The Rebel Jesus: Searching for Those Who Feel Rejected by God Mark 2:13-17, by Marshall Zieman, preached 7-15-2018 at PCOC Our Scripture lesson for today is Mark 2:13-17. It s one of five stories in a row where Jesus begins his ministry by confronting the authority of the Pharisees. Whatever the Messiah was supposed to look like in their minds, it couldn t have been Jesus, yet Jesus teaches as one who has authority. And so they ve got a conundrum. We will see that he does exert authority over the Pharisees, and thus, he has authority over even our own lives, as well. As we read today s story, I d like you to imagine that you are one of the characters in it. There are many. Let me tell you who they are: there s Jesus, a crowd, Levi the tax collector, plus a bunch of other tax collectors and sinners, Jesus disciples are there, and so are the Pharisees. From Mark, chapter 2, beginning in verse 13: 13 Jesus went out again beside the sea; the whole crowd gathered around him, and he taught them. 14 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. 15 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. 16 When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? 17 When Jesus heard this, he said to them, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners. The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Which character were you? Levi was a tax collector, an outcast. Jesus finds him, asks him to follow him. He does. Levi has a lot
2 of friends who were outcasts. He has a party, invites them to meet Jesus. The Pharisees come too, yet Pharisees are not the kind who associate with outcasts, so the Pharisees think, What kind of teacher are you, Jesus? And so Jesus basically says, Unlike you guys, I care about these people. You can almost see a line in the sand being drawn between Jesus and the Pharisees. In my mind I see all the tax collectors and sinners raising their glasses and cheering Jesus, and all the Pharisees shaking their heads and in their minds judging him. Depending on your point of view, this is a either very wonderful story, or a very terrible one. Either way, it s meant to bother us as are all five of this group of stories. And it gets worse, because by the end of the fifth story the Pharisees will already decide to kill Jesus before he s even called the twelve Apostles. The most important part of a movie, I think, is the first 10 minutes, and Mark s gospel is the same way it begins with a bang. The theme of this story is The Outcast, and the teaching is: No One is an Outcast to God - no one. Not Levi. Not his rowdy friends. Not your neighbor. Not you. No one. Jesus said, No one who comes to me will I cast out, yet sometimes we feel that way, or we know people who feel that way, or worse, we act like the Pharisees and do the casting off ourselves. So first, let s consider those times when we feel like an outcast, when we feel abandoned. There are times when we can even feel rejected by God. Perhaps you are someone who thinks that God is far away from you, so you think: maybe it s because I m not good enough for God, or not smart enough, or not holy enough, not disciplined enough, not religious enough. You re not sure why, but you re definitely feeling not blessed enough. Maybe you feel like there s a wall, or gulf between you and God. You feel you don t measure up, and so you feel abandoned by God, like an Outcast.
3 Here, Levi, son of Alphaeus, a tax collector, probably did feel rejected by God. In this society, Levi really was an outcast. The Jews hated the tax collectors and did not allow them in the synagogue. Levi s rowdy friends are referred to as sinners (with quotation marks). They were the kind of folks that proper Pharisees wouldn t t associate with. We might call them outcasts today maybe not criminals (though some could have been). Some Bible scholars see them as the mafia of their day, living out by the lake by the trade routes, rough men that hadn t been to church in quite awhile. And the Pharisees certainly didn t t want them to. Yet here s Jesus, bringing the Church right to them; he s right in the middle of them. So, if you are feeling cast off by God (or you know somebody who feels like this), this story s for you. One things that people said to insult Jesus was that he was a friend of sinners. It wasn t a compliment. Often in his ministry, the gospels record Jesus taking time to be with folks who are not important in society. Here, at the beginning of his ministry, before he s even called the twelve disciples, he s calling people like Levi to join him, people who don t have friends, and then he spends time hanging out with them. When Jesus calmed a storm, you remember the disciples in the boat exclaiming, Who is this man, that even the winds and waves obey him? Today, the Pharisees think something like that - Who is this Teacher who associates with the outcasts like this? And the answer is: He s the Savior, Messiah, the One you ve been looking for your whole life, the Good Shepherd who really does care for all lost sheep. That s Good News for anyone who is feeling lost or excluded. Are you someone who gets lost easily? I m not, but the few times I have been really lost, it was very unsettling. I remember once when we were in the car, driving along Lake Michigan. I knew I was fine because the lake would be always on my right as we headed north. Imagine my confusion when after awhile, the lake somehow appeared on my left. I didn't want to, but I
4 had to admit to the others in the car that I d gotten turned around. We were headed exactly the wrong way. I didn t like being lost. We have a Good Shepherd who cares for lost sheep or to put it another way, this Doctor cares about sick people, and he ll even come to your house to make you well. Then finally, we see that if Jesus cares like this, how can we do any less? Jesus quotes a well-known proverb from their day: It s not healthy people who need a doctor, but sick people. That makes perfectly good sense to both the doctor and the patients, but it didn t make any sense to the Pharisees, who wanted to be the spiritual police. And it s easy to criticize the Pharisees and say how wrong they were, but you know, there is a little bit (or a lot) of the Pharisees in each of us. You remember how last week we talked about the danger of a church that focuses on just taking care of ourselves. Or we think of God s covenant with Abraham the covenant where God said to Abram, I will bless you and make you a blessing for many nations. The problem is that we remember only the first part of that covenant, the part where God says, I will bless you. And so we think, great, God wants to bless us, and we think of all the ways we want God to bless us But we ignore the second part of the call the reason for all this blessing in the first place: So that we may be a blessing for many nations. This is something to keep in mind as we sort out today s political climate. When Christians feel blessed, then it is meant to carry over into blessings for others, not just try to hoard them for yourselves. The Pharisees weren t really interested in blessing many other people. They would not associate with tax collectors and sinners. They just saw them as trash. Yet here s Jesus sitting right in the middle of them. Can we do any less?
5 Again, this is good news for any of us who have ever felt excluded, or on the outside. If Jesus would hang with these guys, then he can find our house, too. The Apostle Paul referred to himself as the Chief of All Sinners. He was the one who used to throw Christians in jail, but Christ still came and found him, as lost as he was. And that s another thing about the Good Shepherd when sheep get lost, he doesn t just go eat dinner, wondering about sheep #100. He doesn t sit around, hoping the sheep somehow wanders home safely. If sheep #100 isn t there, the good shepherd leaves the 99 who are safe, to go and look until Lost Sheep #100 is found. That s very good news for lost sheep #100. Sometimes you and I are the lost sheep; sometimes the lost sheep are folks we know. Sometimes they seem so lost, they ll never get found, but that s not how the Savior sees them, and neither should we. This story of Levi the tax collector also appears in Luke and in Matthew. In Matthew, the tax collector is called by his other name, Matthew. And thus, the hated tax collector, Levi- Matthew, becomes one of the twelve disciples. Most Bible scholars believe that he was the Matthew who wrote the Gospel of Matthew. I think that Jesus looked at him, knew what he could become, and said, Follow Me. He sees the same thing in you, and wants you to see it in others. Who does Jesus want you to become? Amen. Let s pray.