Vimeo - https://vimeo.com/user38606035
Jesus very purposely associated with some of the wrong people, and in the case of Matthew, called one of the wrong people to serve as one his closest associates and followers. In doing so, the example was set for all of us who were to follow, an example that we are to be inclusive as the body of Christ, drawing upon the full variety of people to be included in the mission and purpose given to us by Jesus. This is not always easy as differences can create friction and conflict – and we have no shortage of examples of that difficulty in our current day – but it is the manner in which Jesus went about his mission.
Follow along as I read from Mark 2:13-17 –
13 Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them.
14 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.
15 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.
16 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?”
17 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.”
Let’s take a look at several of the lessons from this passage –
1. Jesus did not come to call the righteous because there are none; we are all sinners.
There is no shortage of ironies in life. I received a call on my cell phone several months ago that is a great example of irony. I need to say, first of all, that I rarely answer my cell phone unless the number is programmed in my contact list. And though I receive calls from Russia, I don’t know anyone there, so I know not to answer that call. This particular call came from Canada, which I ignored, but the caller left a message. I laughed when I listened to the message, as it was from a law firm asking to represent me in suing companies making unsolicited calls to my phone. Hmmm. Should I have hired them to sue themselves on my behalf?
There is some irony in this passage because those who thought of themselves as righteous certainly were not. They were in their own minds, but that was the extent of their righteousness. Jesus did not come to call the righteous for a very simple reason – because there are no righteous people! To call one’s self righteous is more than a bit ironic, because no one can be considered righteous. Paul writes in Romans 3:10 that there is no one righteous, not even one, and that is a phrase that comes from the 14th and 53rd psalms. There is another verse that many of us learned when we were very young, and it applies here. It is also in Romans chapter 3, and it is verse 23, which famously reminds us of what? That we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All is a very inclusive term. All does not mean some, or many, or even most – it means all. When Paul wrote those words it was in the larger context of a point that he was making that no one is righteous because whatever good we do is only what we should have done in the first place.
But some people need a person or a group of people to look down upon so they can feel better about themselves, and so they can feel superior to others, and that’s what the so-called “righteous” people did (and continue to do today). The religious leaders of Jesus’s day used the classifications of righteous and sinner, and they conveniently placed themselves in the category of righteous. Doing so gave them permission, in their view, to separate themselves from all the people that populated that class and it gave them a group of people over whom they could feel superior.
This is a self-righteous attitude that causes many people to take satisfaction when some well-known spiritual figure has a public failing. Take Jimmy Swaggart, for instance. I used to watch him back in the 80s, on Sunday morningTV, before going to church. He was great at pointing a finger of judgment at other people and condemning them. He was great at talking about the sin of others. And then his sin became very public, and he not only became a punchline for every late-night comedian, but he brought dishonor to the gospel, to the ministry, and to the church. And because he had been so smugly self-righteous about the “sinners,” he found very little sympathy when he suffered his downfall.
As some have said, be careful when you point a finger at someone else, because there are three more pointing back at yourself. But the religious leaders of Jesus’s day could not see their judgmental, self-righteous arrogance, but Jesus pointed it out to them, and they did not like it (not that Jesus worried about upsetting them).
2. Jesus did not see Matthew for who he was, but for who he could be.
John Newton, the composer of Amazing Grace, said late in his life, although my memory's fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior. Perhaps John Newton could write about how grace could be so amazing because he was a sinner who so greatly needed that grace, and so greatly received that grace.
Matthew was an interesting choice for Jesus. He was an interesting choice because on the surface, he was a terrible choice. A really terrible choice. I mean, he was a truly awful, terrible choice. Matthew was a traitor to his people, because he worked for the hated, despised Roman government. As bad as it was that he worked for the Romans, it was doubly bad – triply bad – because he collected taxes on their behalf. Remember the story of Zacchaeus? Zacchaeus was also a tax collector, and when Jesus came to Jericho, where Zacchaeus lived, no one in the crowd was interested in letting him move through the crowd so he could see Jesus, so he had to climb into a tree (Luke 19:1-10). As a tax-gatherer, Matthew – and Zacchaeus – were barred from the synagogue. In spite of this, Jesus Matthew as a disciple. What must Jesus have been thinking? That was a question I’m sure was on the minds not only of the other disciples, but of everyone else. If Jesus wanted to make a good impression on people, this was not the way to do it. Having Matthew around was a great liability, because as a tax collector he would have been universally despised. The idea of paying taxes to an occupying power was bad enough, but it was doubly offensive to pay taxes to one who called himself Lord and King – as Caesar did – because only God was worthy of those titles. Caesar settled that question – in his mind – by saying he was god.
