You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. (Philippians 2:5)
As you begin, pause, take a deep breath, invite the Spirit’s leading, and focus your attention on the text.
What words or phrases stand out to you (is the Spirit highlighting)? Why do you think they are catching your attention?
What are you wondering about as you ponder the text?
Later, as Jesus left the town, he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Levi got up, left everything, and followed him.
Later, Levi held a banquet in his home with Jesus as the guest of honor. Many of Levi’s fellow tax collectors and other guests also ate with them. But the Pharisees and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with such scum?”
Jesus answered them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.” (Luke 5:27–32 NLT)
In Jesus’s day, the Pharisees and the Sadducees expected people to obey all 613 laws – and their interpretation of them – if they wanted to be considered part of so-called ‘true’ Israel. In other words, to be acceptable, you had do things their way – wear clothes, do your hair, listen to music, pray, eat your lunch, wash your hands, etc. – or else! Those who fell short, like Levi and his friends in this story, were labelled ‘scum’ and, as such, were excluded, rejected, and condemned. It was as if the religious leaders had posted a sign in bold letters around their holy huddle that read: NO UNDESIRABLES!
Yet, when Jesus comes among, welcoming and eating with those kinds of people, we discover that God’s ‘chosen’ don’t necessarily fit within our boxes or boundaries. In fact, according to Jesus, God’s Kingdom was and is quite different from how we often frame and package it – both then and now. For example, God’s Kingdom, as it turns out, is not about the love of law but about the law of love.
This contrary understanding was a hard reality for the religious leaders to embrace, perhaps a bit like us acknowledging that our computer is almost as outdated as wall phones, even though we just got it! It can’t really be so, can it? But the One calling is the One who “though he was God, did not think of equality with God as something to cling to” (Philippians2:6).
And Jesus’s call in Luke 5:32 is not only an invitation to healing and an inclusive and abundant Table but to a leave-everything-and-follow contrary way of life, through which we discover and participate in God’s Kingdom near at hand, the redemption of all things.
It’s like Jesus was adding something to the sign that changed everything. It read: THERE ARE NO UNDESIRABLES in the Kingdom of God. This was the good news Jesus embodied, taught in word and deed, and died to secure for all time and all people.
The question is: where are we in this story – and which sign are we posting?
Love Eternal, Love Divine.
Love pursuing a heart like mine.
The Christ.
Grace though disgraced.
Robbed yet rich in acceptance.
Extending Generosity before repentance.
Securing Relationship not the law.
Compassion never to withdraw.
Undeserved. Unearned. Undeniable.
No one labelled undesirable.
Relentless. Agonizing.
Reliable.
Love Eternal, Love Divine.
Love pursuing a heart like mine.
Dr. Karen Wilk is on the NAB Missional Initiatives Team in the area of Neighbourhood Life.