Hidden Gold

Jesus was a picker. He travelled the back roads of Israel looking for rusty gold. He saw amazing things buried in people's hearts. What most people saw as junk, he saw as disciples who could change the world. Each person had a history all his or her own. There was no such thing as a nobody to him. And he really wanted to show that.

You could say that many passages in the gospels are episodes in an amazing reality show, Jesus the picker, finding hidden gold. Our text for this morning is one of those episodes, Luke 5:27-32.

27 After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, "Follow me." 28 And he got up, left everything, and followed him.

29 Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them. 30 The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" 31 Jesus answered, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; 32 I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance."

When you think about who is “Bethel’s kind of person,” what picture is in your mind? I see Bethel folks as the salt of the earth, mostly hard working, practical, clean living, simple lifestyle, respectable, down to earth, community minded, cooperative. Those are wonderful traits. We are blessed to be part of this church family.

But if we see ourselves as pickers, if we are thinking about who we might invite to church, and our image of who would fit here is limited to folks who are hard working, practical, clean living, simple lifestyle, respectable, down to earth, community minded, cooperative, we will overlook some people who have some rust on them, whose lifestyles need some cleaning up, who need to find a place where they can invest their lives in making a difference in the world. We may miss people who don’t have the respect of the community. We may miss some hidden gold.

If we had been disciples of Jesus along with him on the picking trip described in our text, we probably wouldn’t have given Mathew/Levi a second look. In our text he is identified by his Hebrew name, Levi, but in the other gospels he is known as Matthew. It wasn’t unusual for Jewish people to have a Hebrew name that their parents called them, and also to use a Greek name that they might use in their work. We are familiar with the disciple Peter, which was his Greek name, but his mother called him Simon, his Hebrew name.

Matthew/Levi would look like moral and spiritual junk to most Jews, hopeless. You know that the core of Jesus’ disciples, Peter and Andrew, James and John were fisherman. They worked hard with their hands and their backs. They probably didn’t have a lot of money. They were simple folk, without much education. Around town they would be “one of the boys,” who fit in easily.

That wasn’t Matthew. Matthew didn’t have any calluses on his hands. He was a tax collector. He did his work sitting at a desk. He probably made good money as a tax collector, so he probably dressed a lot nicer than the other disciples. Nobody saw him as “one of the boys” around town. He was a hated collaborator, a traitor to his people. The Romans had brutally conquered Israel. They set up a network of tax collectors to drain all the money they could get from the Jewish people. And Matthew/Levi had sided with them. And those tax collectors were notorious for exploiting their position, charging even more than they were supposed to and making themselves rich at the expense of all their neighbors. And you can guess what the village thought about that. Tax collectors were hated. If he dared to even come into the synagogue, people probably would have changed their seats to avoid sitting anywhere near him. You can guess that the Sunday dinner conversation at the café might have included something like, “Did you see who was at synagogue this morning? What was he doing there? I remember growing up with Levi. He’s smart. He had so much potential. And now he’s wasted it.”

Don’t name any names out loud, but think for a minute of some people in your life whom you have assumed were not Bethel’s kind of person, just wouldn’t fit in the church, just wouldn’t be interested in spiritual things. Their lives may be too chaotic. Maybe they are too materialistic. Maybe they are pretty ornery and they rub a lot of people the wrong way. Or maybe you’ve seen them around but they really keep to themselves and you have no idea what they are really like inside. But, probably unconsciously, a little dialogue has gone on in your mind that concluded, “Nope, they wouldn’t fit here,” or even “God couldn’t be working in them.” Stop and examine that thought for a moment. Is there anyone for whom we can be sure, “God couldn’t be working in that person.”?