Christmas with St Matthew 4

7.
This also intrigued me: that he should tell everyone not to judge, yet also tell them not to give pearls to pigs. Hadn’t I been tainted with that brush, accused of working with pigs, cuddling up to the gentile swine? Did the command not to judge apply in all cases except mine? And yet – there was also a yet – there was a picture he gave, of those who had never questioned that they were his children, standing at the gate to the kingdom and being turned away, and those who called out with the tenacity of a child, receiving bread, receiving life.

8.
I who had feared and so appeased the pigs, I who had taken the suffering of my people and turned it to my profit: could I bear the cost that he warned of? Following him with no place to rest my head. Letting the dead bury their own dead. It was a strange, radical life he was beckoning me into. And he was sending the demons and the swine hurtling down the cliff, bidding me to hurl my old life and fears down with them.

9.
Now I ask you, which is more remarkable? That the son of man should say to the paralysed man, “Take up your mat and walk”, or that he should say to the tax collector, “Come follow me”? Or even this: that he should sit at my table – mine – and eat with me?