Tax collectors: sinners.

WhenRome occupied the land of Jesus, it hired Jews to collect export taxes from fellow Jews. The older English translations used to call them “publicans.” Obviously the people considered these guys traitors, and often they were guilty of extortion. The newer translations don’t use the word “publican” anymore; it simply calls them tax collectors. And in the New Testament they’re often spoken in the same breath with “sinners” or “outcasts.” “Sinner” was, in fact, a synonym for “tax collector.”

“All tax collectors, just like all Samaritans, were always bad guys.” No they weren’t. Last Sunday’s parable told a story about a good tax collector. Once upon a time two men went up to the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. When the Pharisee got up to pray, he got up on his high horse, and from that lofty mount bragged about how good he was (“I pay tithes on all I own, and I fast twice a week.”) But when the tax collector got up to pray, he got down to pray, i.e. he bent down to the ground where humility gets its humus, and there said of himself what everybody else was saying of him: “Oh Lord, I am a sinner. Be merciful to me.” That tax collector, that “sinner,” knew that he was a sinner, and that made him a saint, a “good guy” (Lk 18: 9-14).

“All tax collectors were always bad guys.” No, they weren’t. Today’s gospel tells another story about a good tax collector. The first one was in a temple; this one is in a tree. One day as Jesus is passing through Jericho, he sees a man named Zacchaeus in the crowds. Scripture calls him "princeps publicanorum," "chief of the publicans,” “chief of the tax collectors" or (to use the synonym) "chief of the sinners." But he's a “shorty,” and he can't see Jesus passing because of the huge crowd, so he climbs a sycamore tree. Jesus calls Zacchaeus down and informs him that he plans to be a guest at his house that evening. This delights the little man, and before he knows it, he’s promising to give half of his property to the poor, and to make restitution fourfold to all those whom he swindled in his tax collecting. This pleases Jesus, and he calls Zacchaeus “a true son of Abraham.” It reminds us of a song made popular some years ago by the famous singing nun: "Oh Zacchaeus he was small. But the Israelites were tall. And Jesus loved Zacchaeus best of all.”

He hobnobs with them.

The crowd, however, is not pleased; they begin grumbling and saying of Jesus: “He hobnobs and banquets with sinners” (Lk 19: 1-10). They do the same on another occasion. One day Jesus sees another tax collector named Matthew, whom he invites to follow him. The man throws a banquet in Jesus’ honor, and that peeves the Pharisees and their lawyers, who grumble at Jesus saying, “How come you hobnob and banquet with sinners?” Jesus gently fires back saying, “People who are healthy don’t need a doctor, but sick people do. Go and learn the meaning of the scripture which says, `It’s compassion that I want from you people, not your animal sacrifices”(Mt 9: 9-13).

There were people who simply didn’t like Jesus for liking tax collectors and sinners, and for hobnobbing with them. G.K. Chesterton wrote of St. Francis of Assisi: “He liked as he liked; he seems to have liked everybody, but especially those whom everybody disliked him for liking.” Chesterton speaks of a “wild blessing” in St. Francis which becomes a sort “of a blasphemy: he listens to those to whom God himself will not listen.” He likes those whom God himself doesn’t like. He banquets with those with whom God himself won’t banquet. He includes those whom God himself excludes.

One day in the temple Jesus unleashed a sharp attack upon the chief priests and elders of the people, saying, “I tell you that tax collectors and prostitutes are way ahead of you, and are beating you into the Kingdom of God and the Banquet of Eternal Life. They listened to the preaching of John the Baptist but you did not” (Mt 21: 28-32). Jesus banquets with those with whom the chief priests and the elders would not banquet. Jesus includes those whom the chief priest and the elders would exclude from the Banquet of Eternal life.

We need them.

