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…For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Matthew 9:9 – 13

The Jews despised tax collectors not only because they did not want to pay taxes to the Roman Government but because they viewed those Jews who did that for the Romans were, in a sense, traitors.  Matthew was one of them!  No respected true Jews associated with such people.

So, we can but imagine the outrage of the Jews when they heard that Jesus chose a tax collector to follow him as a disciple.  What kind of people is Jesus choosing as his disciples?  He had already called four fishermen.  That was hard to believe, but it was even harder to believe that he would even associate with a tax collector, much less to ask him to be one of his disciples.

Come to think of it, Matthew, the despised Jew who collected taxes from his fellow Jews to help the Roman occupiers, is writing this Gospel.  He is that man who left all to follow Jesus.  He admits that he was an unlikely choice, like many of us who follow Jesus.  But look at how he was blessed and how he blessed many!

Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”  This enraged the Pharisees who saw themselves as being called by God to expose the sins of people like Matthew.

I leave it at that.