Scapegoats

A Reflection on the Gospel for Sunday, October 1st, 2023:
Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Matthew
21.28-32

​Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: “What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I am going, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.”

Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.”

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

Every culture has its scapegoats. Indeed, some sociologists have argued this is essential for human society – we don’t feel like we truly belong until we can point to someone else and say they don’t. 
 
The culture Jesus grew up in was highly gender-segregated, so it’s no surprise that there were male and female scapegoats: tax collectors and prostitutes. Tax collectors weren’t told how much each person owed – rather, they were given an amount to send to the Roman Empire, and allowed to use force, coercion, and threats to collect as much as they wanted, keeping as their salary what they didn’t have to send. As you can imagine, this made them highly unpopular and an easy target for anger about the Roman regime. Prostitutes lived outside of a system of male control – belonging to neither their father nor a husband and seen as a threat to God’s command to marry and bear children. They were loathed by nearly all and were excluded from much of ancient Jewish society. 
 
It's important to understand the visceral hatred they experienced to understand how radical it was for Jesus to say, “The tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” He said this to the chief priests and elders – men who had dedicated their lives to studying God’s law! Jesus is celebrating those who spent their lives rejecting God’s people and God’s commandments ahead of those who believed they were holier than anyone else. 
 
This Sunday’s Gospel reading is a reminder that our actions matter. We are saved by our faith, but if that faith is genuine, it will change how we live our lives. When Jesus called tax collectors and prostitutes to repentance, they believed and changed their way of life. This reading is from the Gospel of Matthew, who is traditionally believed to have been a tax collector before his conversion – he gave up wealth and power to study under a homeless preacher. Meeting Jesus changed him, and he became a person who followed Jesus. 
 
Our culture has scapegoats, too. In my experience, they often fall along the ideological lines that divide us so deeply – most of us can think of a type of person or group of people we consider utterly evil, opposed to all that is good, in violation of God’s laws. This reading is a reminder that even those we hate are God’s beloved, capable of repentance. If we fail to see this – if we see their choices as unforgivable – we may be surprised to see them ahead of us in line at the pearly gates. The stories of the saints are littered with those who changed from persecutor to follower:  Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, Saint Olga, Saint Volodomyr. God’s grace is generous, surprising, and – if we’re ready to accept that we can be wrong – delightful. It’s not too late for us to see the potential for good in everyone we meet.




Jenna Young

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