Dionysus on a Bike

Matthew 9:9-26 – 6/7/2026 – Second Sunday after Pentecost

Mercy, not sacrifice. Sinners, not the righteous. These are Jesus’s priorities. Jesus came to change the logic of how we live toward God. No longer do we connect with God according to a logic of blood and vengeance. We do not look to the temple, but to the prophets who cried out for justice, peace, and a return to a community focused on love for one another instead of the accumulation of power at the expense of the people.

At the same time that Jesus changes the logic of our relationship with God, Jesus also changes the structure of how we are to relate to other people. In the custom of Jesus’s time and place, eating with someone was a mark of acceptance, of respect, of acknowledgment. One would only eat with someone whose relationship with God and the community was one you respected and could endorse. This meant that one’s community was circumscribed by one’s moral, political, ethnic, and ritual standards. Eating with someone was tacit acceptance of their person into one’s circle of community. Jesus does not change the function of eating with someone. For Jesus, as for the broader culture, to eat with someone was to welcome them as a whole person. What changed for Jesus was who he welcomed to his table. Everyone was welcome, even those whose lives were degraded or marked by oppressive violence in collaboration with Rome. Jesus’s decision to eat with sinners and tax collectors was to say, “All are part of the beloved community, even those who need to change, even those who are considered evil.”

Jesus changes the logic of all our relationships. There is no need to “make up” for our lack or for falling short of some unattainable standard of perfection or purity. We do not need to offer God sacrifice, and God does not demand blood to wash away our sins. Our relationship with God is marked by love and mercy instead. With our fellow humans, we are freed then from having to distinguish between the right sort of people and the wrong sort. Instead of exclusion, our relationships with others are built on welcoming all and healing those in need. To put it simply, we are called to give up the logic of exclusion and embrace a logic of love. Love is how healing takes place; love is what is required in every situation, in every relationship.

Further reflection: I do not know what this means for relating to the powerful. It’s one thing to sit down to eat with society’s rejects. They are the sick who need healing; they are the ones who need mercy rather than sacrifice. What about the evil in power, those who oppress and harm others for their own gain or out of malicious indifference? What is it to love such people? This is perhaps a purely theoretical question that I will never be forced to answer in a practical way. I may be called to love the worst of the powerful, but since they would never sit down to eat with me, I never have to choose how to respond to eating with them.

Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary.