What a day!
A cold front is coming through here, and it’s safe to say that the North Texas summertime furnace has been turned off. It will barely hit 85 today, and it’ll be cool tonight. Right now, it’s sunny and amazing.
Couldn’t have happened at a better time for me. The heat, dust, pollution and pollen has my lungs burning. And, no, it’s not the coof. By the way, I read where nicotine helps break the bonds of spike proteins. Sadly, my lungs being what they are, I won’t be able to test that theory enjoying a cigar, although a pipe has a certain attraction to me.
So I bought nicotine gum. Weirdly, first day I tried it, it seemed to crater my allergies.
I’m was sitting here, after having six cups of tea, chewing nicotine gum, trying to get some momentum and wondering how the small course I’m building in Articulate is tipping 1 gig. Then, all the caffeine and nicotine hit and I decided I needed to sit in the sunroom and focus.
Praying helps that.
So I broke out the “This Day” copy, and read through today’s mass readings, leaving me with the idea that it wouldn’t be a bad practice to jot this stuff down here on the blog.
Today’s Gospel is Matthew 9:9-1, where he calls Matthew (the tax collector) to join him.
9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Matthew 9:9-13
You have to understand something about tax collectors back in the day to get this. In Jesus’ time, the Romans outsourced tax collections to the locals – Jews. These tax collectors made their living by adding a ‘vig’, or an extra markup – so to speak, to the tax due. Some were more, uh, ‘aggressive’ with their bite of the apple, and they were collecting money from their people to hand to an occupying power.
They weren’t loved.
I take away two things from this passage. First, Jesus came for the sinners. As he explains above. We are all capable of repentance.
Second is that in today’s time we have a class of people that are precisely like the Pharisees and Scribes of Jesus’ time. “Why are you socializing with the un-vaxxed?”, “Why should we give the same standards of healthcare to the un-vaxxed”.
We live in a time where the modern day Pharisees and their fellow travelers see no problem doxxing, and ruining the ‘unclean’ of today’s world. Unclean meaning anyone that doesn’t agree with them 100%.
After the new year, as we approach lent you will see Jesus calling out these hypocrites. It resulted in his crucifixion. Today’s Pharisees aren’t any different. So far they seem immune to their obvious hypocrisy being pointed out.
Not long after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jerusalem was sacked, the temple destroyed and the Pharisees, Scribes, and most of the population scattered.
Food for thought.
Now that the shakes are over, output today will be stunning.
Inspected By Pat 