Mark 2:13-17
The Calling of Levi
Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. 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.
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. 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’?”
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.”
Psalm 147:1-3, 10-11
Praise the Lord.
How good it is to sing praises to our God,
how pleasant and fitting to praise him!
The Lord builds up Jerusalem;
he gathers the exiles of Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his delight in the legs of a man;
the Lord delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.
About 10 years ago, it is now, I used to sometimes watch the TV series The Apprentice. I don't know if ever you used to watch that. It was quite good fun. Sometimes it was cringeworthy. But the premise was that the business magnate Alan Sugar would assemble a team of young prospective businesspeople. He'd put them through their paces and then gradually eliminate them week by week until one left standing, then he'd invest in their business proposal.
And one very interesting dynamic that you would sometimes see in The Apprentice is that there would often be two stereotypical candidates. The first one would be the very bolshy, confident one, who'd be basically saying in Alan Sugar's face, you've got to hire me, I'm the best there is. And then there'd be a very kind of understated, quiet one who just kind of stand on the sidelines and not look terribly impressive. And as we watched, we'd all be thinking, oh, it's certainly the bolshie one that Alan Sugar's going to like and give the job to. And often the other contestants would voice the same opinion. But it would regularly be the case that despite everyone's expectations, Alan Sugar would end up choosing not the confident, brash, natural leader, but the more quiet and steady person. It was an overturning of expectations.
The fact that Alan Sugar had a quite different ‘person spec’ to what we would imagine that he had. Person spec is quite a kind of language used in business. If you ever applied for a job, you'll know that often they have a person spec. Or if you've perhaps put together a job description, you'll know that the bullet points in the person spec are the kind of person you're looking for.
And in many aspects of life, we have such a person spec for expectations that we have of other people. This is especially true of our person spec for what counts as a good and decent human being.
What are the kind of things that we think makes somebody a good and decent person? Perhaps it's someone who dresses well, someone who is articulate, someone who's got good manners, Someone who's got a good job. Someone who's respected by the people around them.
The situation was not any different in Jesus' time. In his culture, people thought a good and decent person was one who had a good job, was respected by the community, who followed God's law and was a role model for others. And the religious leaders, the Pharisees, epitomized such a person. They had the most respected positions. They were faultless in their following of God's law. They were the poster boys for what a good and righteous person looked like.
And yet, just like Alan Sugar often did in The Apprentice, Jesus overturned expectations with his very different person spec for the kingdom of God. Jesus summarizes it in the last verse of our reading from Mark's gospel, when he says, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners”.
And so our reading begins with Jesus on one of his regular preaching tours around the Sea of Galilee. As he's going from one location to another, Jesus passes Levi, the tax collector, in his tax collecting booth. Probably a little chair, a little table, where he would collect taxes from passers-by.
Now we need to notice two very important things here. The first important thing is that Levi is the epitome, the embodiment of someone who fails spectacularly to meet the person spec for a good person in Jesus' day. He was a tax collector. In other words, in everybody's view, he was a traitor, not only collecting crippling taxes for the hated Roman occupiers, but also probably pocketing much of the proceeds himself.
The second important thing to notice is that Levi is not one of the people who is following Jesus. He's not gone out to hear Jesus. Rather, Jesus has gone out of his way to find Levi.
And so, before we go on with the passage, let's think about what this means for us today. If we're to think like Jesus does, in other words, not calling the righteous in inverted commas, but sinners, who is it that our culture sees as failing spectacularly to meet the good person spec? Well, let me suggest it's the grumpy, the difficult, the nuisance person, person we walk on the other side of the road to avoid talking to. It means the kind of people that our culture deplores interaction with.
Now if I can be a bit naughty here, I would say that our culture will praise you for helping the poor, but it won't praise you for showing kindness to certain types of offender, shall we say, who are the people that we are likely to be shunned by others for interacting with. Because make no mistake, if you spent time hanging out with a tax collector in Jesus' day, you would become a social outcast like them. Guilt by association.
And to our second point; Jesus going out to meet Levi. Are we expecting such people to kind of walk into church? Or like Jesus, are we going to meet them where they are? And I'm preaching to myself here. I'm not a good example of this. I know I need to go out to meet people much more than expecting them to knock on the door of the rectory to come meet me.
Because research consistently shows that the church grows when it goes out to people on their turf and on their terms, not expecting people to come on our turf and on our terms.
So now let's look at the next bit in our passage, which is the reaction of Jesus's going out of his way to meet Levi amongst the good and decent people of the Pharisees. And they are predictably disturbed by this. What they're especially annoyed by is that this is not a once-off, but much worse, Jesus has gone actually into Levi's house to eat with him. Can you imagine that? And much worse, there are loads of other detestable, deplorable people there.
