Is there good news for me?
Can There Really Be Good News? • Sermon • Submitted
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13 Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. 14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him. 15 While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16 When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” 18 Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?” 19 Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them. 20 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast. 21 “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. 22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”
Let’s pray.
As we’ve been journeying together through the Gospel of Mark we have seen over and over how Jesus is establishing himself as one who has authority: authority to establish a new kind of kingdom, authority to invite us to follow Him, authority to heal and send us out to minister to others, authority to do what only God can do. As each story builds on the next we recognize that Jesus is making a strong case for how this new kingdom way of doing things is different from the old way that was established in the old covenant. In the old covenant, God purposely set up laws and boundaries so that his people, his set apart people, could be a blessing to the nations. He made it possible for outsiders to become insiders by following those laws. But over the centuries his chosen people took those laws and expanded them to make it more and more difficult to belong to this blessed community. So when Jesus arrives on the scene, the chosen people of God had become so focused on preserving their faith that they lost sight of the promises God had declared from the beginning that they would be part of His plan to redeem the world. The WHOLE world, not just the world of the Jews. Because the Gospel is for everyone.
You see, the religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees and scribes and teachers of the law, they believed that purity and holiness were the most important parts of their religion. They longed for the day when all Jewish people were as committed to ritual purity as they were. This devotion to ritual purity permeated every aspect of their lives. And before we get too self-righteous about it, we need to keep in mind that the Pharisees are a mirror for many of us who have grown up in the church or grown old in the church. Like the Pharisees, it is very easy for us to grow more and more legalistic, to focus more on the things we see that are wrong rather than what is right, to care more about ourselves and preserving the remnants our community than caring about those who are on the outside.
And this idea of outsider vs. insider is exactly what Jesus is challenging over and over again in these stories we have been reading together. From calling the fishermen to be his disciples, to touching and healing a woman, to casting out demons, to touching a leper who might as well have been dead, Jesus challenges the prevailing idea that only those who were already clean and already committed to upholding the law were the ones who belonged inside the religious community. And in our passage today, Jesus does it again. He calls one of the most unlikely disciples to follow him in a redemptive move that confounds the religious community. Jesus has dinner with a tax collector.
A tax collector back then was not what we think of now. Tax collectors were also called tax “farmers” and would bid against one another for the right to collect taxes from a district for Rome. These were not Roman citizens, but Jews who had abandoned their people to make a living. They would pay Rome up front and for the next season tax as much as they wanted from the people, with all the extra profit going into their own pocket. They were like loan sharks, preying on the income of each person in their region so that they could become more rich. Being a tax collector was a secure and prosperous job, but it was also a lonely job. In a culture that valued community over individuality, tax collectors were like traitors to their own people. According to the Jewish purity laws at the time, a tax collector made any house he entered unclean because of his partnership with Rome and his abuse of his Jewish brothers and sisters.
Jesus not only invites this supposedly awful human being to follow him, he goes a step further and has dinner at his house. In that culture, table fellowship indicated intimate relations among those who shared it. You didn’t eat a meal with just anybody. You only ate with those who you absolutely trusted. It was also a place of reconciliation. If you had something against your brother and you wanted to set things right, you would do it over a meal. Breaking bread together and sharing the cup is not something only done today by Christians during communion. We do that because it was such a significant part of Jewish culture back then.
While eating a meal together was a sign of intimacy and trust, the Pharisees took it a step further. They considered the table in their homes as representations of the Lord’s altar in the Temple in Jerusalem. So when they sat down to a meal, they were envisioning themselves at worship. This is why the purity laws around food and who was at the table with them were so important to them. They wanted their homes to be a reflection of the purity that the priests maintained at the temple. That is why the Pharisees insisted on eating only with companions who were also in a state of ritual purity. The pharisees assume that Jesus, as a Rabbi, shares their religious convictions and they are shocked when he goes so far outside them. By sitting down to eat with tax collectors and sinners Jesus demonstrates that these outsiders have been adopted into fellowship with God and that was more important than religious piety or ritual purity. The Gospel is for everyone no matter how far outside the community they are.
When the Pharisees ask whyJesus does this crazy thing, he responds with a sentence that is clear as day. It’s not a mysterious, hidden message. The healthy don’t need a doctor, but the sick do. The righteous don’t need repentance, but the sinners do. The worshipping community does not exist for the ones on the inside, but the ones on the outside. It is the same for the church. Jesus came to call the sinner to repentance. So if you were that sinner and you have repented, then the focus of the Gospel is no longer on you, it is on those who are still outside who need to hear the invitation to repent. The Gospel is for everyone, so if you have already experienced that healing from the sickness of sin by our Great Physician, then your job is to look for others who are also sick with sin and in need of that healing touch from God.
Who are the Levi’s in our community? Who are the ones who seem to be the most unlikely disciple, the most unlikely follower of Jesus? Can you take a moment to imagine who that might be? Do you know someone who fits that description? That is who Jesus would invite over for dinner.
The next scene in this passage expands on the theme of outsider and insiders. The Pharisees and disciples of John the Baptist are all fasting. Now fasting was only required on the Day of Atonement, but frequent weekly fasts had been adopted as a regular practice by many religious Jews. Since Rabbi’s were responsible for the behavior of their disciples, they are confused why Jesus would allow his disciples to forgo fasting since it is a common practice of piety. Everybody does it. It’s part of what it means to be faithful and holy. So if you’re such a great Rabbi, why aren’t you and your disciples doing it, too?
Jesus answers their question with a question of his own, something Jesus actually does a lot. How can the guests of the bridegroom fast when he is with them? Jesus is doing a lot with these few statements. He’s reminding the Pharisees that throughout the entire old testament God often refers to his covenant with Israel as a marriage covenant. And by referring to himself as the bridegroom, Jesus is making the claim that He is God. He has done this before when he declared the sins of the paralytic man forgiven and when he healed he leper. He’s foreshadowing his death when he says that the day will come when the bridegroom will be taken away. Even at this stage in his ministry, barely into the second chapter of Mark, Jesus knows the end of the story.
And then Jesus talks about wineskins. Since we don’t make wine this way today let me explain what he’s referring to. Back then, they would pour the unfermented grape juice into a leather bag that was new, meaning still stretchy. As the juice fermented and became wine, it would expand and so the skin would expand. You couldn’t put new wine, that had not yet fermented, into old wineskins or it would explode. With this imagery, Jesus is saying that the new covenant between God and humanity would not fit in the old way of doing things. The Gospel was now for everyone, including the most outrageous outsider imaginable.
Levi was not living a just and holy life, but he was open to Jesus invitation. And Jesus didn’t balk when Levi invited him to his home, something that technically Jesus should not have done. We saw Jesus do this last week when he touched the leper. The call of Levi and Jesus’ feasting with sinners discloses the contrast between a religious attitude that keeps sinners and the unhallowed at arm’s length and one, the good news of God, that welcomes all comers. My prayer is that this church would one day be full of sinners and tax collectors, the ones we would never in our wildest dreams imagine lifting their hands in worship, the ones who are not yet holy but are open to saying YES to Jesus. Because the church does not exist for those who are inside it. We exist for those who are outside. The Gospel is for everyone.