One of the most difficult things for us as Christians to do is to reach out to people we don't like. One of the easiest ways to escape this uncomfortable chore is to label them immediately as a sinner, and thus avoid contact with them on "righteous" grounds. We even go to scripture to back up our hesitency to associate with such seedy individuals, after all, "bad company corrupts good morals."
While that may be true, we often rush to judgment on whether the company we are trying so desparately to escape is good or bad. Truth be told, if we turned the standards we use on others around and use them to perform a little self-evaluation, then we most likely would find that we shouldn't even be associating with ourselves!!
This is the reality behind these few verses from the gospel of Mark, which are centered on a tax-collecter named Levi. The society around him insisted on lumping Levi in with sinners, even though his activity wasn't illegal or sinful. Their disdain for him was motivated by their own nationalistic ideology, or more simply put their politics. Some will say that as a tax-collecter Levi was almost certainly over-charging, but I would suggest that to assume such things is to read more into the gospel than is actually there.
The real lesson to be learned is that sometimes our reasons for not liking someone have nothing to do with religion, morality, or righteousness, and that to our horror we sometimes discover that on the contrary, the people we dislike so strongly actually turn out to be people of faith and conviction. Can you imagine the reaction of Peter, Andrew, James, and John when Jesus says to Levi: "follow me!"? I think they probably reacted in one of two ways. The first way is skepticism: "Sure Jesus, you go ahead and ask that tax-collecter to follow you. There is about as much chance of that happening as there is of the pigs we can't eat sprouting wings and flying off!" The other would be one of shock: "You want to ask who to follow you? Levi?!?! That guy constantly has his hand in our pockets, and I suspect that it always takes out more than it should!" Peter might have been especially exasperated. I can imagine what may have been going through his head: "First he heals my mother-in-law who does nothing but nag me, and now he wants me to pal around with this guy from the IRS. This discipleship thing is not how I thought it would be!"
How do you think they responded when, to both their amazement and their horror, Levi got up and fell in with the other disciples, leaving his tax-collecting booth behind? Do you think it caused them to re-evaluate their previous opinions of him? As Jesus procedes to Levi's house, and enjoys a meal with both tax-collecters and sinners, do you think the disciples were perhaps a bit uneasy? We know that the Pharisees were, because they brought the issue up. And yet, all Jesus was doing was hanging out with those who were willing to hang out with Him. I think it's a powerful illustration that anyone; and I mean anyone, even "tax-collecters and sinners", can come into the presence of Jesus. In fact, ultimately we will be judged by our willingness, and even our eagerness to do just that. We can stand aloof insisting that everything is fine, in which case Jesus can do nothing for us. OR, we can do the scary thing, the thing that takes faith, and admit that there is much in our lives that needs to change. We can't heal illness by denying that it is present, nor can we deal with our own sinful nature by pretending to be righteous.
The real question, I believe, is not "what does this mean for me?" That question is important, but I think the real elephant in the room, the question that no one wants to ask is, "what does this mean for our churches?" Barring the doors of our churches to the sinner, or more specifically to the sinner who struggles with a sin different than the one I struggle with, is like a hospital refusing to accept the injured, on the basis that mending their wound would get blood all over the floor. We would never close the doors of our hospitals out of fear of the sick, after all, where would people go to get well? Why then, do we have a tendency to slam the doors of our churches in the face of sinners? Without Jesus what hope do they, or better yet what hope we do, have of being made well?
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