Fr Paul Gooley reads today’s Gospel from Mark (2: 13-17) in which Jesus stuns the Pharisees and the teachers of the law by keeping company with tax collectors and sinners. Fr Paul says the Gospel story today starts with a piece of local lore and, also, a puzzle. The piece of local lore is that Capernaum is the first village reached after crossing the Jordan and entering the territory of Galilee from the territory of Iturea, ruled by Herod Antipas and his brother Philip, respectively. It was a good road along the lakeside and a busy trade-route, and presumably there was a border-tax to be paid. The puzzle: was the tax-collector Levi the same as the tax collector Matthew? Perhaps the one man had two names, like Simon/Peter and Saul/Paul. The chief point, however, is the outrage of the Pharisees at Jesus’ action. Not only had he picked out a tax-collector as one of his special companions, but he actually seemed to enjoy their company. In the Roman Empire, at the time, the right to collect taxes was let out to large companies, who were then naturally determined to make a profit. The tax-collectors were additionally unpopular because they worked for the Romans. Nobody was too worried about this except the lawyers – the ‘scribes’ of the Pharisees, whose chief business was deciding what was ritually clean and what unclean. So, to these scribes it was incomprehensible that a religious teacher should plunge themselves into a cesspit of tax-collectors for dinner. Yet, to Jesus these were precisely the people he was seeking. For our reflection today, Fr Paul invites us to remind ourselves…Jesus came among us, not just for some, but for everyone.