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JESUS – His Life, His Mission. Open Your Home To Ministry, Mark 2:13-17

Open Your Home To Ministry

Mark 2:13-17

 

What would you do if your wedding band ended up in a garbage truck? would you make arrangements to get it replaced or search through literally tons of trash? Collen Dyckman, who lived in Babylon, New York, located on Long Island outside of New York City, accidentally threw out her wedding ring after cooking dinner Sunday night. She only realized it was missing the next morning. But, by that time, the garbage truck had already come by and taken the trash. She ran out of the house and chased down the garbage truck and its driver.

 

The driver then called Edward Wiggins, sanitation site crew leader at the Town of Babylon’s Department of Environmental Control. Wiggins said he had the driver immediately stop his route and the driver and Collen started digging through the trash in his truck. New York City trash. Six tons of New York City trash. He dug around in it for about three hours. Collen said, “In that moment I thought…I’m not going to find it. I didn’t see it. It’s not in there.”

 

But finally, after four hours they spotted the lost ring. Dyckman said she was brought to tears. To show her appreciation, she later baked brownies and bought pizza pies and cookies that she took to Wiggins and his team during lunch. “We’re really glad we were able to help her and get her ring back,” Wiggins said today. “To be honest, in the 41 years I’ve been here, we’ve only been able to successfully recover lost items three times.”[i]

 

Reminds me of the time Becky and I jumped into the dumpster over at Eastern Elementary School to find Aubrey’s retainer. After lunch. On goulash day. It wasn’t pretty. But we found the retainer. But if the dumpsters had already been emptied into a trash truck? We can buy a new retainer. For a wedding ring though … we’d all go through the trash I’d guess. But would you go through a trash truck. I certainly admire the value she places not just on the ring, but on the marriage that the ring symbolizes. But going through a trash truck? How far would you go for something valuable that was lost? How far would you go for someONE valuable, that you had lost a relationship with? As we continue our journey through the Gospel of Mark, looking at the life and mission of Jesus, we find Jesus going to extremes to find, and connect with, people who were really, truly, lost. Turn with me to Mark 2:13-17.

 

We’re fairly certain that this Levi is also known as Matthew, one of Jesus’ disciples. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story in their gospel, with Mark and Luke calling the man Levi, and Matthew calling him Matthew. So it’s possible that Jesus renamed Levi Matthew, just as he renamed Simon Peter. The confusion comes in because in all three of those gospels, when they list the 12 Jesus chose to be his disciples, they all list Matthew, and also someone named James, son of Alphaeus. So it’s also possible that this Levi was also James, son of Alphaeus, or that Levi/Matthew and James were brothers. And James gets the designation “son of Alphaeus” because there was another James, as in James and John the fishermen, among Jesus’ disciples. We do know that Matthew and Levi are identified as tax collectors, and that Matthew tells the same story using almost identical language and calls the man Matthew, so it’s likely that Matthew and Levi are the same person. Regardless, this person is a tax collector.

 

Actually, a better term might be tax farmer, because of the way the Romans set up their system for collecting taxes from subjugated peoples for Rome. Tax collectors were people who were a part of the group being taxed who contracted with Rome to collect taxes from the people in the area they were responsible for, plus enough to cover their own “salary.” So it shouldn’t really come as a big shock that most tax collectors took more for themselves than most people thought they should. No one really likes paying taxes to the government in the best of circumstances. Paying taxes to a conquering, oppressive regime like Rome in the first century was even worse. And tax collectors were known to cheat people, taking more than was really necessary to live reasonably in their area. So they were viewed as cheating, turncoats who colluded with Rome and profited excessively from their own people, and lived far more lavish lives than the people they taxed.

 

Because of this, although they lived comfortable lives materially speaking, they were outcasts from society. Their only friends were others who held the same position, and possibly some of their regional Roman connections. Tax collectors were disqualified from serving as a judge in the community. They weren’t even allowed to testify in court as a witness. Their word wasn’t trusted. When someone took a position as a tax collector, they were excommunicated from their synagogue. They were considered cut off from God. And their disgrace in the community extended to their family, so their family often wrote them off as well, considering them dead. They had betrayed their people, rejected their heritage, despised their temple, and renounced their God.