Now, I will add here that it I have always found it fascinating that the disciples responded in such an immediate way to the invitation of Jesus to follow him. Peter, Andrew, James, and John left their fishing boats and their nets immediately when Jesus invited them to follow him. In today’s Scripture reading, verse 14 says 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. Isn’t that amazing, how Matthew so quickly got up and followed Jesus? I mean, the guy had an office, probably a staff, and a fair amount of responsibility, and yet he’s up out of his seat and following Jesus. And, he also had a stigma upon him, because of his work as a tax collector. Surely, he thought to himself, what would Jesus want with me? And why would I follow him, when his other followers most likely won’t accept me?
But he got up, left his office, and followed Jesus. No one else but Jesus could elicit that kind of response, and I would also add that no other person would have called Matthew to a position of spiritual leadership. No one. But Jesus did.
For Matthew, why would he follow Jesus, as he would give up a lot. Certainly, he would lose a good and a comfortable income. But Matthew had a lot to gain as well, because he would, for one, gain the fellowship of the other disciples, even if that fellowship took some time to really develop, because the other disciples probably had to overcome some resentments and suspicions they had about him. Matthew, an outcast because of his profession, gained a fellowship that he could not imagine would ever have been his. He would also gain a far great purpose and mission for his life. For Matthew, his journey to become a follower of Jesus reminds me of the words of Paul in Philippians 3:7 – whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. Matthew lost, but he gained much, much more.
What is really interesting about Matthew, however, is that he also had a particular tool to use, and it was one that would far outlive him. It was a tool of his former trade, as he managed his ledger – it was his pen (for this idea I am indebted to William Barclay, who wrote the commentary on Matthew’s gospel in the Daily Study Bible series). But as a follower of Jesus, that pen became a tool that was used for far greater purposes than simply keeping a ledger. I don’t know how many of the other disciples were literate. Most people in the time of Jesus probably could not read and write, and that might have included some or most of the other disciples. But Matthew could write, and he put that skill to good use when he wrote the gospel that bears his name. Imagine – Matthew, the disciple who probably would have been at the bottom of everyone’s list – if he even made any list – wrote what became the first book of the New Testament, the gospel that bears his name. Peter didn’t write a gospel. He wrote a few letters included in the New Testament, but not a gospel. Andrew didn’t write anything, at least not that we have. James wrote a letter, but no gospel. John is the only other disciple who wrote a gospel.
Jesus did not see Matthew for who he was, but for who he could be, and thank God – literally, thank God – that Jesus sees people in that way! He sees us not for who we are, but for who we can be.
3. When it came to his associations, Jesus was an equal opportunity offender.
Generally speaking, we think of Jesus as associating with the outcasts – the sinners and the tax collectors. He did associate with the sinners and tax collectors quite often, and the religious leaders did not like it, even though the people he associated with loved him greatly because he would spend time with them. Interestingly, though, Jesus offended not only the religious leaders, sometimes he offended the sinners and the tax collectors, because he did not disassociate himself from the religious leaders. Luke 14:1, for instance, tells us that Jesus was in the home of a prominent Pharisee one day for dinner, and he was being carefully watched. Jesus not only associated with those who the religious establishment considered to be sinners; Jesus also associated with the religious establishment. Jesus loved not only the sinners and the tax collectors; Jesus also loved the scribes and the Pharisees, even though he could be sharply critical of them. And, perhaps, Jesus was critical of them because they could have been better and they should have been better.
The reality is, every group wants to feel – or to see themselves as – morally superior to others. The scribes, Pharisees, and religious leaders certainly felt morally superior to the tax collectors and sinners, but the tax collectors and sinners could also feel morally superior to the religious leaders. Perhaps they believed, for instance, hey, Jesus is associating with us, so we must be special. We must be better than those religious guys.
In our current cultural moment, there remains much of the same unwillingness to see others as equals, and the same unwillingness to reach across the cultural, social, political, and religious divides and offer a hand of friendship and unity. There’s too much of the attitude that if you’ve ever made a mistake, you are not worthy of my love. If you’ve ever held a position to which I object, you are not worthy of my love. If you cannot pass my theological, ideological, or political purity tests, you are not worthy of my love. There are too many claims of complicity if you associate with today’s “wrong people” in any way. That is not the way of Jesus.
Life is not a choice between two ways, as so often presented today. There is a third way, and it is the way of Jesus.
I don’t want my life to be limited in a way that says I can only associate with the “right” people, however they might be defined. If I disagree with someone, it doesn’t mean I will – or should – break fellowship with them.
Yes, Jesus associated with the wrong people – the tax collectors and sinners – but he also associated with the Pharisees and religious leaders as well. In some way, every person is a wrong person, but Jesus is the right person to show us the way. And I say amen to that.
No comments:
Post a Comment