Jesus Calls a Collaborator with the Enemy to Be His Disciple (9:9)

Jesus' call to follow was a call to be his disciple-a future teacher in training (4:19; 8:22; 10:38; 16:24; 19:21). But whereas Jesus warned a scribe who was a would-be follower about the cost (8:19-20), here he openly invites a despised tax gatherer to join his circle (compare 18:17)! The common people and nonaristocratic pietists despised tax gatherers as agents of the Romans and their aristocratic pawns (E. Sanders 1985:178), perhaps something like what the Dutch or French felt toward local collaborators with the Nazis or Africans felt toward slatees, African assistants to European slave traders.

The average Jewish person in ancient Palestine had several reasons to dislike tax gatherers. First, Palestine's local Jewish aristocracies undoubtedly arranged for this tax collection (E. Sanders 1990:46-47). Second, the Empire sometimes had to take precautions to keep tax gatherers from overcharging people (Lk 3:12-13; Carmon 1973:105, 226), which suggests that some tax gatherers did just that (Hoehner 1972:78; compare Philo Leg. Gai. 199); some also beat people to get their money (Philo Spec. Leg. 3.30; N. Lewis 1983:161-63). Further, nearly all scholars concur that taxes were exorbitant even without overcharges; in some parts of the Empire taxation was so oppressive that laborers fled their land, at times to the point that entire villages were depopulated (N. Lewis 1983:164-64).

Matthew's office would have made him locally prominent, possibly as a customs official. Customs officers demanded written declarations of travelers' possessions and searched baggage (Casson 1974:290-91). They may have collected some other government revenues as well (M. Stern 1974-1976:333). Some Jewish texts condemn customs officers as well as other tax gatherers (see Edersheim 1993:236), though some such officials appear to have become benefactors to local populations (Jos. War 2.287-88).

In the eyes of these Pharisees (v. 11), eating with sinners connoted approval of them; by contrast, a pious person normally preferred to eat with scholars (compare Jeremias 1966a:236). Some take sinners here to mean the `am ha'ares common people whom the Pharisees despised for their lack of adherence to Pharisaic food laws (as in Jeremias 1972:132; thus the quotation marks in the NIV); more scholars today lean toward the view that it means sinners in a more blatant sense.

Although we make exceptions today for former sinners if they are of prominent status, many churches are embarrassed to embrace a recovering drug addict or prostitute who comes seeking help. Likewise, Christians who struggled with homosexual or lesbian behavior in the past find this one of the few sins they dare confide to no one. Some churches are even reticent to allow an unemployed person or someone who was divorced in the distant past to train for a position of leadership. Even when our churches define sin and forgiveness the Bible's way, we sometimes define status in unbiblical ways.