Keeping Receipts

Gospel: Matthew 21: 28-32

Tax collection is not sinful by nature; it becomes so when dishonesty enters the picture, and when the taxes are so severe on a population that it leads to dire poverty for the people.  Prostitution is sinful by nature; and yet women are often forced into the profession in order to avoid grinding poverty, or they are coerced into it through unscrupulous men who traffic human beings for unseemly gain.  Those in these professions do not want to be there; they long for a better life and a more just society.  

By contrast the professional religious class place themselves as the ideal for all to follow.  They stand at the pulpit denouncing the sexual sins of others, and yet half of them are engaged in sexual sin and the other half knowing about it consort to keep quiet about it and cover it up.  Hence, an entire culture of lies and hypocrisy is created over and above the culture of sexual dalliance.  In this world no remorse is had, and no one is coerced into such behaviors.  

This is Jesus' point in today's Gospel.  The professional religious class has always been a more depraved world; they, in fact, help to create the unjust structures that haunt the tax collector and prostitute.  The tax collector and prostitute want to be cleansed of this, want a better society that is more just.  Hence they will enter the kingdom, but for the professional religious class...