbyes once again and they walked back home that mile and a quarter as we waved until they were no longer in sight.
Today, years later, that same son is doing amazing work in an entirely different part of the world. I’ve no doubt he does a lot of feasting with the likes of tax collectors and sinners, because his heart has been warmed by the greatest Feaster of all.
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