This week’s readings in Matthew’s Gospel included the call of Matthew the tax collector. I wrote about The Chosen’s treatment of this last July. For now, let’s just stick with our theme of the past few days of outsiders versus insiders. The Message account captures it beautifully:

Passing along, Jesus saw a man at his work collecting taxes. His name was Matthew. Jesus said, “Come along with me.” Matthew stood up and followed him. Later when Jesus was eating supper at Matthew’s house with his close followers, a lot of disreputable characters came and joined them. When the Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company, they had a fit, and lit into Jesus’ followers. “What kind of example is this from your Teacher, acting cozy with crooks and riff-raff?” Jesus, overhearing, shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.” (Matthew 9.9 – 13, MSG, emphasis mine)

“I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.” For some of our churches, the opposite is true. We coddle the insiders and keep the outsiders, well, out! One large downtown church’s ushers were trained not to let certain kinds of people into the services. When the new pastor heard about that practice, he exclaimed, “You have to catch ’em before you can clean ’em!” The policy changed.

For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19.10, ESV)