Jesus was the companion of sinners. Companion? Yes. We get our word "companion" from "com" (with) and "panis" (food). A companion is someone you eat with. Jesus was the companion of sinners.

Who were these "sinners"? We’d have a difficult time pinning the label, having, as we do, Paul’s reminder to the Romans, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) The Pharisees had no such problem. For them it was simple: a sinner was any person who did not observe the details of the orthodox law. Jesus wanted sinners to know God. The Pharisees did not. They didn’t seek them - they shunned them. They even had a name for them. They called them "the people of the land."

It would be easy today to dodge the thrust of this Gospel. The first dodge might be this: we could talk …