Scandalous
January 11, 2008 Mark 2:13-17
Intro:
A friend of mine began his ministry quite well. He had some good early successes. He was a really strong teacher – he had a way of bringing the Bible to life, explaining it in fresh ways, which people could relate to. Maybe you’ve experienced some of those moments, when a teacher opens the Bible to a place that you’ve heard and studied and thought you’d figured out, but then this teacher shows you something there that is so simple and obvious and so different from what you thought it meant. My friend was one of those kinds of teachers, and people responded really well. There was some good fruit. He was also really gifted at caring for people – you know, would have just the right thing to say to people in need that would be encouraging and uplifting. Again, some good fruit.
But, as happens so often, there was another side to my friend. Some leaders heard a rumor about some of the ways he was spending his time. Someone had heard that he’d been seen at a pretty wild party. Someone else thought they’d seen him surrounded by a group of people that a minister shouldn’t hang around, late at night, laughing and joining in with them. Apparently, he’d even had an alcoholic beverage in his hand. Even more scandalous, one leader invited him for dinner, and a prostitute walked up to my friend and it was really obvious that they knew each other. She was even openly, demonstrably affectionate. When this leader asked him what on earth this meant, my friend was abrasive in response, even rude.
So let’s treat this as a “case study”, like you might do in school. What do you think should be done? Take a moment to think about how you might respond to this situation.
Who is this friend of mine?
What should be done with a minister like that? I’ll venture a guess that your ideas range from the quick “get rid of him”, to a more measured “sit him down and talk to him about building healthy friendships with people that can be a good influence on him”, perhaps even to a “find out why he has been hanging around with these types of people and go from there”. I wonder how many of us, though, thought that the best thing to do in this situation would be to encourage him to keep this up, spend more time with these people, and even take some others with him.
You see, my friend’s name is Jesus. And these are true stories. This week I want to look at the story of the “inappropriate”, wild party – Mark 2. Next week we’ll look at the story of the “inappropriate” relationship with the prostitute told in Luke 7.
Mark 2:13-17
13 Then Jesus went out to the lakeshore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him. 14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Levi got up and followed him.
15 Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. (There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers.) 16 But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked (“complained bitterly”, Luke 5:30) his disciples, “Why does he eat with such scum?”
17 When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”
The Problem with Familiarity:
Had I begun with this story instead of my little “case study” we would likely have missed most of how radical and scandalous this story really is. I wasn’t trying to be manipulative in my introduction. But the problem with our familiarity is that we jump immediately to condemning those judgmental Pharisees, and agree with Jesus that He is in the right place. After all, He is Jesus, He must be right. But here is the kicker: in all my years of going to church (more than 35), in my 7 years of theological training (which included “chapel” at least twice a week, about half of which I actually attended (I often wasn’t on campus during chapel time)), in my years of professional development as a minister – AND ALL OF THESE WITH THE EXPRESSED GOAL OF HELPING ME BE MORE LIKE JESUS – I don’t recall many references to the fact that to be like Jesus means that I should be going to wild parties like this one at Levi’s house. That just didn’t happen very much… We’ll come back to that in a moment, but let’s spend a little more time in Mark and the story.
Background:
As with many of the stories of Jesus, really understanding them begins with understanding something of the culture. It is a different time, different place, with different customs and traditions. Verse 1 of chapter 2 tells us that Jesus has returned to Capernaum, in the northern part of Israel on the sea of Galilee, quite a distance from Jerusalem and the centre of the religious life of the people. It is a little rougher, yet of course there is a strong religious presence as this is the main unifier of the Jewish people. So the story simply tells us, “he (Jesus) saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector’s booth.” Here is a lot of information – the name “Levi” shows he is definitely a Jew. “Sitting at his tax collector’s booth” tells us his occupation. Now, even today most of us do not like paying taxes, but we pay taxes to a country where we are free to choose our leaders, free to oppose decisions we don’t like, free to lobby for changes, all without fear of losing our lives. In addition, we all benefit a great deal from the taxes we pay – we are protected by police and firemen and paramedics, we have roads and clean water and waste disposal, we have parks and sports facilities, we have doctors and nurses and technicians to help heal us when we get sick. So even if we don’t like paying taxes, we do benefit.
