And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
How dare he! The Pharisees were very concerned with doing the right thing. Jesus is welcoming the very people who flaunt the fact that they do the wrong thing. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, the Pharisees were legitimately concerned that Jesus was defiling himself, by his mere proximity to the sinners. I’m generally supportive of giving folks the benefit of the doubt. However..
Jesus tells the Pharisees a little later in this section that they “justify yourselves in the eyes of others”. Jesus knows that Pharisees use right actions as a yardstick to judge humanity; those who do the right things, like the Pharisees, are good, and those who do not, like the sinners, are not. It’s not that the Pharisees are concerned with Jesus being defiled, they are pointing out that he’s hanging out with people who are relatively not good, or at least not as good as the right-acting Pharisees.
To the Pharisees, it’s all relative. Their goodness is inherently defined by someone else’s badness, it has to. I’m good because I’ve drawn this circle around me and my buddies, and we’re good, and you who are outside the circle are bad.
I saw a great quote yesterday that I can’t attribute but it went something like this: “Every time you draw a circle around your group to exclude the others, Jesus will go to the others, and invite you to join him. Every time.”
That’s what the Pharisees and scribes are concerned about, creating the insiders vs. outsiders, and making sure they’re considered insiders. Jesus is going to the outsiders, and inviting the Pharisees to join him. But if they were to do that, their entire value structure would crumble, so they cannot.
This morning, I’m thinking about any circles I’ve drawn, or more insidious, circles I’m content with staying inside. Are there any parts of my life where I assess my value based on someone else’s devaluation? I’d like to believe not. And I suspect it’s true, somewhere in my life. Today, I’m going to think about all the ways I consider myself good, or of value, and to try to figure out if it’s at someone else’s expense. I want to join Jesus on the other side; I just need to figure out where I’ve done that.
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