 

The first disciples Jesus called were fishermen, undereducated men of low social status. Levi took things a step further. Yes, he was wealthy, but he had a shady reputation. He was basically an ancient mobster without all of the family connections. Was this the tax collector Peter, Andrew, James, and John had to deal with? Had he cheated them? How do you think they felt about Levi joining their group. They may have been lower class than most, but at least fishing was honest work. Tax collecting? Not so much. But Jesus extends to him the same call he’d extended to them.

 

Jesus sees in people something others can’t, something the person he calls can’t see in themselves. When other people look at us, or when we look in the mirror at ourselves, we see what the world tells us we are, what circumstances and events and genetics have shaped us into. Jesus sees the beautiful man or woman he created us to be, the beautiful person he can transform us into. Like the person who cleans their house before the cleaning service comes in to clean, we think we have to clean things up so that God will love us. But that isn’t how it works.

 

In the week or two leading up to the fair in 2012, the fair at which Zeke died, our well was going in and out. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. It made it difficult to keep up with laundry and dishes and things like cleaning bathrooms and the kitchen. I was camping at the fair with the kids and Becky was going back and forth, doing a load or two of laundry when she could (actually, I think she was using someone else’s washer to clean our dirty fair clothes each day). So she was basically in and out. In short, our house was a total wreck. When Zeke died, two of the moms from our 4H club went to our house while we were at DeVos down in Grand Rapids and cleaned our house for us. They did laundry at the neighbors. They cleaned and scrubbed and washed everything, knowing that our family was traveling into town to be with us when we got home.

 

When I found out that they had cleaned the house, I cringed, and asked, “Who cleaned the master bathroom?” And Jackie Kaschel, who will be preaching here in May when I’m gone, raised her hand. And may have grimaced a little, because it was bad. Really bad. But she waded into the mess and cleaned that bathroom from floor to ceiling. Why? Because she’s our friend and she loves us and she wanted to help. That’s what Jesus does. He steps into the mess, sees the stains and the spills and the untidiness, and he cleans it up for us. Why? Because he loves us.

 

You see, his call is a transforming call. Peter, Andrew, James, and John left everything they had known to follow Jesus. Their lives were forever changed. But honestly, if things went south, they could go back to fishing. In fact, after the crucifixion, that’s exactly what we find them doing. But Levi? He couldn’t go back. The Romans wouldn’t renew with a tax collector who’d walked out on his contract. And if he’d stayed as a tax collector, he would have needed to radically change his business model.

 

I find it interesting that tax collectors flocked to Jesus. In Luke 3, Luke tells us that “Tax collectors (notice the plural) also came to be baptized.” And when they did, they asked him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do” (Luke 3:12-13). Jesus didn’t tolerate their dishonest, cheating lifestyles. He didn’t leave them the way he’d found them. He also didn’t force them to change. He simply invited them to allow their relationship with him to completely transform them. By reaching out to and loving tax collectors, Jesus wanted to transform not just their own lives but the way they engaged in their business. Only Jesus could look at a group of thugs and cheats and see honest tax collectors. Honest tax collector – sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it? But that’s what Jesus saw.

 

Zacchaeus was another tax collector who came to Jesus. And when he did, realizing how dishonest he’d been, said to Jesus, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold” (Luke 19:1-10). That’s radical transformation. If he gave half of what he had to the poor, and out of the other half repaid anyone he’d cheated four times the amount he’d cheated them, how much was going to be left for him? Zacchaeus made himself poor! He left himself with nothing. He didn’t try to come to Jesus and not change. He was radically transformed by his encounter with Jesus. So was Levi.

