Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of Matthew (9: 9-13) in which the Pharisees, after seeing Jesus going to the tax collector Matthew’s house for dinner, ask Jesus’ disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”.

Fr Paul says he thinks it is fairly universal that nobody likes tax-collectors. What made it worse in this case was that they were working for the hated enemy, the Romans. But Jesus openly chooses them as his company. Jesus called Matthew to follow him, and then went and had dinner with a group of them. He must have known that they were lonely and worried by their isolation, and wanted to heal them, just as he wants to heal us.

So, Jesus went out of his way to call sinners, not even asking them to repent first, but just because they needed him. He wasn’t worried that they were despised or even hated, nor that they were cut off from all the normal practices of religion.

What scandalized the ‘people who went to church’ was that Jesus seemed to really enjoy the company of these dirty sinners. He did the same with Zacchaeus, the chief tax-collector of Jericho, who must have been a rogue. Three times in this Gospel Jesus says, ‘What I want is love, not sacrifice’. He didn’t care whether they ‘went to church’ or kept the rules. He must have known that there was good in everyone, if only it is allowed to come to the surface.

Fr Paul says today’s Gospel challenge is to be like Jesus and look for the good in others, no matter who they are.