Mark 2:13-17 - Once again Jesus went out beside the lake.
A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. As he walked along, he saw Levi son of
Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and
Levi got up and followed him.
While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax
collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were
many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him
eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does
he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the
healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous,
but sinners.”
“The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for
saints.”
This is a quote that I’ve heard all my life, and often, it
is invoked when one speaks of the above passage. An updated version of the pithy saying
replaces “museum” with “harbor.” Either
way, the saying is intended to remind those within the church that the church
has a mission that mirrors Jesus’s own mission to reach out to those who are
not already inside the fold of the Christian community. `Though
I am generally not a fan of reducing scriptural truth to pithy sayings, I do
have to admit the effectiveness of this saying making the intended point. Further,
it is a point that has continually needed to be made for as long as I have been
a part of it.
If you have ever had
the misfortune of being present with a crowd of people who you mostly didn’t
know, who talked about things you don’t readily understand, and who make very
little effort to help you understand and feel included, then you know what’s it’s
like to attend far too many Christian churches.
As uncomfortable as that situation may be today, it was even worse in
Jesus’s time. We see this in the
religious leaders’ reaction to Jesus.
They are objecting on the basis of Jewish law that looked down upon Jews
dining with those who don’t follow Jewish traditions and laws.
To be fair, there is a kernel of truth in the teachers’
concern. There should be a difference
between the way Christians live and the way those who haven’t made such
commitments do. Jesus Himself called
people to live differently. The
revolution in Jesus’s teaching here is that living that way should not isolate
you from those who live differently. In
fact, Jesus’s assertion here is that there is no way we can help people see the
value of living differently if they never see someone living that way themselves.
But there is something even more revolutionary going on here. Jesus is not just changing the way God’s
people interact with those outside the community. He is recruiting people from outside the community
to become leaders of the community. This
would have been unthinkable in Jewish circles.
And worse yet, it’s not just run of the mill “sinners” Jesus is recruiting;
it is the “worst of the worst” – tax collectors. We will talk about this issue later in Mark,
but we have to point it out now.
All of this begs the following questions that deserves
honest answers.
Question: Who is
genuinely welcome (meaning who would you actively invite to your dinner table? Are there people that you would not accept an
invitation to go eat with if you were asked? How do you feel about being led by
someone considered the “worst of sinners?”
Prayer: Jesus, show
us our attitudes towards those who live differently from us that we may see the
ways our attitudes are not like Yours.
Amen.
Prayer Focus: Pray
for God to bless people you know who don’t ever attend church.
Song: Jesus, Friend
of Sinners – Casting Crowns
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