The Righteous and the Sinners

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday morning, January 24, 2021.  The Bible verses used are Mark 2:13-17.

            Who did Jesus come to save?

            Well, it’s a silly question, right?  Jesus came to save everybody.  That’s one of the basic beliefs we have as Christians.  John Three Sixteen tells us that whoever believes in Jesus shall have salvation and eternal life.  And that thought appears all throughout the New Testament.  Salvation and eternal life are available to everyone who believes in Jesus Christ as the Savior.

            But with that in mind, let’s look at our Bible reading for today.  Jesus is walking along the lake.  There’s a crowd there, and Jesus is talking to them, teaching them as he walks along.  Eventually, they come near a booth.  It’s the booth of a man named Levi, who’s a tax collector.

Now, we’ve talked about this in the past, but it’s important that we remember what a tax collector was back then.  The Roman government’s tax system was completely different from the tax season we’re familiar with in the United States.

            The way it worked is that, if you were hired as a tax collector, the Roman government told you that you were responsible for turning X dollars over the Roman government.  That was all.  The Romans did not care where you got the money.  They did not care how you got the money.  They just cared that you turned the right amount over to them when you were supposed to.  As long as you did that, the Roman government did not care about anything else.

            And the Roman government did not pay you for doing this.  The way you got paid is, whatever you could collect over the amount the Roman government wanted was yours to keep.    So, obviously, tax collectors had a reason to try to collect as much money as they could.  And because the Romans did not care where they got the money, there were literally no legal boundaries to what tax collectors could do.  They would take as much money as they could, and they were not concerned about fairness or morality or anything else.  All this meant that tax collectors were, by and large, quite rich.  But it also meant that tax collectors were, by and large, very much disliked by the people.

            So that’s who Levi was.  That’s the guy Jesus saw at the tax collection booth.  And the way it’s written, Jesus says to words to him.  “Follow me”.  And were told that Levi got up and followed him.

            That’s an amazing thing, don’t you think?  It’s amazing on two levels.  One of them is that Jesus would choose to call this man, Levi, a man who had gotten rich by taking other people’s money, with no regard to fairness or morality, to follow him.  And the other is that Levi, this man who had gotten rich by taking other people’s money, with no regard to fairness or morality, would actually get up and follow Jesus.

            And then, listen to this next sentence.  This is an amazing thing, too.  “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.”

            In other words, Levi was not a fluke.  Levi was not the one remarkable tax collector who had a change of heart and followed Jesus.  There were a whole bunch of tax collectors who followed.  All these people, who again had gotten rich by taking other people’s money with no regard to fairness or morality, all started following Jesus.  That’s incredible.

            And of course, it was noticed.  Among those who noticed was the teachers of the law, who were also Pharisees.  And they asked about it.  Now, notice, they apparently did not have the courage to go to Jesus directly and ask him about it.  No, they went to the disciples.  And they asked the disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

            And by the way, this was not just an innocent question.  They were not just asking for information.  The Pharisees were already opposed to Jesus.  They already looked at him as an enemy.  They thought this was a put down.  They thought they could give Jesus a bad reputation.  They were going for guilt by association.  “Look at the kind of people Jesus spends time with.  What does that say about him, that he spends time with these lowlifes?  After all, a man is known by the company he keeps, right?  If Jesus hangs out with that kind of person, well, I guess we know what kind of person he is.”

            Jesus hears what they’re saying, of course.  And he answers them, even though they did not ask him directly.  And what does he say?  “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

            That response must have stunned the Pharisees.  I mean, they considered themselves “the righteous”.  And they had no doubt about that, either.  And they were sure that if and when the Messiah came, they’d be the ones he came to.  The righteous Pharisees.  Not these riffraff.  Not these thieves and cheaters.  Not the “tax collectors and sinners”.  The Messiah would come to the best of the best.  And of course, that’s who the Pharisees thought they were.

            So, which do you think you are?  And which do I think I am?  Are we among the righteous?  Or are we among the “tax collectors and sinners”?

            Now, let’s not answer this right away.  Let’s think about it a little.  Because the easy answer, the churchy answer, is to quote Romans Three, Twenty-three and say “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  We say, therefore, that we’re all sinners.

            And that’s true, of course.  We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  But here’s the thing.  Do we really believe that?

            I know we say it.  And I know that, in our heads, we know it’s true.  But do we really believe it in our hearts?  Do we really believe it in a way that affects the way we think and speak and live our lives?

            Each of us has to answer that for himself or herself.  I cannot answer it for you.  I would not presume to try.  It’s not my place to judge you.  But I ask you to really think about it.  In fact, I ask you to pray about it.  Do you consider yourself among the righteous?  Or do you consider yourself one of the “tax collectors and sinners”?

            The reason I ask you to really think about it, and to pray about it, is that I know how easy it is for us human beings to justify ourselves to ourselves.  It’s human nature.  We can excuse almost anything we do if we want to badly enough.  In fact, we can convince ourselves that almost anything we do is good, is right, is exactly what we should be doing, if we want to badly enough.

            And you know another thing we human beings are good at?  We’re really good at not thinking about things we don’t want to think about.  That’s human nature, too.  We’re really good at doing something and just not allowing ourselves to think about the consequences of it.  We just don’t think about how what we’ve done affects other people.  We compartmentalize it and ignore it and pretend that it did not even happen.

            And there’s one other thing we human beings are good at.  We compare ourselves to other people.  We may realize we’re not perfect, but we think, well, I’m not all that bad.  Look at all these other people.  I’m a lot better than they are.  So, I must be pretty good.

            And because of all this, it’s very easy for us to excuse our sins.  It’s very easy for us to pretend that our sins are not really sins.  It’s very easy for us to think that we’re better than someone else, and so we must be okay.  In fact, we’re better than okay.  We’re just fine.  Maybe we’re not perfect, but we really don’t need to change much of anything, either.

            Again, this is not aimed at anyone in particular.  This is simply human nature.  I’m as subject to it as anyone.  The reason I can talk about all these things is because I do all these things.  And I do them repeatedly.  That’s why I can talk about them--I’m intimately acquainted with all these things.

            Because of all this, even though we say we’re all sinners, it is very easy for us to consider ourselves among the righteous.  And so, we come back to Jesus’ statement.  “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

            That does not mean that what we said at the start of this message was wrong.  Jesus did come to save everybody.  But we cannot hear Jesus’ call, we cannot truly accept it, if we consider ourselves righteous.  We can only hear Jesus’ call, and we can only truly accept the salvation that Jesus offers, if we truly realize we are sinners.  Not just realize it in our heads.  Not just say the words.  But know it in our hearts.

            The reason for that is that we can only accept salvation by repenting of our sins and asking for forgiveness.  And we can only do that if we truly know, in our hearts, that we are sinners.  We can only do that if we stop justifying ourselves to ourselves.  We can only do that if we acknowledge and understand how the things we do affect other people.  We can only do that if we stop comparing ourselves to others and start comparing ourselves to Jesus.  Because if we truly compare ourselves to Jesus, we’ll understand what sinners we really are.

            When we understand that, we can come to Jesus humbly.  We can come to Jesus repenting of our sins and asking forgiveness.  And when we come to Jesus that way, we can hear Jesus say to us, as he did to Levi, “Follow me.”  

And we can follow, knowing that our sins are forgiven and that we truly do have salvation and eternal life.