Brenda came to worship from across the street. Across the street was the rehab center at our local hospital. Everyone knew what that meant. Brenda was a recovering crack addict. And she was welcomed. Brenda was also African-American. To many people in the town where I then lived, that matters. “We’d love for you to stay for our fellowship meal,” several people told her. It didn’t matter to them. She stayed. And she came back the next Sunday. And the next. For several months Brenda was an important part of our fellowship in Yadkinville. What in the world was a person like that doing in a small church like ours in a small town like ours? She was there because she had experienced the love of Christ through some of His people; she was there because she had been loved like she had never been loved before.
“After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. ‘Follow me,’ Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’ Jesus answered them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’” (Luke
What we have here is not only a call to discipleship; it is a redemption story. It is the climax of a string of redemption stories that began back in Luke 4:31-37 with the driving out of an evil spirit. Then followed the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law and many others who were sick and demon-possessed (
The story of Levi’s calling affirms the redemptive nature of Jesus’ mission. It also informs and instructs us about the nature of our own calling and mission today. Very simply, if we are truly to be the church we claim to be, then we must also be willing to minister to those Jesus ministered to and love the kinds of people Jesus loved. Jesus loved those that the “respectable religious folk” of His day loved to despise. In the calling of Levi we see Jesus doing what Jesus does best: loving the despised. His actions serve as a model for our ministry as the church today. Very simply, in all of our various forms of outreach, we must also be willing to love “sinners” (the despised, the marginalized, the untouchables), those whom polite religionists find hard to love.
Three principles come to light from this story.
First, we must be willing to meet people where they are. We know about the tax collectors of Jesus’ day. They were viewed by their countrymen as traitors because they were in the employ of the infidel Romans. The Romans themselves tolerated the publicans as a necessary evil. Tax collectors typically thought nothing of gouging their own people so that they might line their pockets. They were greedy and crooked.
Did you notice when and where Jesus approached Levi? Jesus approached Levi while he was sitting there at his tax booth, practicing his trade of greed and graft! He approached Levi while he was still mired in his sinful practices. In the modern church we typically look at people like this and think, “Well, that one is probably a lost cause. To try to reach out to him/her would just be a waste of time.” Now, if they show some evidence first of wanting to clean up their act, make themselves more respectable, then we might give them the time of day. Not Jesus. He went to people while they were in the grungiest depths of their sin and initiated the encounter. Jesus was a practitioner of grace, and so we must be!
We must have the eyes to see the despised in their sickness and the compassion to want to do something about it. And they are all around us. They are the addicts, the unethical business people, the crooked lawyers, the immoral, the migrants, the “gay”, and many more. They are the kinds of people Jesus would notice.
Second, we must be willing to participate in table fellowship. We must be willing to show up at the party! The picture of Jesus at a dinner party in the full company of those unscrupulous tax collectors and assorted sinners is a picture of hope for those who experience the estrangement of sin. When criticized for this by the Pharisees and scribes, Jesus’ response was, “I mix with sinners because they have a need and I have the cure.” His motive, as someone else put it, was not to catch the disease, but to heal the patient.
When was the last time you sat down to eat with an “ungodly” sinner? Have you gotten involved with someone’s life? Do you know their story? We today typically think it to be the better part of discretion not to associate with “those kinds of people.” Rather than attempting to initiate an encounter, we walk to the other side of the road to avoid encounters. We tend to disdainfully reject invitations to their parties. And in the doing of these things we clearly align ourselves with the Pharisees and scribes.
Finally, expect to be criticized. In the eyes of the Pharisees, Jesus’ behavior was completely unbecoming that of a supposed holy man. They questioned His judgment and charact4er. They judged Him falsely. When you love sinners the way Jesus did, you can expect to be criticized as well; and sometimes the harshest criticism will come from within the church itself! However, what the Pharisees considered to be a discredit to Jesus, He considered to be His very purpose in life. Sometimes, the criticism of others only affirms the rightness of our ministry.
This story affirms “…how great a God we have! A God who cares about the despised. A God who can touch the hardest heart with forgiveness and transform the most warped personality—that the sinner might become a new man” (You Can Be Transformed, Larry Richards, Victor Books, 1974, p. 42). As the church we are called to a ministry that affirms the greatness and power of God’s love, a ministry that truly loves sinners. They are sick, and we have the cure.
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