Eating with Sinners - Reflections on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26, Second Sunday after Pentecost, Year A
by John C. Holbert on Thursday, April 2, 2026
Jesus was very upsetting in multiple ways to many of the religious authorities of his time, but nothing made those keepers of the flames of correct piety more furious than his choice of dinner companions. Why was eating with the wrong folks such a big deal? We would do well to think a bit about the business of eating a meal in the first century in comparison to a 21st-century jaunt to the local fast-food joint.
When meals were served 2000 years ago, every part of what was presented had to be prepared “from scratch,” as we like to say today. From the growing of the plants, to the nurturing of the animals, to the careful cleaning of all the vegetables, to the slaughter of the livestock, to the tending of the cooking fires, to the placement of the tables, and on and on; meal prep was hardly a light endeavor, consuming hours of time and vast stores of physical energy. To be invited into a house for a meal was both an enormous privilege and a demanding event. In addition, in Jewish households, eating a meal was accompanied by careful religious rituals and prayers. It was vitally important that all those who sat at table knew what they were doing when they participated in the liturgies and spoken prayers, and all present should feel welcome and comfortable as the meal was offered. Surely, it would be incredibly awkward to find oneself eating with those who either could not participate appropriately and easily, or who were somehow socially suspect, not to mention religiously doubtful.
And so when we read Matthew 9 about Jesus at table with “tax collectors and sinners,” we can clearly feel the great tension in the room. Meals are to be occasions of pleasure and delight, but in this dinner there is only an edgy kind of strain in the air. Preceding the meal, Jesus had passed near the “tax office,” (telonion), perhaps a kind of tollbooth where one paid fees on the goods transported out of the region of the Sea of Galilee. The booth was manned that day by Matthew. In Mark’s story of the tax collector chosen by Jesus, his name is given as “Levi, son of Alphaeus” (Mark 2:14). Why the change of name? “Matthew” is on the one hand the Greek form of a Hebrew name meaning “gift of God,” while on the other hand the name might be a play on the Greek word for disciple (mathetes), an important part of this tale. Obviously, the tradition has made this Matthew the author of this Gospel, making it plain that especially those who were seen as outcast in the society of the time were often the very ones chosen for service by Jesus.
It has been regularly said that tax collectors in the time of the Romans were despised by those from whom they collected the levies and also by the Romans themselves whom they imagined were gouging them by raking monies off the top of the tolls. In short, tax collectors were trusted by no one, and disliked by all. Jesus then finds himself at table with such persons, and at the same time has singled one of them out, telling him simply to “follow” him (Mt.9:9). And at the meal one can also find “sinners.” This somewhat vague term, however damning it may be, surely includes those whose actions or lifestyles or occupations that were seen to be unacceptable in certain ways, what we might call today, “outside the bounds of polite religious society.” The fact that it is the “Pharisees” that take umbrage at this collection of diners makes it certain that these “sinners” are religiously unacceptable in one way or another, that they are “unclean,” certainly unworthy to share any sort of meal with those who are among the acceptable folk.
Notice that the Pharisees do not speak to Jesus directly with their accusations, but only to his disciples at table: “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mt.9:11). But Jesus overhears the snide question, and replies, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go, learn what this means: ‘I wish mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came to call not the righteous but sinners” (Mt.9:12-13). Jesus here quotes Hosea 6:6 in the Septuagint, a quotation also used at Mt.12:7 during a debate about Sabbath observance. Thus we are to conclude that the mention of “sacrifice” from Hosea connotes the program of ritual purity which is uppermost on the minds of these Pharisaic opponents of Jesus. The “tax collectors and sinners” sitting around this table are ritually impure according to the Pharisees, and are an afront to proper meal behavior. Why in the world would this Jesus allow himself to be found in the presence of such dangerous religious riff-raff?
It is always important to note that not all Pharisees in Jesus’s time were to be judged as his antagonists; after all, it is certain that many of his early followers were Pharisees, who were the liberal religionists of the time, open to new ideas, not limited to narrow views of Torah only. Still, these Pharisees in this story were deeply offended by Jesus’s choice of meal companions and made their anger plain. But Jesus’s reply to their angry refusal to eat with such outcasts is for him an expected one: he comes for those seen to be outside the norms of the day, for the unacceptable ones. God asks of us “mercy” not “sacrifice,” openness and welcome rather than exclusion on grounds of ritual purity.
And again in this tiny scene we are confronted with our unwillingness to show mercy in the face of those judged outcast, unwelcome in our “polite society.” The scene of Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners, a portrait of the joy of welcome for all is more than enough to lead to a terrible death on a Roman cross. In the long run, it may be Jesus’s choice of dining friends that led him to that cross just as much as anything he spoke against those in his day who just could not accept him for what he claimed to be, namely the agent/messenger of the merciful God of the whole world.