Tax Collectors and Payday Lenders

AM Psalm 101, 109:1-4(5-19)20-30 • PM Psalm 119:121-144
Hosea 4:11-19 • Acts 21:15-26 • Luke 5:27-39

Here is Jesus eating with tax collectors again. Why does he keep doing this? Throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus hanging out with misfits and social outcasts. Who are these tax collectors? Tax collectors were members of the community who took money and assets from their neighbors to give to the Roman Empire. Often, they padded their own pockets by taking much more than was necessary, exploiting others in the community.

In this passage, Jesus says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.” These tax collectors are complicit in a system of Empire. Jesus is not talking about poor people in this parable. People who are exploited are not sinners in need of repentance. It is the folks in the middle, those carrying out the sins of oppression, those who can change their practices and make an impact in the community, these are who Jesus calls sick and in need of a physician.

When I read this passage and think about who might be tax collectors in our own communities, I think about payday lenders. These businesses make their profit by charging exorbitant interest rates on small loans given to people living paycheck to paycheck trying to care for their families in an impossible economy.

I wonder if I might be like the Pharisees, wondering why Jesus is hanging out with those people. It is easier for me to distance myself from these exploitive practices, rather than interrogate my own complicity in the Empire. I wonder if this is the heart of the Good News: that Jesus came to hang out with tax collectors and payday lenders for the healing of the community.

Written by Angela Tyler-Williams

…who finds both comfort and challenge in the Good News of the Gospel.