Eating with Sinners

When Jesus called a notorious sinner named Levi to follow him, there would have been talk. But what really got the gossip mill running was when Levi called all of his friends together and threw a large feast for Jesus. It was scandalous enough for Levi to suddenly be counted among the friends of Jesus, but to see Jesus with a whole group of people of Levi’s ink was too much. I am sure that if Jesus would have been lecturing them on ethics it would not have caused a stir, but the fact that the charge is made by the religious community that, “Jesus is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners…” shows us that in the midst of this less than religious crowd, Jesus actually enjoyed his invitations to dine with a crowd of folk who had a reputation for a highly sinful life-style.Tax collectors were viewed by the Jewish people as collaborators with a hostile oppressive government. Tax collectors made their living collecting taxes from their own people and then whatever was extra they got to keep for themselves. Because of their life-style and reputation for being thieves, their testimony would never be accepted in court. They simply could not be trusted to tell the truth. Yet, in the gospel of St. Luke we see a tax collector named Levi hear the call of God, leave everything, and follow Jesus. This is too much for the people who viewed Jesus with suspicion anyway. This was the final straw. This act of eating and laughing with the scum of earth was more than their religious respectability could stand.However, let’s look at this from Levi’s perspective for a moment. He really can’t be blamed for inviting all of his thieving friends over to meet Jesus. When Jesus called him, he was a thief, maybe even a drunkard, but he certainly wasn’t religious. You would never have found him at the times of worship; he would have never been allowed to enter the synagogue or the temple. And yet, as dirty as he was, Jesus called him to himself. He must have reasoned something like this. In fact he would not have reasoned at all, it would have been assumed, “Jesus called me when I was a tax collecting thief, this must be what he does, so I want all my friends to come meet him. If he accepts people just as they are, there is no need to invite all my nice friends over, I will just call all the people in my circle of friends.” This crowd that assembles to feast at Levi’s house would not have been like those people you see at Sunday School. They wouldn’t know that anything had happened in Levi’s life. He may have experienced immediate moral reform, but they didn’t know that, they just showed up for the party. Levi, because he wasn’t religious and had not been in a religious community would have not had time to warn his friends like we do today, “Watch what you say, we have a preacher coming for dinner.” No, he was called as a sinner, bad habits and all, and if Jesus accepted him “just as he was,” then why warn his friends that they should somehow be on their best behavior?Nothing got Jesus into more trouble than the people he ate with. For all the controversy of his teaching that he was the Messiah of Israel, it was his eating companions that stirred the ire of the religious community. You can’t say he was soft on sin, because people who heard Jesus’ call on their life, changed; they left their former life-style and became like Jesus. In fact, Jesus was harder on sin than the legalist. The legalistic religious people taught that if you were really good and tried really hard, you would find acceptance with God. Jesus, on the other hand, said that one little sin would damn your soul forever. What was it that caused the religious community to get so upset with the way Jesus seemed to accept and be accepted by sinners? It was simply this: Jesus’ acceptance of sinners, his mercy and grace to them, brought to light their repressed sins and the absolute lack of grace and charity that is part of the gospel story. It was like they were all patting themselves on the back for their external righteousness and when the real righteousness showed up, it showed their righteousness for what it really is, a counterfeit. It would be like a bunch of people decking themselves in fake Rolex watches, Oakley sunglasses, wearing fake jewelry and fake designer clothing like you buy from a street vender in New York, and suddenly someone walks in and has the real thing. It shows how fake you really are. If everyone is a fake it is no problem, but if someone walks in with the real thing, then you are exposed as a fraud.On the other hand, the sinners had no fake righteousness; they knew what they were. It was much easier for them to admit just how bad they were. But for the religious crowd, it was not so easy. They had to take off all their outward show of respectability, all the things they were using to gain God’s favor and admit that they were just as corrupt as the tax collectors. They had to admit that, for all their outward performance, they had missed the weightier matters of the law, which is to be drenched in the divine charity. It is not until you know how bad you are and admit a real need for a savior, that you can really love anyone, certainly not the kind of people Jesus constantly found himself among and eating with. The one thing I never hear said in criticism of the church in our age is the main criticism that was leveled at Jesus and the company he kept, “They are drunkards, gluttons, and friends of sinners.” The thing that is even worse than that is that the lack of this criticism doesn’t even bother us. If, as Jesus said, “A servant is not greater than the master,” what does this mean for us? It is a question that haunts me. So, this summer I am doing a series of sermons addressing this issue called, “Eating and Drinking with Jesus.”