Straight to the Heart

In July 2000, the British newspaper “News of the World” ran a campaign to name and shame convicted paedophiles living free in the community. The Paulsgrove estate in Portsmouth exploded into violence when residents discovered that one such convicted sex offender was in their midst. Hundreds of rioters burned cars and ransacked the block of flats where he lived. “I think they should all be hanged or put on a desert island,” shouted a mother of three to the gathering reporters.

People don’t like paedophiles. As a father of three young children, I can certainly understand why. But don’t let two thousand years of distance dull your ears to the radical message of Matthew 9:9-13. Matthew has used Rahab, the Magi, and the fisherman-disciples to convince us that God loves ordinary people like ourselves. Now he pushes his outrageous message still further. God loves all the ordinary, sin-steeped people around us in the same way too.

First-century Israel had its own equivalent of the paedophile. Without question, the detested pariahs of Palestine were the Jewish tax collectors who plagued its busy roads. They were turncoats, quislings, and double-crossing treasonists. They were back-stabbing traitors who had sold their nation to the Romans, and who serviced Caesar’s tax machine at the expense of God’s People. Unless you have ever lived in an enemy-occupied country, then you will probably struggle to grasp the enormity of hatred which they drew. They were so universally detested that even the temple priests refused to take their money. If it hadn’t been for the iron fist of Rome, they would have gone the way of the Paulsgrove paedophiles long ago.

Matthew was one of those first-century outcasts. He doesn’t try to hide that from the readers of his gospel. He simply tells us the story of how one day Jesus walked up to his tax collector’s booth, and commanded him softly to “Follow me.” Matthew was shocked. The rabbi wanted a tax collector as his disciple?! The Messiah - the one whom the Jews hoped would hate and kill the Romans - was actually inviting him to become an Ordinary Radical too?! His heart was melted by the unexpected offer, and at once he left behind a table piled high with Caesar’s money to follow the penniless King of kings.

This was too much for the synagogue-loving Pharisees. They hated tax collectors with the kind of venom which made the Paulsgrove riots look like a scuffle in the playground. How could Jesus share the bread of friendship with such wicked and death-deserving snakes in the grass? Jesus met their self-righteous anger with an uncompromising reply: “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.”

Matthew expects you to know by now that God loves and accepts you. He expects you to believe God sent his Son to die for people like you and me, so that we can become Ordinary Radicals in his Kingdom army. But now he wants to press his point home still further. God also loves and accepts all those around us as well. He sent his Son to die for them as much as us, because no one can out-sin the loving heart of God. Grace, Jesus tells us, is for other people too.

When Christians give a wide berth to paedophiles, perverts, prostitutes and pariahs, they behave far more like the Pharisees than like Jesus in this story. Ordinary Radicals grasp God’s heart for the vilest of sinners and are prepared to be criticised for offering lavish grace towards them too. Take a moment as you read this to identify those around you who are furthest away from the life we are called to live. Matthew tells you that it is precisely to those people that the Lord wants to send you today.

The sicker, the viler, the more detestable the person, the more they are the sick  patient for whom Doctor Jesus came. If you are serious about following the friend of tax collectors and paedophiles, then this has got to affect the way you live today. Go and love the unloveable with God-given love, and tell them your Master loves them even more than you.