Mark 2:13-17

08/10/11 Mark 2:13-17 GUMC Youth

In this next passage in the Gospel according to Mark, Jesus does something that most of us would not expect him to do. He calls a tax collector named Levi and then eats dinner with him. In doing this, Jesus caused something of a scandal and opened himself up for attack.

In order to understand how serious it is that Jesus called Levi the tax collector, you need to understand just who tax collectors were at the time and why most people hated them. As you probably have picked up by now, there are a whole bunch of people in America who are not at all excited about paying taxes. You have one side of the argument that emphasizes that we pay taxes so we can get a whole bunch of services; after all, our police and fire departments are paid through our taxes, there are many good things that are paid for by our taxes. There are also services for people who simply don't have any money to speak of that we help to pay for, without which, many people would not be able to survive. On the other hand, there is a question as to whether we need all the services that we have, or, just as often, whether we can't offer the same services to the people more efficiently, with less cost to everyone else. Our situation today is complicated by the fact that our country is in an absolutely enormous amount of debt and something has to be done, both sides can agree, at least, on that. Arguing about taxes is about as American as apple pie. There will always be those who want taxes to go up (usually, though, they are interested in the taxes of other people going up) and there will always be people who want taxes to go down.

Now, in first century Israel, it was a little different. Israel was governed by Rome, so the taxes, in general, weren't going to help the people have better public services, or even to their own people, but were going to Rome to help make it a more beautiful and glorious city. When you are telling the Jewish people that they have to pay taxes in order for this great, pagan, superpower to be rich, it is hard to get them to play along. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that Rome was seriously the most powerful nation ever, Israel would have rebelled in a heartbeat. In fact, that had done that once upon the time, when the Greeks were in charge, but it didn't last very long.

You see, when America was being taxed by England, they made public demonstrations, like the Boston Tea Party. It was fairly easy to do that when the people you were protesting against were over a thousand miles away and there was nothing but water between you. It would take months before they would even know what you'd done and months more before they could respond. This was not the case in Israel. You paid your taxes, or you were in serious trouble.

So you can see why the Israelites would hate to pay their taxes in general, but it is actually much worse than that. In order to collect the taxes, Rome employed a bunch of native Israelites to collect the taxes for them. Already, this is a reason to hate the tax collectors. After all, now you have your neighbors who are working in close company with the Roman government. Not only that, the tax collectors weren't exactly known for being particularly honest. It was common practice for tax collectors to collect more than they were told to and just pocket the extra. So, now you not only have your neighbors working for the people you hate, they are ripping you off on top of it. This is the kind of person that Jesus calls in our passage. Jesus had already called a bunch of fishermen, who were poor and something of outcasts from society; now Jesus has called someone even further outside the people that most folks want to interact with. Jesus accepts the unacceptable.

As a side note, it is interesting to notice that, when we read lists of Jesus' disciples, there is always included a man named Simon "The Cananean" or "The Zealot." People who had this title were staunch nationalists, who hate the Romans more than just about anyone else around. I bring this up because Jesus calls both the tax collector and the zealot to follow him. Both of the radical extremes have to set down the issues that divide them and unite in Christ. The reality they encounter in Christ is far more important than their political differences and forces them to approach their whole lives from a different point of view. Jesus is calling you, and he is calling those who you hate. Jesus calls everyone, whether we like it or not. You will meet many people that you might not be able to imagine why God has called them, but he calls them anyway. If God accepts them, we have to deal with our own prejudices.

Let's turn our attention to the controversy that arises when Jesus goes to eat dinner with Levi and his tax collector friends. But before we can understand that, we have to know something about ancient Jewish practice for eating together. According to custom, Jewish people did not eat with non-Jews. To do so was said to make them unclean. The same was true if they ate with people who were unclean. Now, aside from the fact that tax collectors, in the eyes of their fellow Israelites, had already set themselves up against them and against God, they were also close associates with the Romans, which means they, too, were unclean. To eat with tax collectors was to eat with sinners who hated God and God's people. If you ate with sinners, it meant to the people that you approved of what they did and you made other people think that you were just like them.

So these Pharisees see that Jesus is eating with Levi and other tax collectors and sinners and they are deeply offended. Here was this Rabbi, this teacher, who, in spite of the fact that the Pharisees are some of Jesus' biggest enemies, is actually quite like them in a lot of ways, sitting down and eating with people who have set themselves up against the longstanding tradition of the people. By eating with tax collectors, it is almost as if Jesus was turning his back on his nation, turning his back on the tradition, and setting himself up against the religious leaders of the time. They ask, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?"

Listen to Jesus' response. He says, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners." Jesus' point is really quite clear and correct. If you are a doctor and you decide that you are not going to help people who are sick because you don't like sick people or because you think that only people who are healthy are worth helping, you aren't much of a doctor. If you are a doctor, you have to go where the sick people are, or at least be available for the sick people to come to you. If you only associate with people who are well, you never heal anyone, so, whatever you are, you aren't really a doctor.