There’s something in us that needs tax collectors and sinners. There’s something in us that needs to have someone whom we can exclude. In the parable of the two men who went up to the temple to pray, the Pharisee needed a tax collector whom he could exclude from the Banquet of Eternal Life. For some strange reason that made him feel good. The Pharisee needed a tax collector so that he could build himself up by tearing the other guy down: “Oh God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of people, dishonest, adulterous –or even like this tax collector here.” For some strange reason that made him feel good. Jerry Falwel also needs tax collectors and sinners whom he can exclude from the Banquet of Eternal Life: he has his gays, lesbians, feminists, People for the American Way, etc. For some strange reason it makes him feel good.

There’s something in all the great religions, Islamic, Christian, Judaic that needs tax collectors, sinners, and outcasts. There’s something in them that needs infidels. The Muslim religion has its infidels. The Judaic religion has its infidels. The Christian religion has its infidels. In church history, for us Christian, “infidels” meant that whole sea of un-baptized humanity out there, which St Augustine went so far as to call the “massa damnata,” “the mass of the damned.” In the third century, one of the patristic fathers, Origen by name, uttered the dictum "Extra ecclesiam nulla salus" ("Outside the church there is no salvation"). Perhaps he uttered it off the top of his head, but at any rate, it stuck, and for centuries we breathed its foul air and were filled with its mischief. My gosh, there are over one billion un-baptized Chinese out there! What an enormous sea of infidels that is!

There is a strange dynamic at work here: by excluding and casting out from the Banquet, you create a sea of outcasts. And that in turn provides you with a mission to exercise. You now have a mission of conversion whereby you get rid of your infidels by making them look and act and think just like you. Or you exercise a mission of annihilation whereby you get rid of your infidels by simply burning them in ovens and turning them into holocausts (burnt offerings), as the Germans did in Nazi Germany. All the great religions create infidels, and all of them have their crusaders. Osama bin Laden is always complaining about Christian crusaders with their cruel intrusions into infidel Islamic lands. He should talk. He too has his crusaders whom he sent into Lower Manhattan (that symbol par excellence of Western infidelity), and there his crusaders perpetrated an intrusion of historic proportion.

Gathering the scattered

Religion’s eternal temptation: to create infidels against whom it can exercise a mission of either conversion or annihilation. Religion’s eternal temptation: to divide God’s children and set one against the other. Religion’s eternal temptation: to negate the very thing, perhaps the only thing that makes religion truly religious, namely to gather God’s children into one. Religion’s eternal temptation: to deny its very quintessence. We remind ourselves that the very root meaning of the Latin word for church (“ecclesia”) is “to gather together,” “to bring people together.”

When the chief priests and Pharisees had worries about the increasing popularity of Jesus, they summoned a council. Caiphas, the high priest that year, by inspiration said to the council: “Don’t you realize that it is necessary for one man to die for the nation and to gather together the scattered children of God?” (Jn 11: 52). That’s what religion is all about. That’s what religion should be all about: not to divide God’s children, and set one against the other, but rather “to gather together the scattered children of God.” Put that in your pipe and smoke it: when your religion scatters God’s children, it is false. When your religion gathers together the scattered children of God, it is true. It’s that simple.

The spirit of inclusion

Pope John XXIII summoned the whole church to the Ecumenical Council of Vatican II. After three years of preparation, it opened on October 11, 1962 and was attended by 2500 bishops. The Council lasted for three years and concluded on Dec 8^th, 1965. Its most important document is entitled Lumen Gentium. In it the church asks herself, “Who in the world am I, and what in the world should I be doing?” Never before in the church’s two thousand year existence did the church give that question such comprehensive attention as she did in Vatican II. That council substantially changed the course of our Catholic lives.

In debating the preliminary draft of the Lumen Gentium document, the council fathers came to the question of “Who belongs to the church?” After much debate, one of the bishops rose to his feet objecting to the spirit of exclusion that was coloring the discussion. “What kind of a Mother is this,” he asked, “who makes a list of all those who don’t belong to her?” (“You don’t belong to me” and “You don’t belong to me” and “You don’t belong to me.”) Doesn’t a good mother try to gather together the scattered children of God, as the hen doth gather her chicks?” A “dangerous” spirit of inclusion was creeping into the Council. That spirit was already foreshadowed right from the very start, when Good Pope John XXIII decided to make Vatican II a universal banquet by inviting and including the Orthodox, the Protestants, the Jews, and non-Christians.

Ever since Vatican II, that spirit of inclusion has been growing, and has now taken us to limits we never thought were possible. We remember the old days when all tax collectors and sinners were excluded from the Eucharistic Banquet: excluded were the divorced, the remarried, the un-confessed, the poorly confessed; excluded were non-Roman Catholics, gays and lesbians. In fact, in those days more were excluded from the Eucharistic Banquet than included. Many of us remember that when communion time came in those days, almost no one from a packed church would rise to approach the Table of the Lord. The only ones to stir for communion were a handful of people who, after due deliberation, considered themselves to be in the "State of Sanctifying Grace.”

Now, when the time of the Eucharistic Banquet arrives, the whole congregation rises to communicate. What has changed? Nothing really: we're all still tax collectors and sinners. What's new is a new perspective which is perhaps much more gospel than the old perspective: the new one says, “If Jesus can hobnob and banquet with tax collectors and sinners, then we in turn can hobnob and banquet with him.” The new perspective sees communion not as some reward for the saint but rather as food for the sinner. After all, did he not say, “I have not come for the self-righteous but for the sinner” (Lk 5: 31)?

Conclusion

The radiance of the Banquet

I spent a number of years at St. Benedict the Moor Church on State Street, with its Banquet of Loaves and Fishes. There you learn a lot. You learn, for example, that most saints are also sinners. And you learn also that most tax collectors and sinners and outcasts have something of the saint in them.

One of the original volunteers, who worked with us in those early days of the community meal, had a drinking problem. He never got on top of it. It finally killed him. I had the homily for his memorial service. I chose for text: "When you throw a banquet invite the beggars and the crippled, the blind and the lame," and the drunkard (Lk 14: 13). I was thinking of a passage from Dostoyesky’s Brothers Karamasov. Jesus is asked, “How come, how come you receive such people ("drunkards")? How come you include them in your mercy? And he answers, "I receive them, I include them because none of them considers himself worthy to be received and included."

One month after the memorial service, there was a message on the answering machine, from a lady in the suburbs. She had attended the service, heard the homily, which was on her mind ever since. She wanted to speak with me about it. I knew right there and then that I had disturbed some orthodox faith in her, and she was going to let me know about it. We all have some telephone calls we don’t want to make. This was one of them for me. But I screwed up enough courage to call her back, and braced myself for the worst. I got only the very best from her! Her voice was gentle, loving, and radiant. She spoke about the Universal Banquet we had celebrated that evening, and how she had experienced true Church in it. She spoke about how the vibes of that celebration had enchanted her, and were still lingering on.

As I look back now over the years of a long priesthood I see this: most of the swift angers and gloomy countenances vented upon me down through those years was because I had included someone in the Universal Banquet, and there was someone out there bent on exclusion. Conversely, most of the good will and gratitude, most of the radiant countenances showered upon me by people down through the years was for the very same reason: because I had included someone in the Universal Banquet – someone that was either themselves or someone they loved very much.

I speak, for example, of the radiance of the woman, divorced, remarried, and a recovering alcoholic, who after that memorial service said that the good news of the Universal Banquet was going to help her return to the Church. I speak of the radiance of the vibrant young man who after the service said that the good news about the Universal Banquet was exactly what he was waiting to hear for a very long time.

As I look back now on a long priesthood, I see that it is their radiance that gives me my radiance (believe it or not I do have one). And it is their radiance that keeps me going even after my fiftieth. And it is their radiance that keeps me saying, “It’s been worth it all.”