self righteous need not apply

10th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) Matthew 9:9-13 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “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.”

I think the message of today's gospel is still the most difficult message of Jesus to accept. Not simply a message of inclusion, but something even stronger. Jesus is not simply saying that he wants to include everyone, but he wants to put the excluded first. Jesus says, "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." So those included in the kingdom of God are all sinners, and I don't know if we can say it, but it seems that the righteous are excluded. In a moment I am going to talk about the excluded, about the sinners, about all of us, but first I want to talk about the righteus, those who are not sinners. Who are they? In my opinion, they are the ones who when they the word sinners their first thought is the other guy. They don’t think about their sins, they think about my sins, your sins. It's hard to believe, but there are many folks like that. they start out by saying something like, "Father, I liked to introduce myself. I am so-and-so, I am in charge of the ministers of such-and-such. I come to Mass not only every sunday, but every day. My husband and I are very generous, we always put a $500 peso bill in the collection and we never ask for change. We have donated all the new vestments for the church and our children they are all married in the church." So far so good. There is no problem of going to Mass every day, being generous, living according to the rules of the church. The problem is when they continue to say. "I'm not like the lady over there. Their children are not married in the church and when they give something in the collection, they always ask for change." She might end up saying something like, "Of course father I'm not saying they're better than them, but I want you to know we're not like them." It is very clear from the gospels that Jesus was a friend of sinners and those on the margins. It was something new in Israel, a prophet living with sinners, with the excluded. In the law of the Jews you were supposed to keep your distance from the excluded, they were dirty and by approaching them you became dirty yourself. The most pious always kept their distance from those who were less. But not Jesus. On the contrary, he sat down to eat with anyone. His mission was not to exclude. His table was open to all. You don’t have to be holy, on the contrary, he didn't want to sit with the saints. He wanted to sit with the sick. The first step in approaching Jesus is not repentance, it is simply accepting the invitation. Like Pope Francis' famous expression: "everyone, everyone, everyone!" Pope Francis like Jesus had a vision of an open and welcoming Church, where there is room for everyone without exclusion: young, old, healthy, sick, just, divorced, threatened, LGBTQ. What does EVERYONE mean? EVERYONE! Jesus came for the sick, for sinners. He didn’t come for the righteous, the healthy, the perfect. Obviously they don't need Jesus. But we do. That's why we're here. But it is not the end of the story. Jesus not only came for sinners, but he wants for his disciples. Matthew was one of the bad guys, but he was called to be a disciple of Jesus. And we know very well that the other disciples were also the excluded ones, the worthless ones in the society of Jesus. Today's gospel message is difficult, but it's good news. Jesus came to sit at the table with sinners and tax collectors, with the excluded, and now he is going to repeat the same gesture, because he invites us at this moment to sit with him around this table here.