A devotional thought presented originally to Swift Current Men’s Prayer Breakfast, Thursday 18 September 2014
Read Matthew 9:9-13
Read Matthew 9:9-13
Many people
believed (as we know) that Jesus is the Messiah. The Messiah is expected to be
the ruler of Judah and Israel and many people believed that the
Messiah would overthrow the Romans. Matthew is a Judean who is a tax collector
for the Romans. Strictly speaking he is more like a customs official but it is
the same idea: he collects taxes for Rome.
The Romans – the
Superpower at this time – control Palestine in Jesus’ day. Palestine is an occupied territory. I
observe D-Day and Remembrance Day with the veterans annually. For Judeans,
Samaritans and other Palestinians paying taxes to the Romans
would be the same as the Dutch or the French paying taxes to the Nazis in 1943.
It would be like Afghanistan paying taxes to NATO or Iraq paying taxes to the
USA. The Americans, in their own revolution cited as one of their causes for that war the fact that they didn’t want to pay taxes even to support
their own military. People generally aren’t so fond of paying taxes. As a
Judean, for Matthew, collecting taxes from his own people to pay Caesar would
be like collaborating with the enemy (cf. Matthew 22:15-22, Mark 12:13-17, Luke
20:20-26). This is what Matthew would have been doing in essence, as he was
sitting in his toll booth (Matthew 9:9).
So here is
Jesus, a celebrity preacher with a big following, who some people know is the
Messiah and some people think will destroy the Superpower and free the occupied
Palestine territories and Jesus invites himself over to one of the
collaborators’ places for dinner. In the eyes of many of his followers and
countrymen, he is associating with the enemy.
Jesus’
adversaries, the Pharisees, think they see a weakness in Jesus, so the
Pharisees attack. If there were newspapers, internet and the like back then the
headline on the 6-O’Clock News would read like verse 11: “Jesus eats with
sinners and tax collectors.” Jesus has been caught associating with the
opposition. This could be a political scandal on par with many in our world of
political scandals today. It could make or break a career – and even more: it
could lead to riots and a mob-mentality inspired execution.
Jesus overhears
them and instead of running for cover, instead of denying his actions, like
many contemporary public figures might be tempted to do, verses 12 and 13, “On
hearing this, Jesus said, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the
sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I
have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’”
In The Salvation Army we are called to
'love the unloveable'; as a Christian we are called to extend mercy and
forgiveness even to those who attack and oppress us. How can you do this here
today?
[1] This devotional thought was presented originally to Swift Current
Men’s Prayer Breakfast, Thursday 18 September 2014. It is based on the sermon
by Captain Michael Ramsay, Matthew 9:13: I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
presented to the Swift Current Corps, 13 June 2010. Available on-line at
http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2010/06/matthew-913-i-desire-mercy-not.html
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