 

No one is beyond the forgiveness and healing and hope Jesus offers. No one. Someone once had a cross given to them by a friend with the inscription, “Hope raises no dust.” If you “Hope raises no dust” into the Google search engine, you’ll find that the phrase was originally uttered by Paul Éluard, a French poet associated with Dadaism. So then if you look up Dadaism, you’ll find this definition: “The Dada movement tried to express the negation of all current aesthetic and social values and frequently used deliberately incomprehensible artistic and literary methods.”

 

Then you’ll find some of Éluard’s other famous quotes – quotes like “Elephants are contagious” and “Earth is blue like an orange.” All of this brings us back to “Hope raises no dust.” Everyone believes hope is vital to people, but most folks’ hope is about as vague as the Éluard quote painted on that little cross. But for followers of Jesus, hope is not vague. We have a hope that is historical, personal. We know a hope that stands in front of the empty grave of Jesus and clearly preaches, “You, too, can live as Jesus does!” That’s what drew tax collectors to Jesus. Hope that for them, things could be different. That their story wasn’t yet fully written. That Jesus could transform even people with shady reputations like them.

 

Now, look at what happens next. Look at Vv. 15-17. MANY tax collectors and sinners are enjoying a meal with Jesus. Why? Because MANY of them had followed him. Mark tells us it was in “his house,” but he doesn’t specify whether it was Levi’s house or the house in which Jesus was staying. The language does seem to indicate that Jesus, not Levi, is the host of this meal though. He wasn’t just invited to a meal at Levi’s house and accepted the invitation, he planned and carried out the meal himself. He was the host. And it wasn’t just a meal for the many tax collectors who found Jesus. Mark tells us that there was another group there. A group he simply calls “sinners.”

 

But notice that he doesn’t use the wording “other sinners.” It’s more like a title or technical term. Just “sinners.” It’s a class of people the Pharisees viewed as inferior because they just really weren’t all that interested in God or the things of God. To be honest, the kind of people who might decide to become tax collectors, but probably other things as well. It wasn’t that they were out there trying to do evil things. They just didn’t pay all that much attention to God or to the Law of Moses. They did what they thought they had to do to make their way in the world. And because they weren’t interested in living like the Pharisees lived, they didn’t tithe or observe the food laws. So they too were outcasts. And Jesus is having a meal with them.

 

And the scribes of the pharisees didn’t like that at all. How could an obviously powerful Jewish teacher do something like that? You see, while the “sinners” basically ignored the law of God, the Pharisees were deeply devoted to it. They tried to strictly keep the law of God in their own lives. They were laymen, not priests, who sought to extend the laws regarding ritual purity usually reserved for the priests into the lives of everyday people. The especially latched onto laws that classified things, and times, and people according to different degrees of holiness or unholiness. For them, everything and everyone was divided into good-better-best and bad-worse-worst. And they only associated and ate with those who were in the good-better-best categories, preferably the better and best. And Jesus was eating with the worst. Or more likely the worst of the worst – tax collectors and other sinners. He has opened his home to them, not just to have a party, but to introduce them to a transformed life.

 

The pharisees look down on sinners. Jesus looks for them. The pharisees want to keep sinners at arm’s length, preferably farther than that. Jesus invites them into his house and eats with them. He doesn’t just feed them and then hide in the kitchen. He eats with them. He identifies with them. He places them on the same level as himself. And the pharisees aren’t happy about that at all. It’s possible that Peter, Andrew, James, and John are wondering about this too, because the Pharisees ask THEM what in the world Jesus is doing. But as always, Jesus knows what’s going on, because he’s doing what he’s doing on purpose, trying to get them to question their own assumptions.

 

And he quotes to them a common proverb that they all knew and accepted as true. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” Well, duh. Can you imagine going to a doctor’s office and seeing a sign on the door that said, “Sick people not welcome here. If you have the flu, or strep throat, or Covid, or diabetes, you’re on your own.” Okay, we do see signs today telling people to stay in their cars if they’re sick, but only so that the medical staff can bring them in safely so that they don’t infect other. But we don’t see signs on doctor’s offices saying “We only do physicals for healthy, whole, fit people. All others need not apply.” No! Doctors wade into the mess with us and help us find healing.