Not so in Jesus’ day. An oppressive foreign regime rules, and “taxes” are largely sent to Rome. The common practice (approved by the Romans) was for tax-collectors to over-charge and pocket the difference. Most likely, in this specific situation Levi was more like a “customs agent” – the evidence is the “booth” on the main road. Craig Keener says, “Levi may have been a general tax farmer working for Herod Antipas, situated at an office in Capernaum, however he was more likely a customs agent, charging import duties on wares brought through this town on important nearby trade routes… he has a secure and prosperous job… Some taxes went directly to the Roman government, but tolls and customs taxes (usually levied at 2-3 percent, but multiplied for traders who past through many territories) supported the cities where they were taken. Even if Levi is a locally valuable customs agent, however, this narrative shows that he is still regarded as unwholesome; the municipal aristocracy supported Roman interests against those of the Jewish poor. Tax gatherers were regarded as collaborators with the Romans and despised by religious people.” (The IVP Bible Background Commentary, p. 141).
So basically, Levi was hated by the good people, the religious people. He would have been an outcast, even from the rest of the Jews who felt he had sold out to the Romans. So his friendship circle would have been the other outcasts. Having been rejected by the religious, we can assume that the “rules” of the “religious” held little sway over him – he and his friends most likely were rough, vulgar, drinking and partying people.
Side question: why would Jesus pick him as one of his twelve disciples?? Doesn’t seem to have the right qualifications on his resume…
But the story in Mark continues, and after Levi (whose name becomes Matthew, and who, yes, is the author of the first gospel) accepts the invitation of Jesus to follow, Levi throws a party. Verse 15 says, “Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners.” Now, knowing the status of these people as outcasts, we can imagine what this dinner party was like. This was not polite society, not a “black tie” dinner, not an ordered, clean, proper sit-down meal with table linens and three different forks. This was a party with a bunch of outcasts in an already rough part of the country. And Jesus – the incarnate God of the Universe – is the guest of honor.
Now, the “Sunday School” Jesus who is a constant do-gooder with clean fingernails and a permanent smile, who would never be caught even close to sin, doesn’t fit well in this picture. That was last week’s sermon. If “Sunday School” Jesus went to this party and sat in the corner with his arms crossed and a look of disgust on his face, condemning the sin and excess and remaining aloof, He first of all would not have been loved and followed by these people, and He second of all would not have been on the receiving end of the wrath of the religious leaders who condemned Him. This is a different Jesus, perfectly at home with these people, joining in, participating, embracing, being accepted, all without ever sinning.
Flipping the Question:
We are familiar with the reaction from the established religious leaders, and I particularly like the NLT translation of the verse: “Why does he eat with such scum?” I think the translation well captures the scorn, derision, and implied superiority that the Pharisees felt. But I’d like to flip the question around this morning: if we begin with the assertion that our goal as maturing Christians is to be like Jesus, and to be always growing more like Jesus, then maybe the question is “why don’t we eat with such scum”?
Remember from the bigger context of the entire life of Jesus that this was not an isolated incident. It wasn’t a brief, well planned, strategic evangelistic foray into “enemy” territory, like Jonah going to Ninevah. This was how Jesus lived. He did this all the time. The established religious leaders labeled him “a glutton and a drunkard” (Luke 7:34), because he hung around with the gluttons and the drunkards, shared their lives and their tables, stayed at their homes, and perhaps most significantly of all, was completely welcomed and accepted by them. All without ever sinning.
So, if we agree we want to be like Jesus, why don’t we “eat with such scum”? I can think of lots of reasons, let me share two:
Knowing “Scum”
First, in my life I don’t really know many scum. I am called to be your pastor, and gladly invest my life in serving God by loving you, and none of you fit the category of “scum”. This is simply a reality of my life, but it isn’t very much like Jesus. He summed it up well at the end of the story, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do”, yet my role is mostly about being a pastor to God’s people. Now I’m not naïve, thinking we are all perfectly healthy and spiritually mature, and that my life consists of little more than the spiritual equivalent of needless cosmetic surgery, like injecting botox so that someone has bigger lips. I have a vital, important, valuable, God-affirmed and God-equipped call to “shepherd” the people of God. But I know that to really be like Jesus, I also need to grow relationships with people outside of the Kingdom of God. I’m trying to do that in my community of Terwillegar, where I live, by being involved in the “community league” and getting to know my neighbours. I received what I took as a great compliment about a month ago from one of the others, who said, “we aren’t a religious or church-going family, but if we were I’d want to go to your church.” Ironically, the last great opportunity I had to be like Jesus was in Mark 2, an invitation to go for drinks with the other board members, I had to decline so I could attend a church budget meeting. I told them, though, with a smile, that I would rather join them than go to the budget meeting… My point here is that I had to actively make a decision to do something where I could build relationships with people outside of the church, and maybe you need to also. Or maybe you just need to deepen existing relationships you already have. It seems clear, though, that being like Jesus means we need to have those relationships.
