All the Wrong (Right) People--January 26, 2024

All the Wrong (Right) People--January 26, 2024

"Jesus went out again beside the lake; the whole crowd gathered around him, and he taught them. As he was walking along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.  And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax-collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples—for there were many who followed him." [Mark 2:13-15]

You know that old one-liner attributed to Groucho Marx?  It goes, "I would never want to belong to a club that would have someone like me for a member."  That, dear ones, is the sheer divine comedy of the gospel.  Jesus has deliberately (and provocatively) chosen to make his new community out of all the "wrong" people... and that turns out to be exactly right.

It's no secret that Jesus got a reputation early on for hanging out with the people labeled as "sinners" and treated as outcasts by the Gatekeepers of Respectable Religion, Incorporated (C).  And chances are, somewhere back in the recesses of our Sunday School flannel-board memories, we recall that tax collectors were counted as traitors and sell-outs by their fellow Judeans both because of their reputation for graft and corruption but also because the government for whom they collected taxes was the occupying Roman Empire.  In other words, Mr. Levi, mentioned here at his tax booth before Jesus finds him, wasn't raising funds for helping the local school district, the band boosters, the Metroparks, or the local roads and bridges.  He was extorting money from his own people (you know Levi is Jewish because his name is one of the twelve tribes of ancient Israel) and, after he got his cut, the lion's share went to subsidize and enrich the very enemy armies that marched through their streets, harassed their neighbors, beat their relatives, and crucified anybody they wanted to make an example of.  Maybe Levi felt trapped and saw no way out of his place in the system, but he was definitely being used by that system to hurt his own people and assist the hostile empire.

And yet... Jesus comes right up to Levi and calls him to be a part of his new community.  And he does it without precondition, without a prerequisite of showing sufficient sorrow for his sin or repentance to show he had changed his ways.  He doesn't even make Levi pray the sinner's prayer or accept Jesus as his "personal Lord and Savior" (although, truth in advertising, nobody in the Bible does that--that's just not how Jesus or the early church thought or spoke).  Instead, Jesus sees Levi, stuck in precisely the dead end of a job that alienated him from his community and petrified him to try and leave behind (sort of like working for the mafia), and speaks the same simple call, "Follow me," as he had given to the somewhat more respectable fishermen Simon, Andrew, James, and John (who at least were seen as contributing to the common good by providing food).

Let's just pause there for a moment: the wording of Jesus' invitation is identical for both the fisherman and for the tax collector--even though Levi is a pariah and an outcast whose livelihood is seen by many as inherently sinful.  Jesus doesn't discriminate.  Jesus doesn't add a list of "But first you must..." conditions.  Jesus doesn't make Levi's invitation conditional on a probationary period, nor does Mark tell us that there is any speech about "giving up his sinful lifestyle as a tax collector."  There is only the call, given to Levi the human being (without other labels or judgments foisted onto him), "Follow me."  And just as it had been for the fishermen, it is Jesus' call that makes Levi worthy--it is not Levi's worthiness that prompts Jesus to call him.

And see? We're right back to Groucho Marx.  Jesus' community is made up entirely of the folks who get labeled as "all the wrong people," and that is exactly the beauty of his movement.  Jesus doesn't take a survey and find the people deemed "worthy" or "winners" by the pollsters to recruit for his team.  Jesus finds the anybodies--and in particular the ones who have been told they are nobodies--and it is his calling to them, his treating them as somebodies, that makes them able, worthy, and willing to get up and follow.  The call makes you worthy; it's not the worthiness that leads Jesus to call you.  Jesus doesn't call Levi "in spite of" the fact that he's a notorious member of the tax-collector-and-sinner demographic; that doesn't even register for Jesus.  Jesus doesn't pity Levi and condescendingly say, "Even though you're terrible, no good, and unlovable, I guess I'll let you tag along." He says, "Follow me," as though those very words removed any question of worthiness or value and settled the matter once and for all.

Now, if all of that weren't bad enough for Jesus' P.R. in the eyes of the Respectable Religious Leaders, it's worth remembering that Jesus has claimed to be bringing the Reign of God near.  The summary of Jesus' primary message is still ringing in our ears from earlier this week and just a bit earlier in Mark's Gospel: Jesus went around saying, "The wait is over.  The Reign of God has come near--turn around and believe it, because it's here!"  Everybody who heard Jesus understood that he wasn't just speaking in the abstract, like "Somewhere, at sometime, the Kingdom of God will come--I'm just reminding you that it might, hypothetically, be on the horizon."  He was saying that in his ministry, the Reign of God was opening up and gathering momentum.  To be in Jesus' entourage, his circle of followers, was to be a part of God's Reign.  And therefore, the people Jesus included in his circles were the people Jesus thought were acceptable in God's sight!  

This was the real scandal.  If some ordinary person, or even a respected rabbi, decided to make their public reputation self-destruct by hanging out with sell-outs and sinners, that was their business. The Gatekeepers of Respectable Religion, Incorporated (C) might not have thought well of you if you did, but as long as you confined the damage to your own reputation, they could hold their peace.  For the Respectable Religious Crowd, the unforgivable thing was--well, exactly what Jesus did: he said that "the sinners" weren't merely acceptable to Jesus alone, but that they were accepted already by God.  The labels and judgments other people affix simply do not register for Jesus. They do not factor in his equation one little bit.

Think I'm overreaching?  Notice how Mark makes it clear that Levi isn't a special case, an exception, or in some separate category of "doesn't really count as a disciple" by noting that "many tax collectors and sinners... followed him." As Mark the Gospel-writer tells it, Jesus made a habit of including people that others had determined were unacceptable, and not just of letting them hang around in his orbit, but of deliberately seeking out the folks others have deemed unworthy.

Well, friends, just so we're clear then, here's the question: if this is how Jesus gathers people, not just into his social circles but to the messianic banquet and the very Table of God's Reign, who are we sent to speak a word of welcome to?  Who that has been told they are unworthy, unacceptable, and undesirable by God are we being sent specifically to--for the expressed purpose of saying, "Jesus calls you to follow him"?  And what in heaven's name gives us the utter arrogance to think we know better than Jesus or can set the bar higher than he does for eligibility in his beloved community?

Let me say this as clearly as I can, then: if you've ever been in Levi's position--told (or elbowed out) in no uncertain terms that you were not acceptable or worthy of belonging to God's Reign, then hear it from Jesus' own words:  "Follow."  You are called.  And Jesus' call is definitive--you are worthy of love and belonging, on Jesus' authority, by Jesus' say-so.  And on the other hand, for any of us who see ourselves as already belonging to Jesus' community, then the question is, Who that crosses my path today might Jesus be sending me to, in order to welcome them to Jesus' table?

Wherever Levi's story hits you, we have a word for the day. You, and everybody else you meet, are being called into the pull of God's love, to a place at Jesus' table, and to the motley crew of anybodies-who-are-really-somebodies called the Reign of God.

Lord Jesus, help us hear your call--for us, and for all, to find our place at your table and in your Reign.