The point is clear. Jesus is here, not only to heal those who are physically sick, but to heal those who are sick in their soul, deep in who they are. Just like our bodies get sick, our souls and minds get sick, too, and they have just as serious of an impact on our lives as physical sickness, maybe even more. If we get caught up in destructive patterns of thought and life, it might hurt us even more than being terribly sick would. If Jesus is the one who can heal people like this, then where else should he be? If the tax collectors are the people who have the most disordered minds and lives, shouldn't Jesus go and help them? Doesn't that make sense? If they are sick, they need a doctor; if they are sinners, they need Jesus.

This is incredibly good news for you and me because, whether you realize it or not, we are all sinners. None of us lives like we should, none of us does what is right all the time, none of us lives a life that is totally pleasing to God. Even when we are at our best, we all get distracted by ourselves, by seeking what we want instead of what is best for others. We get caught up in our own problems instead of being more concerned with the needs of others. We are incredibly selfish people, even when we don't look like it. We are people who are sick and in need of a doctor, sinners in need of a savior. And Jesus came to save sinners and only to save sinners. If you are a sinner, rejoice because Christ came for you, Christ died for you, Christ was raised for you, Christ was ascended for you, and Christ prays for you, even now. When we read about Jesus, nothing is more comforting than realizing that we are sinners who need saving, for it is only when we realize that we need saving that we will embrace Jesus with our whole lives.

You see, there are two sides to Jesus' statement here. It is at the same time a word of comfort and grace as well as a word of critique and condemnation. The tax collectors and sinners, who were seen as those on the outside of society, heard that Jesus was there for them, to heal them, to make them whole, to give them a new hope and a new reason for living. The Pharisees, who were very moral people, who lived carefully by God's laws, who were understood by everyone around at the time to be on God's good side, who were on the inside, are revealed to be very arrogant indeed. After all, they look at the tax collectors and realize that they are sinners without even noticing that there is just as much capacity for evil in themselves as they see in others. Know this, if you can look down on another person, whether because of what they do or what they don't do, if you can think yourself better than someone else, it is not because you actually are; it is because you have been blinded, for one reason or another, to the fact that you, too, are not what you ought to be, and cannot be who you were made to be apart from the Spirit dwelling inside of you and making you like Christ. As Christians, we are never confirmed in ourselves, accepted for who we are, but because we have been made Christ's own brothers and sisters, we are accepted because of who Christ is.

The fact of the matter is that nowhere in the Bible will you find any acknowledgement of people being good and holy on their own. It will speak of people being righteous, but never in isolation from God. Jesus speaks of those who need a physician and those who do not, but we must not take that too literally when he speaks of people who don't need a physician, because Jesus does not mean it to be taken literally, which is clear when we look at all of what he says. Jesus is saying to the Pharisees, "If you had any idea how much you needed to be healed, you wouldn't be sitting here criticizing me, but you would be coming to be healed, yourselves."

But the real fact of the matter is that it is not easy to admit that we need help. We are told that we need to be self-sufficient, that we need to figure things out for ourselves. To admit that we need help is to admit that we are not able to solve our own problems, that we need guidance, that we need people who know us better than we know ourselves to sort through our issues. Are we prepared to admit that? Again, Jesus is the savior of none but sinners. Are you a sinner? Are you willing to admit before all that you have sinned and that you are, left to your own devices, completely unable to heal yourself? That is what you say when you become a Christian. You cannot say that you are a Christian, that you follow Christ, but that you don't have a problem with sin like all the other people who follow Christ. Christians ought to be the most humble people in the world, for Christians, by definition, are people who are weak, who are unable to make it on their own, who recognize that without God they are nothing. Christians know that, whatever it might have looked like before they started following Christ, they were lost, they were alienated from the truth.

Is that a claim you are willing to make tonight and forever? Are you willing to join with the rest of the sinners in this room, which is all of us, and follow the Jesus who laid down his life for us, who died that we might live? Cling to the truth of the Gospel, that when humanity had turned away from God, had decided that they were not going to listen to him, God entered into the weakness and brokenness of our world of space and time and became one of us, to live like us, to struggle like us in the difficulties of life, to grow up like us, to be betrayed by friends like we are, and to suffer the depths of the evil of the world. But remember this. Though Jesus was crucified, though he was killed, his death was not the final word; Jesus rose from the dead, not even death, our great enemy, could stop God.

If this is what God has done for us, on our behalf and in our place, know and trust that he cares for you, has done amazing things for you, and wants desperately for you to be transformed from an enemy of God to his friend, from a sinner to a saint, from one who tries to do it on your own to one who trusts in him for everything. We are sick sinners, but we have a great physician who has endured much so that we can be healed. So, let us learn to cling to Christ every day, that we might truly be renewed and restored. Let us pray.

AMEN