And so, in their indignation they can't even talk to Jesus. So they ask his disciples, what possible justification can this so-called religious leader have for fraternizing with the enemy?
Now let's not be too harsh on the Pharisees. They just represent human nature. All of us is a Pharisee deep down. We run with the cultural herd around us in praising good people, in vilifying bad people. If you think back to The Apprentice, that Pharisee instinct is deep down when that confident candidate says, “surely Alan Sugar needs to pick me because I'm confident I'm business savvy. I'm not the mousy unpopular candidate over there. I deserve Alan Sugar's investments.”
And so, the Pharisees represent the default setting of the heart that does not know Jesus Christ. The heart which says, God approves of people who do good and rewards them, and God disapproves of people who do bad and punishes them. And by the way, I'm the kind of person who God approves of. To this attitude, Jesus answered, I have not come to call people who think that God approves of them, but to call people who know that God disapproves of them.
And here's the crucial thing we need to understand. It is true that God rewards good and punishes evil. But here's the thing. The Bible tells us no human can be in the good category by their own effort. And that's because God's person spec for belonging to the good category is not being ‘good enough’, but absolute perfection. What Jesus wants is not people who say, “Jesus accept me because I try my best and I'm generally a good person. I haven't assassinated anybody. I'm nice to my kids, etc., etc.” No, but “Jesus accept me because I'm not the good person.”
Again, this is the Christian message in a nutshell. For membership in his kingdom, God requires not goodness, but complete perfection. And all of us fail to attain this perfection. As Paul says in the book of Romans, “all have fallen short of the glory of God.”
But Paul goes on to say, but all can be justified freely by his gracious gift. This is the good news, that although we all fail to meet God's criteria, God qualifies us for membership in his kingdom unilaterally, taking the initiative in removing our imperfection and sin and giving us his own perfection.
Think of it like this. Imagine Alan Sugar sets the candidates what he knows is an impossible task, one which only Alan Sugar can fulfil. For all of us watching, the dynamic becomes clear. Alan Sugar is waiting to see which of the candidates will plough ahead foolishly and try and complete the task at their own strength, and which will humbly come back to him and say, “sorry Lord Sugar, but we can't complete this task by ourselves.”
The task of living a perfect life is equally an impossible one for us. And God doesn't cruelly set it to kind of tease us, but what he wants more than anything, more than attempts to complete the task independently, is for people to come back to him, rely on him so that he can lovingly and graciously complete the task for us.
So again, let's ask ourselves, who do we think will make a good candidate for becoming a Christian? Is it the intelligent, the articulate, the influential? Perhaps. But Jesus calls us to seek out the rejected, the untouchables, the moral outcasts.
I wrote this before some key events have happened in the news, and when we see evil things done we are tempted to think “thank goodness I’m not as evil as that person.”
So this week when we watch the news, instead of thinking “I kid you not they're a nearly really nasty person”, instead of congratulating ourselves that we're not like them, let's pray for them that they would come to know Jesus. Perhaps if it's people that we know that we don't really like in our lives, we can interact with them in a way that nobody else does, giving them a few minutes of our time.
This is all to tackle the Pharisee in our own hearts, which says “what God wants is good people like me, and he doesn't like bad people like that one.” But the truth is that Jesus is knocking on the door of all our hearts. He asks, “will you let me in?” And he says this: “When I come in, I don't want to see in the house of your heart all the things that you're proud of. All the things you think I'll be impressed with. No. I want you to show me your sin. The things you're afraid of. The things you're ashamed of.”
Because Jesus says this, “I can't do anything with your righteousness. It doesn't mean anything to me. Because what is it compared to the gold and righteousness of me as the son of God? But I will do something with your sin. I'll take it away and replace it with the gold of my own righteousness, my forgiveness, my approval, my love. Now, which is it going to be?”
And so if you've never let Jesus into your heart honestly to show him your sin, to really let him see all the things that you're ashamed of, here's the surprising thing. He won't tell you off. He won't say, “how dare you.” No, in fact, quite the opposite. What he wants is your sin. He wants to take it away and forgive you. He will give you peace and joy in return.
It's painful because we have to show him the deepest, darkest depths of our hearts. But it's so worth it.
So please today, right now, open that door. Be honest with him about all the muck that's in your heart. You won't regret it. So, wherever we are with Jesus this morning, let's open the doors of our hearts to let him in, to allow him to soothe our sorrows, to heal our wounds and to give us his own eternal joy.