Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality

by Richard Beck

That is the root lesson of Matthew 9: No conversation about sin, purity, or holiness can begin until human dignity has been secured beyond all question or doubt. Discussions of purity and sin cannot be primary discussions. For when the “will to purity” trumps the “will to embrace” (when sacrifice precedes mercy), the gears of sociomoral disgust begin to turn, poisoning the well of hospitality by activating the emotions of otherness.