“But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”

— Matthew 9:12

I guess Jesus should really be more intentional about the company he keeps. After all, he’s eating with tax collectors.

There is much to unpack in this week’s gospel lesson, but one thread runs through the entire passage: exclusion and restoration. It helps to think of sin and sickness not simply as moral or physical conditions, but as forms of separation from the community. Healing, then, becomes restoration—not only to health, but to relationship, belonging, and life with God’s people.

The passage begins with Jesus calling Matthew, a tax collector, into the family of disciples. Then Jesus shares a meal with tax collectors and sinners. It is not explicitly stated that Matthew attended the dinner, but I suspect he did. If so, perhaps he was introducing Jesus to the only community that would still eat with him.

We know tax collectors were not well received among the faithful Jewish community. Their close proximity to Gentiles and Gentile commerce likely made full participation in communal and religious life difficult. At least, that is how I imagine it. In the section of the Talmud I am currently reading, there is considerable discussion about with whom one may share a meal. Samaritans are acceptable under certain circumstances. Women and enslaved people are acceptable. But Gentiles? Gentiles are right out.

If that was the social reality, then tax collectors may have found themselves in an in-between space: still part of their people, yet never fully welcomed. Present, but separated.

And they are not the only ones in this passage living with separation.

The leader’s daughter is dead. Death creates distance not only for the deceased, but also for the grieving family left behind. The woman with the issue of blood has spent years cut off from full participation in worship and community life. We can spend pages discussing purity laws and social expectations, but the practical reality is simple: she has been excluded from life with God’s people.

Tax collectors. A grieving family. A woman with a chronic condition. Three different stories. Three different forms of separation.

And into each of these situations Jesus comes as physician, healer, whole-maker, and restorer.

When Jesus says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick,” he is speaking about more than physical ailments. He is describing God’s desire to restore all who have been pushed to the margins, left outside, or made to feel as though they no longer belong.

What does that look like today?

It looks like our LGBTQIA siblings. It looks like those whose immune systems keep them isolated. It looks like those undergoing cancer treatment. It looks like those whose brain chemistry makes it difficult to feel or receive love. It looks like those whose minds are wired differently and who spend their lives navigating spaces not built with them in mind. It looks like anyone who has ever wondered whether there is still a place for them in the family of God.

Beloved, these are not moral categories. These are people. These are beloved children of God. These are people who need to hear and know that Jesus loves them too, that Jesus came for them too.

In a world increasingly divided into categories—red and blue, insider and outsider, accepted and rejected—we continue to build barriers that Jesus seems determined to cross.

This week, I pray we find one way to participate in God’s restoring work. May we make room at the table, extend a hand across a divide, and bear witness to the whole-making love of Christ at work in the world.