There are no chapters more renowned in all of the New Testament than Chapter 15 of the Gospel according to Luke. It is called the gospel within the Gospel because it presents and represents the essence of Jesus’ message of mercy towards sinners. In fact, it is called the Gospel of Mercy.
To eat with sinners
The Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ (Lk. 15:2)
The Master speaks in parables whenever he needs to explain something abstract, such as the Kingdom of God, or when people question or criticize his behaviour. Chapter 15 of this Gospel is composed of three parables on mercy; these parables were motivated by the criticism of the Pharisees over the fact that Jesus eats with sinners, that is, the socially outcast.
Who were the sinners? – St. Augustine once said, “Homo simul justus et peccator” - we all regard ourselves as being a bit righteous and a bit of a sinner. To consider ourselves fully righteous would be like saying that we are already holy, and for all our conceit, none of us would dare to say this.
In Jesus’ time, however, this was not so; the teachers of the law, the scribes and the Pharisees, looked on themselves as being righteous, and on everybody else as being sinners. Sinners were the tax collectors because they were allied with the Roman invaders, the prostitutes for their immorality, the shepherds for spending much of their time apart from the community, and as a general rule, all the people who were not as dedicated to the fulfillment of the Law with the thoroughness of religious professionals as the Pharisees.
To eat with sinners – “Mix with the good people and you will be like them, mix with the bad ones and you will be worse than them” says a proverb – Jesus had already been accused of associating with sinners, now however the accusation is even stronger, he sits at the table and eats with them. In our modern western mentality, this act of eating with a bad person does not have any negative implications attached to it, but this was not how people thought in Jesus’ time. In the Middle East, food was seen as the fountain or the source of life and those who shared of the same source were united to one another in the way they lived.
This is why in Ethiopia, even today, the Muslims do not eat the meat that the Christians eat, and vice versa. In the cities where the Christians and the Muslims live together, there are butchers for the Muslims and butchers for the Christians. In the act of slaughtering an animal, proper prayers are said, so that if the animal is killed by a Muslim then the meat is for the exclusive consumption of Muslims; if a Christian eats of it then he would be considered a Muslim.
In order to point out this way of thinking as wrong and contrary to the Gospel, one of my colleagues ate of the meat that had been slaughtered by a Muslim butcher; when the Ethiopian Christians heard of this they no longer considered him a Catholic priest and would avoid receiving the Eucharist whenever he was the celebrant.
For the Pharisees therefore, if Jesus eats with sinners then he too is a sinner and he shares in their sinfulness. But Jesus thinks differently, he eats with sinners not to become a sinner or sinner-like, but so that they can become like him. In being friends with the sinners and eating with them, Jesus shows that God’s kindness is intended to lead sinners to repentance (Rom. 2:4).
The mystery of the Incarnation – Jesus lived with sinners not to join them in their sinful ways, but to show them that the good news of repentance is available for everyone, including them. There were many sinners who in fact, after experiencing Jesus’ welcoming openness, absence of criticism, kindness and unconditional love, recognized their own sinfulness and repented; a clear example of this is seen in the case of Zacchaeus (Lk. 19:1-10).
From the psychological point of view, Jesus’ ‘savoir faire’ approach to sinners in order for them to change their lives, is unparalleled. Indeed, he used the best strategy for as we say nowadays, “one does not catch flies with vinegar”. It is not with criticisms that we win sinners over and get them to change their ways.
Jesus always accepted people just as they were, unconditionally entering into their homes and eating with them, despite of knowing that according to the Mosaic Law that in so doing it would render him impure. In life, far too often husbands, wives and friends establish a set of unspoken conditions in how they relate to one another and some even going as far as requiring and demanding a change of behaviour in others.
Instead of accepting others unconditionally as they are thus proving that we love them, we try to customize others to meet our needs like we customize a computer for our own personal use, thus proving that who we really love is ourselves. Contrary to this, if we followed Jesus’ approach as shown in the episode of Zacchaeus, it is when we accept others as they are that they eventually change. On this same note, it is not with hatred that we win over our enemy, but with love since hatred makes the enemy more hateful and more antagonistic. In other words, hatred makes our enemy stronger while love helps us triumph over our enemy, turning him or her into a friend.
Jesus died for us when we were still sinners (Rom. 5:8). Jesus’ death is the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation by which, according to St. Irenaeus, “God became man so that man may become God”. By lowering himself, Jesus is working to elevate us to the category of children of God.
The mystery of the Incarnation was already foretold in the message of the prophet Hosea. This prophet deliberately married a prostitute, so that she may become chaste and return to the time of their courtship. With this action, the prophet wanted to say that God was married to an unfaithful people, who was prostituting themselves with the false gods of Baal; in contrast, God, represented by the prophet, is faithful and did not lose hope to guide the people back to the faithfulness of the betrothal days, that is, during their crossing of the desert from Egypt to the Promised Land.
Call everyone because all are sinners
When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does you teacher eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’ But when he heard this, he said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’ (Matt. 9:11-13)
Jesus could not have said this to the Pharisees and the doctors of the law without a touch of irony amid some sarcasm. God does not want from us impersonal sacrifices and rituals, but rather that we recognize our sinfulness and acknowledge that we are indebted to him, accept his forgiveness and his mercy, and afterwards, as it is seen in the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt. 18:21-35), that we in turn be merciful to those who have sinned against us and are indebted to us.
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1John 1:8). For Jesus there is no one who is righteous before God, we are all sinners and in need of his divine mercy. As St. John perceived very well, those like the Pharisees and the doctors of the law who consider themselves righteous are liars and dishonest, they not only have a false image of themselves but also of God.
The three parables which follow one another in Chapter 15 of the Gospel according to Luke are also called the Gospel of Mercy as they all show the reason why Jesus not only associated and ate with sinners but also why he chose some of them to be his apostles.
The first two, the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin, serve together as an introduction to the greater parable of the Prodigal Son; the subjects that are drafted in the first two parables are later best explained and developed in the third. On their own these first two parables also have a lesson to impart but more importantly, they serve the purpose of getting the listener's attention to the upcoming parable of the Prodigal Son.
Luke sets off the alarm in the common sense of listeners with the most unusual behaviour of a shepherd who risks the welfare of 99 sheep by abandoning them in the wilderness to the mercy of wolves, to go looking for one single sheep that is lost. To top it off, unaware of the danger the 99 are in, he goes off and celebrates a feast after having found the lost one. In the same manner, it also seems very extravagant that a woman calls her neighbours to celebrate after finding the one coin that she had lost inside her own house! However, it all makes sense when these parables are followed by the parable of the Prodigal Son; they serve the purpose of awakening a listener’s attention and heightening his concentration and expectation of the third parable.
By making the main character in the first parable a man and the second a woman, Jesus wants to tell us that he has come to call all sinners without distinction of gender, nationality, social status, or any other distinctions. On the other hand, when we examine the three parables as a whole, Jesus wants us to realize that we are all lost but can be found, that is, we are all sinners who can be recipients of the divine mercy available to all mankind.
Therefore the sheep and the prodigal son, who became lost by going outside the flock and who abandoned the Father’s house, are as likely sinners as the coin and the oldest son who stayed lost while inside the house. The first group of sinners who left the flock and house were the publicans, the prostitutes and harlots in general; the sinners inside the flock and house were those who considered themselves righteous like the Pharisees, the doctors of the law and the scribes.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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