So, Matthew sits at his telōnion, a tollbooth at which taxes were collected on goods passing through – likely fish, given the Galilean context. The tax rate was set by the Roman occupiers, with the collector’s wage coming from whatever he added to the bill. We can only imagine how hated the tax collectors were – collaborators and thieves in the eyes of the people. This might explain why they come flocking to eat with Jesus – a marginalized group had found a friend, a Rabbi, someone who could see their humanity, and welcome them in. Jesus shows them mercy. This is a theme of Matthew’s Gospel, one in which God’s power is most closely associated with and revealed through, God’s mercy.
Jesus’ mercy leads him across all sorts of boundaries and lines of propriety. He will eat with “tax collectors and sinners.” He will allow an unclean woman to touch him, whose vaginal hemorrhaging (whatever the cause) makes her unclean and places her outside of polite, religious society. He will touch the body of a dead child, thereby making himself so unclean he could no longer worship alongside others. As one scholar puts it, “For Matthew’s Jesus, mercy is at the heart of the social ethos he came to promote.” This is Jesus’ embodiment of Hosea’s teaching (6:6) which Jesus recites in verse 13: Go and learn what this means, “I desire Mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.
As if to drive the point home, Matthew recounts the healing of the hemorrhaging woman a wee bit differently than Mark does (Mark 5:27). In Matthew, she is healed not when she touches the hem of Jesus’ garment, but rather afterwards when Jesus looks at her, and says “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well” (vs. 22). This is mercy in action.
We can all understand the lengths that the leader of the synagogue will go to save the life of his daughter. He “knelt before Jesus” (vs. 18) – the same Jesus whom the Pharisees loudly and publicly condemn (vs. 11). However, the word used here is proskyneō, which means “to pay homage.” This religious official humbles himself before Jesus in an act of worship. And Jesus is moved, through mercy, to give the girl life whatever the cost to himself.
There is nothing so unclean to Jesus that mercy cannot overcome it. There is no one so unclean that Jesus cannot enfold them in love. There is no boundary he will not cross to include the excluded. There is no price he will not pay to bestow life.
