Day: June 21, 2026

“Rejoice with me”

Humility and rejoicing are intimately connected. The one, humility, is the condition for the other, our true rejoicing in the absolute goodness of God’s love imaged in Luke 15 by the shepherd’s care, the woman’s diligence, and the father’s love. The humility of God’s charity calls us to humility against our pride. Pride is that grand delusion in which we think we are totally self-sufficient; as if we stand in need of nothing. We presume to be the centre of everything. The self-giving love of God stands opposed to the self-centeredness of our pride. Our pride opposes God and God’s ways for us and with us in our lives.

In the Gospel, “all the publicans (meaning here tax collectors) and sinners [drew near] to hear Jesus”. But there were others who objected. “The Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying, this man receiveth sinners and eateth with them”. In other words, the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, the self-righteous about their religion, complain about the company which Jesus keeps, the company of tax collectors and sinners. Jesus tells this parable in relation to this division between tax collectors and sinners, on the one hand, and Pharisees and the teachers of the law, on the other hand.

Tax collecting is a necessary feature of public life in any organized state or political community. Tax collectors are hardly ever regarded in a favourable light, but how much less so in the context of the Gospel? For then, they were seen as traitors to Israel because they were working for the Roman Authorities over and against their own people. And if that wasn’t bad enough, they were seen as extortionists. The business of tax collecting was out-sourced by the Roman government to local agents. They were given a quota they had to meet; anything above that was for themselves. Consequently, the tax collectors were out to get whatever they could from an unwilling and hostile population.

Traitors to Israel and extortionists of their own people. No one could be more despised and seen as a sinner than a tax collector. Hardly respectable company for a teacher of religion, it might seem, or, at least, so the Pharisees and the teachers of the law thought. After all, they saw themselves as the worthy ones, as the respectable company with whom Jesus should be, not this rabble of unworthy tax collectors and sinners. How does Jesus respond?

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