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Luke 5:27-39 | Randy Hein
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My friends who are not Christians are not neutral about Jesus. Most of them try not to think about him too much, but when they do, whether it’s positive or negative, he seems to get a reaction.
When you read the gospels, you the find the same thing. People are not neutral about him. In fact, when it comes to Jesus, there seems to be a certain pattern that emerges, and I don’t know what to make of it. It seems to me that the more unpleasant and grubby a person is, the more at ease he seems to feel around Jesus. And, in contrast, the more respectable and pious a person is, the more uncomfortable they seem to get. It’s striking when you think about it. Have you ever wondered why?
Perhaps sinners who are really sinners know they are sinners and have less to hide. So when Jesus comes around, and offers forgiveness and acceptance, they just go, “Ch’a”. Yet respectable people who pretend not to be sinners have a lot to hide. So when Jesus comes around they build up their defensives.
Over the past two weeks, we have been introduced to people that sought Jesus out. Tonight, we see something altogether different. The guy we meet here did not chase Jesus down. Jesus went looking for him. “What kind of person does Jesus seek?”
Levi was a tax collector. Without going into the historical significance tonight, let’s just understand that these guys were hated.
They were abusers, dealers: the pimps of the First Century. They symbolized abuse, oppression, corruption, and moral filth.
But it wasn’t just a social stigma, it was also spiritual. With the job came an instant ban from ever entering a synagogue. You couldn’t go to church. So, by taking the job, you were resolving yourself to life outside the faith community. So these are guys who have given up on faith or religion.
We don’t even know if Levi was attracted to Jesus initially. All we know is that Jesus approaches him and says, “Hey, Levi, come on. I want you to follow me. I want you to be with me, and be a part of what I’m about.” And he says, “Okay”.
Now this is where it gets really cool. Levi had a bunch of friends. I’m guessing that being excluded from the greater community has a way of bringing you together with ‘your own kind’. So these are ‘the sinners’. I mean the real scum.
And he invited them all over to come meet Jesus. He made them a big feast. “Hey, guys, come over. I want to meet this dude. He’s like nothing’ I’ve seen before.”
I really wonder what this party was like? What kinds of jokes were told? How much alcohol was consumed?
If you were pious you never would eat with tax collectors. The rule of thumb was this: who you eat with, you identify with. Eating was a sacred event.
In fact, most observant Jews had water basins at the front door of houses. And they were there to ceremonially cleanse you from any contact you had with the outside world before you sat at the table.
Incidentally, when Jesus turned water to wine and the wedding at Cana, it was the water in these basins that he used. Jesus takes the ceremonial symbol of separation and he turns it into something that drew people together.
So, that Jesus would go and eat with sinners, was mind blowing. Jesus is demonstrating that his acceptance of them is total. And notice – Jesus doesn’t go alone – he invites his disciples to come with him.
We know this because when the Pharisees make their accusations and judgments, they don’t go after Jesus but his disciples. They say to the disciples, “What are you doing eating with tax collectors and sinners?”
“If Jesus wants to be nutty, that’s his business, but why do you going there?”
I think their response would have been, “We don’t know. It makes no sense to us. We are just following our Master.”
It’s Jesus who responds. He lands his mission statement on them. “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I haven’t come for the righteous, but is the sinners.” You see, Jesus did not see Levi as someone deserving of contempt. He saw him as someone who was broken and needed love.
But the Pharisees aren’t finished. They keep going after the disciples. You see, Jesus is not a safe man to be around. You can just see them eating and drinking away. They say, “You know, for the sake of purity, even John’s disciples fasted. So do we Pharisees. But your disciples party.”
The Pharisees were curious guys. On one hand, they were devoted to things like prayer and bible study. They spent most of their time defending the faith, preserving the community and protecting it from worldly influences.
But they believed that purity was about separation. For Jesus, purity is about love. “It’s not what goes into a man that makes him unclean and unholy, but what comes out of him.” They had a theology of detachment. Jesus had a theology of engagement.
“You guys just don’t get it. God is engaging the world in a new way. He is alive and active and healing and forgiving. And this is something to celebrate. There are going to be hard days ahead for my disciples. But the King is in the house, and while the king is in the house, my boys are going to party.”
And the Pharisees just don’t get it.
Jesus says, “New wine cannot fit in old wineskins.” When new wine was put into wine skins and it began to ferment, it would give off gas. That would create pressure.
If the skin were new, it would stretch. But if it were dry and old it would burst. “What I am bringing is new wine.”