A Fear of “Contamination”
Second, I think we are afraid of contamination. We are afraid that if “normal” Christians,
like you and I, spend significant time and build real, interdependent relationships with non-Christians, we’ll fall into temptation and end up sinning. And so we might think that it would be good to do what I’m talking about, but not until our faith is rock-solid, mature, unshakable, and we can go in covered with spiritual Teflon so none of the sin will stick to us. It is ok for “super-Christians”, but not for Christians like me. Here we might even look to Jesus as the example and say “He could do that because He was God.” To that I respond with Heb 4:15, where it says that Jesus “understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.” And I’d clarify that Jesus did this while He was completely human, filled with the Holy Spirit.
But the deeper response is that our fear of being contaminated by sin leads us into a deeper sin, the sin of not being involved in our culture so that they see Jesus. Again using the words of Scripture, we “light a lamp and then put it under a basket.” That passage, Matt 5:14-16, commands us instead to “let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.” How can they see them if our lives are cut off from them?
What do I find if I peel off another layer, and go even deeper into this fear and what is behind it? I find at the very base a wrong understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus – namely that being a follower of Jesus means that our chief concern is our own spiritual purity (and appearance of purity), rather than our chief concern being the salvation of the world. Now hear me carefully – I’m not saying we should not care about our own spiritual purity, and I’m not saying “that doesn’t matter!”. What I am saying is this: when that concern results in us disengaging from the mission, or even when that concern becomes our main concern, we have already crossed the line into sin and away from Christlikeness because we are no longer obeying the mission to which we have been called. We’ve been lulled by fear into inaction.
Maybe I can illustrate that this way: imagine that you are in charge of the sterilization and maintenance of an operating room in a hospital. There is a very real risk of danger and death if there are viruses or bacteria present, and it is your job to make sure that doesn’t happen. The very best way would be to clean, sanitize, disinfect, autoclave, and anything else you can do to purify the place, and then seal the room off completely. Let no one in; or if someone must come in then make sure they wear scrubs, have gone through all the appropriate hand washing procedures, have a mask and hat and everything else. Certainly, if you are going to take your job seriously, don’t let in anyone who might be sick. They’ll just bring those viruses and bacteria right into your sterilized operating room, and the whole thing will be contaminated and you’ll have a ton of work ahead. I admit, that is a touch ridiculous – the whole reason the operating room exists is to help sick people. And likewise, the whole reason the church exists is to help spiritually sick people find God, and that can never happen if we are more concerned with our purity than with those who are sick and dying. Of course we recognize, even in this ridiculous example, that the germs are terrible and even potentially fatal, and we work hard to avoid them, and so also must be our attitude towards sin. But we can’t do that by sealing off our lives from all the “sinners” around us without losing sight of the entire purpose for which we have been saved: to be the visible presence of God in the midst of our world.
Conclusion:
Let me leave a question rolling around in your head and heart this morning: do you really want to be like Jesus? Do you really want to be like the Jesus who spent His life touching the lepers, going to the parties held by the sinners, letting His feet be anointed by the prostitute who washed them with her tears and dried them with her hair and kissed them with her lips and then wasted an expensive jar of perfume on some feet? Do we really want to be like the untamed Jesus we find in the Gospels? If the answer is yes, we begin to follow a road that is not safe, not clean, and certainly not boring. Certainly not insignificant. Certainly not trivial or unimportant. In fact, it is a road, it is a story, which invites us to live in the reality that the Kingdom of God is at hand, and the Kingdom of God transforms the world.
Jesus reached his hand out to Levi, a sinner, an outcast, a tax collector, and said “Follow me and be my disciple”. Levi did. And he was transformed – not from a rugged, vulgar outcast into a socially acceptable rabbi. But from a man without an overall mission or purpose beyond his own life and comfort, into a man who would and did participate in the coming of the Kingdom of God, the transformation of the world, and a man who, I am quite sure, would never want to return to his safe, predictable, stable, prosperous little tax collector booth back in Capernaum. Jesus invited, Levi accepted.
This same Jesus reaches out his hand to you and to me, with the same invitation: “Follow me and be my disciple.” The next chapter in the story depends on our response.