 

The sad thing is that the pharisees didn’t get Jesus’ joke, or realize that they were the butt of that joke. They were living as if only the righteous, the healthy and whole were allowed to come to the doctor. And then he says, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” At this point in his ministry, Jesus doesn’t yell at them or judge them or flip over tables in their faces. He gently invites them to reconsider their own perspective on both the sinners and themselves, to find the sin sickness in themselves. But they can’t do it. Can you? Where do you find yourself in this story? In the tax collectors and sinners who can’t believe that Jesus is willing to wade into your filthy mess and offer to clean it up and transform you? Or in the pharisees who don’t want “those kinds of people” hanging around them. Not in their synagogues, and certainly not in their homes?

 

Jesus doesn’t classify people into groups: holy and unholy, clean and unclean, righteous and sinners. He welcomes all who will come, gathering them together in his embrace. And he transforms all who come. The tax collectors needed to come up with a new business model, and in the case of Levi, Matthew, give up tax collecting all together, making it something he could never return to if he walked out on his contract with the Romans. The pharisees needed to give up their categories and their avoidance of those who didn’t fit their mold. They needed to recognize their own sin-sickness and allow Jesus to transform them too. Where do you find yourself in this story? And who do you need to invite into your home, into your space, so that they can see and experience Jesus in you? Jesus climbs into the trash trucks of this world seeking people of value who have been lost.

 

During the Middle Ages English law provided a way for “sinners” to find refuge. When a criminal or debtor wanted to flee to safety, he would travel to the famous Durham Cathedral and plead for asylum. The runaway banged on the cathedral’s north door, using the enormous bronze sanctuary knocker …. Then the fugitive desperately clung to the knocker’s ring, waiting for someone to usher him in and toll the church bell to notify Durham’s citizens that a felon sought sanctuary. (At night, two men waited in a room above the north door, looking for sanctuary seekers arriving in the dark.)

 

Once inside, the criminal confessed his crime to a priest, surrendered his weapons, paid a nominal fee and donned a black gown. He lived in a railed-off alcove above the southwest tower, and within thirty-seven days decided whether to stand trial or leave the country. If a criminal chose to “quit the kingdom,” the law afforded him nine days to exit England’s borders, traveling solely on the king’s highways. For the journey, he wore nothing on his head and a long white robe. He carried only a wooden cross.

 

For centuries, this sanctuary principle remained the same: if you’ve committed a horrible crime, run to the church for protection. During this anxious journey, signs of the cross often pointed the way. Stone crosses inscribed with the word Sancturarium stood as signposts along the highways, leading sinners to their haven ….

 

This practice blessed the repentant offenders with forgiveness and a clean start. Today, it’s difficult for us to condone this protection. Offering asylum to criminals? Their presence taints a community, a country. They should be punished. We do not like such lavish compassion.

 

Thankfully, God’s love flows deeper and wider than we can imagine. So does his mercy. Early medieval sanctuary laws can only faintly reflect God’s endless patience. Whatever sin we commit, however many times we fail, he forgives us. God waits in the night of our souls, swinging open his broad door of grace when we flee to him and repent. He accepts us however we arrive.

 

During the medieval sanctuary process, signs of the cross accompanied sinners in and out of asylum, stepping them toward an altered life. Today, Christ’s cross bears the same promise of forgiveness, helping us find refuge in God’s grace. But God doesn’t banish us from his kingdom or force us to stand trial. When we slip back into life, spiritually we are totally free. Wearing robes of white, carrying the sign of the cross – the mark of the King’s forgiveness – we can begin again.[ii] ANYONE can begin again. And that’s good news. Let’s pray.

[i] Avianne Tan, “NY Sanitation Crew Finds Woman’s Lost Wedding Rings After Digging Through 6 Tons of Garbage,” ABC News (11-16-16)

[ii] Adapted from Judith Couchman, The Mystery of the Cross (IVP Books, 2009), pp. 184-187