We must remember that a sinner, in general terms, was somebody that stood outside the covenant boundaries of Israel, as one who did not engage in that which demonstrated membership within the nation (observance of purity laws, food restrictions, etc…). Though these “sinners” certainly could be accused of moral failures, which the Pharisees certainly believed was true of all men including themselves (availing themselves of the sacrificial provisions of the law to atone for such---allowing themselves to be blameless in regards to the requirements of the law, which was one of the claims of the Apostle Paul), it was not moral failures as we tend to think of them that caused a classification as “sinners”.
It is while Jesus is at this particular meal that He makes His famous statement of “Those who are healthy don’t need a physician, but those who are sick do. Go and learn what this means, ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (9:12b-13). Lest we run the risk of missing the larger point that Jesus is making by His quotation from Hosea (6:6), though it is not necessarily entirely pertinent to this study, these words from Hosea are not simply a matter of Jesus justifying His actions, but rather, of calling His hearers (as Matthew calls His readers) attention to the greater context of Israel’s exile, for violation of their covenant agreements, to which Hosea directs His message.
At this same meal, the disciples of John the Baptist come to make an inquiry of Jesus in regards to fasting. In response, Jesus speaks of a wedding, a bridegroom, patches for garments, wine, and wineskins. Some of Jesus’ most mysterious and revealing teachings, most in need of searching minds and ears to hear, are presented when He is at a meal. We do well to consider those teachings in the context of the expected kingdom of heaven. Even though there may be no specific recorded reference to that kingdom, it is quite clear that the whole of Jesus’ ministry is undergirded by His thinking along those lines. Along with that, Jesus’ presentation of Himself in a messianic light, or barring that, the messianic implications of His words and deeds in the ears and eyes of the people would have kept thoughts of the kingdom of God at the forefront of the thinking of those that were hearing Him and seeing Him.
So though we have to be reminded of this pervasive theme that is reflective of general mood in the first century, such reminders were not necessary for those that lived in the aura of expectation of God’s working on their behalf, whatever form that may take. In addition to that, though we do well to bear in mind the contextual underpinnings provided by the notion of the kingdom, we do even better to consider them in the context of the kingdom of heaven, along with the obvious (but often missed) context that the teachings are often conducted while at a meal. The two seem to go hand in hand, and it may be difficult, and even damaging to right understanding if we separate the two.
Though there are many instances throughout Matthew of people coming to Jesus for healing or to pose questions, and though His presence in someone’s house is a regular theme, and even though we have two massive meals over which Jesus presided as host (the feedings of the five thousand the four thousand---which should not be dismissed in their importance as it relates to Jesus’ kingdom theology), we do not have Jesus specifically sitting down to a meal again until we see Him at what has come to be called “the Lord’s supper.” There, of course, we have the prototype of the sacrament of communion, as something of a modification of the traditional Passover remembrance (while retaining all of the important symbolism of the Passover). Naturally, as should be expected, a meal does not pass without Jesus mentioning the kingdom of heaven. In fact, though Jesus will speak a few more words to His disciples before His arrest, Matthew has Jesus closing out Jesus’ pre-Resurrection teaching to His disciples by presenting a kingdom-of-heaven-oriented understanding of the Passover meal by saying, in reference to the wine, “I tell you, from now on I will not drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom” (26:29).
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