This man receives sinners

By appearances, the Pharisees had a point, for, as St. Paul says, bad company corrupts good conduct. Every father knows this, when his teenager hangs around with the wrong kind of people. So Jesus is associating with publicans and sinners. It looks bad, but of course the appearance is not the reality; for in truth we know that the kind of sinners he ate with were penitent sinners: Zacchaeus, Matthew, Mary Magdalene, and the like. He did not care how it appeared to be, but how it was. How marvelous a thing, actually, that Jesus receives sinners and eats with them, for this is the very essence of the Gospel. Every child of Adam is a sinner, beginning with the first, who was a murder. And Adam and Eve themselves: Eve rebelled against  the authority of her husband, and Adam against the authority of God; such is the nature of all sin. It is rebellion against God. But still he came to us, not to condemn us for this but to rescue and redeem us, like a shepherd who finds and brings back his wandering sheep, laying it happily on his shoulders rejoicing. So therefore let us rejoice with him as his friends and neighbors, and rejoice that he has also found and rescued us. Instead of virtue signaling such as is so common in our culture today--showing the world some kind of virtue that we think we appear to have--determining in thanksgiving to seek to become truly virtuous, and loving and being kind to one another, and forgiving one another as God for Christ's sake has forgiven us. For he has, thankfully, deigned to receive us and eat with us. Sermon for Trinity III. The video is here.