“You Pharisees have you constricted ways of looking at people, of looking at the world, and looking at God. God is doing a really big thing and it’s going to require that you stretch in order to be a part of it.”
God is still afoot. He is still bursting onto the scene and getting into the mess of life. And he’s called us into the same mess. And he wants us to identify with that mess. Because he’s there already redeeming the mess. If we miss the mess, we may miss Jesus.
Jesus was criticized for being a little too friendly with sinners. Can the same be said of us? And – if not – than why don’t sinners like being around us?
Our job is to go into the mess of life and alert people to the reign of God. What does that look like? I don’t know entirely. But I know what we bring. We bring, with us, the story of God. We bring the message of peace. We bring mercy and the possibility of hope. I think it looks a little like heaven.
And if we want to know what that looks like, Jesus is our reference point.
Where is he inviting you to participate? What is he alerting you to? Who is he drawing you toward?
I love the song Good King Wenceslas. It’s my favorite Christmas carol. I don’t think it’s just a sentimental feel good song with a good moral. It’s a parable of the kingdom. We have three characters. The King is God. The Page is the church. The poor guy is a poor guy: maybe he lives in physical poverty – or like Levi – social and spiritual poverty. But in the song, it is the King who sees the poor and alerts us to their plight.
He says, “Hey, pay attention to that guy. Bring me some good meat, the best wine and wood for the fire. We are going to go party with that guy.”
The night is cold and on the way, the page loses confidence. He gets tired. The mission is hard. He doesn’t think he can go on. Ever feel that way? The King says, “Hey, don’t panic, man. I’m in front of you. I’m always in front of you.” And so, in his Master’s steps he trods.
Let’s try to re-discover the mission of God, and do it.
But if this is going to happen, you are going to have to loose your spirituality of risk aversion. Sometimes, like the Pharisees, we just want to play it safe. But Jesus is not a safe man to be around. He is daring.
I think, when you first take a risk, there is a moment of panic. I remember scuba diving for the first time. And the instructor telling me,
“You’ve been conditioned all your life to believe you can’t breath under water. Your brain isn’t ready for it. So when you first go down you may experience a slight panic attack.” And I did. But when it was over it was amazing.
When it comes to following Jesus, are we willing to get over the feeling of panic?
In 1988 Martin Scorsese scandalized the church by bringing Kazantzakis’ book The Last Temptation of Christ to the big screen. For those of you who are too young to remember this, the book reads like Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. It depicts Jesus as a carpenter who builds crosses for the Romans and desires to shirk his divinity so he can settle down and marry Mary Magdalene.
Only, when it came to film, it garnered way more reaction than Da Vinci Code did. Christians were actually picketing movies theatres in protest.
I was in my second year of my degree when this all took place. To throw fuel on the fire, one professor on my campus decided that he was going to offer a 3-credit course on the book. Many Christian students were really upset about this. Some of them were writing letters to the dean and the school newspaper.
I can’t remember what compelled the decision, but I felt this impulse that – somehow – I should be there. So I enrolled. It didn’t take me long to realize that I was the only Christian in the lecture hall.
The prof was doing a hack job in representing Christianity. In fact, he was slagging Christianity. And I remember feeling that slight panic attack. I started mumbling under my breath, “That’s not what Christians believe.” He began to hear my objections and – at one point – he said, “Yes they do” And I said, “We’ll that’s not what I believe.” And he said, “We’ll what do you believe.” …
There came a point, where – if he had questions about what Christians thought on matters – he would appeal to me. At one point he was talking about the gospel, and I said, “That is not the gospel?” And he said, “Well, what then is the gospel?” And I looked at him and said, “Are you kidding me?” And said “No.” And he gave me his chalk. And I got up in front of the class and presented the gospel. It was a hack job. But when I was done, I remember a guy who was pretty far from anything remotely spiritual saying, “That’s beautiful.”
I took a lot of ribbing in that class, but I enjoyed the people.
On the last day of class, this prof was giving out book award to students who had achieved greatness: best essay, best test results … etc. I tuned out. But he said, “The last award is going to Randy Hein for being a spark plug and a gracious representation of Christianity.” And on the inside he wrote …
I went to see him afterward, and I gave him a copy of Mere Christianity. I told him if he wanted to continue teaching courses on Christianity, he should at least know something: that this was a good place to start.
The thing is this – and you need to hear this – he wrote, you reminded us that the Spirit mustn’t compromise. But the whole time I was wondering if I had. Most of the Christian students on campus were criticizing me for compromising.
But what an opportunity that would have been missed had I caved into those voices.
“I am pouring new wine into you. Will you be stretched?”
Monday, November 23, 2009
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