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Luke 15:1-32   Now the tax collectors and "sinners" were all gathering around to hear him.  ² But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them."

In Luke 15, we find Jesus enjoying his typical audience, a mix of religious types and marginal types – sinners as the Pharisees call them, people whose lives don’t show faithfulness to God.  First of all, I continue to be amazed by how much people outside the mainstream of Judaism were attracted to Jesus.  Here he is, again surrounded by all the outsiders in town, and the religious establishment is ticked off at this.  They mutter, “this man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  Don’t you half expect Jesus to turn to them and say, “what is your problem?”  Why do the Pharisees and the teachers of the law have such an issue with Jesus?  Remember the Pharisees’ agenda – like all of the Jews in that day, their biggest concern was the fact that they were living under Roman oppression, and as God’s chosen people, they could not understand why that would be the case.  There were four prominent religious groups in Jesus’ day, and each group – the Essenes, Zealots, Sadducees, and Pharisees – had their own beliefs on how to deal with this oppression.  The Pharisees’ belief was that if the people would be pure enough and faithful to God, than the Messiah would come and deliver them from Roman oppression.  For this reason, they were like a self-appointed watchdog group, putting pressure on any Jew who was living in impure ways – sexually immoral women, tax collectors, etc.  Because of their self-appointed role in the Jewish culture, they were suspicious of any other religious leaders who attracted a following, because they wanted to be sure the other leader endorsed their agenda.  And since Jesus did not condemn those on the margins but welcomed them, shared meals with them, etc., the Pharisees began to despise him.