Saturday After Ash Wednesday 2024
Jesus was in conflict with the Jewish religious leaders of His time pretty much all the time. The other day we heard in Mark that Jesus told the disciples to “beware” of the “leaven” of the Pharisees and the Herodians. Today Jesus is having dinner with His new disciple, the formerly non-observant Levi or Matthew, and His friends. Whenever Jesus does that, we know at some point He’s going to call for conversion and repentance. So here come the Pharisee critics. “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” That can’t be the only time this happened in Jesus’s life. Jesus remains focused on His mission. Note that He doesn’t say something like, “well, these guys are products of their environments.” He doesn’t excuse their sin, and in a rather clever way He tells everyone that they are not-excused: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” And even Pharisees are sinners, just like you and me. Among Jesus’s disciples, in time, we see Pharisees like Nicodemus. All are welcome, but all are expected to repent for the forgiveness of our sins.
As the psalmist tells it, repentance involves an attitude of humility. We have to stand in our lowliness and look to our loving but transcendent God asking “incline Your ear O Lord and answer me, for I am poor and needy.” We are poor in righteousness when we come to Christ, and we are needy of His grace to move toward union with Him and true imitation of Him.
And as Isaiah promises, when we call like this, the Lord will answer us, and tell us “Here I am.” But He will also require that we take away from our lives the yoke of sin, of oppressing others, of unjust judgement, of lying and cheating to gain advantage over our neighbor. The Lord will indeed satisfy our every need (though maybe not our every desire) and make us thrive in the Spirit like watered gardens. That’s what we really need, is it not, as we move through the weeks of Lent toward our Resurrection Sunday?
