The Friend of Sinners, Pt. 1
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People form lasting opinions of others within seconds. No matter how much time passes, some people just can’t seem to shake the way others see them Pastor Nick Gatzke introduces us to a man whose reputation made him one of the most hated men in town, and we’ll find out how Jesus approached him.
Dennis was a real piece of work. He was bigger than most of the other boys and faster too. Tall, muscular, dark hair, no shortage of freckles. He was the type of kid that you would see in the movies who wore a leather jacket and had two smaller kids on his flank that would egg him on as he stole your lunch money on the way to school in the morning. Reality wasn’t actually all that far off from that picture. In middle school, if he found you in the hallway after school alone, he would back you into the corner and maybe even pin you up against the locker just to see you squirm. And if he had something on you that he wanted, he might just take it for fun. Sometimes, that encounter was even met with a maniacal laugh as he walked away.
Back when I was in high school, hazing was still rather common, and it was probably my generation that took it way too far. That’s where Dennis found his true calling. In the freshman hallway, there was a large support beam from floor to ceiling and Dennis and some of his football lackeys would hang out waiting to identify one of those scared little freshman boys in the swarm as they walked to class. And after they identified their prey, they would pounce. Two of them would grab the unsuspecting freshman. The third, as he squealed and squirmed, would take a roll of duct tape and tear off a piece and put it right over his mouth. And then they would pin him up against that beam elevated in the air and use the whole rest of that roll of duct tape to suspend him in the air, just making their escape before the hall monitor arrived. The maniacal laugh echoing down the hallway as they fled.
Time caught up with Dennis, as it does for all of us. His self-serving lifestyle didn’t serve him all that well. And by the time he was 18, he was no longer the biggest kid. His friends had all graduated and he was still stuck in high school because he had flunked out of a couple classes. And quite frankly, not too many people liked him. Dennis was a real piece of work. I don’t know what happened to him. But I know that during the years that I knew him, he had few friends and even more enemies because Dennis made his reputation by picking on his own kind. And he was despised by many for that.
The announcement that the kingdom of God is at hand is starting to be met with some opposition. Jesus, in Mark 1 and Mark 2, makes the announcement, and then he goes on the dominance tour. And many are now amazed at his teaching and his miracles. He is one with unique authority. But not everyone wants to… submit to that authority or recognize the nature of his spiritual kingdom. You might remember when we talk about the kingdom of God and the announcement of the kingdom of God being at hand, that kingdom is a spiritual kingdom that’s marked by the rule and the reign of Jesus being present in men and women and boys and girls. People who submit to him and follow him there, his kingdom is present. But the question would remain, What types of people would be allowed into this kingdom?
Would the Dennis’s of the world receive an invitation? Or was this just for the religious ones or the ones from the right side of the tracks? And in Mark chapter two, all the way into the beginning of chapter three, we see five accounts of opposition that are starting to rise against. the king and the kingdom, and they display how different Jesus is as a king than what we might expect. Today we see account number two and account number three of opposition, and we pick it up in Mark 2:13. This is what it says.
It says, he, being Jesus, “went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. And as he passed by, he saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, follow me. And he rose and followed him. And as he reclined at the table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to the disciples, Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. Now, John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? And Jesus said to them, can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins and the new wine is destroyed. And so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”
The people are following Jesus around again. He was teaching them. It’s interesting that every account of Jesus’s ministry to this point has mentioned that he’s teaching them. This is the core of what he’s doing. And as he passes by the tax booth, he calls out to Levi, follow me. And he rose and he followed him. And it’s a short description of an encounter and it seems almost pedestrian in its nature, but it was anything but because Levi was a tax collector, the most hated of all of those in Jewish society.
You see, the tax system in Jerusalem was a multi-tiered structure that functioned sort of like a modern-day concept of a franchise. If you want to own a Chick-fil-A restaurant, you have to go through their training program. You have to be offered the chance to buy a restaurant. You have to purchase it. You have to sell the products according to the Chick-fil-A corporate list and standards. And you get to keep the profit as a franchise owner after, of course, you pay the ongoing franchise fee. Then you too can be a purveyor of God’s chicken. But in ancient Jerusalem, the government of Rome franchised the collection of taxes. The government of Rome, the occupying force, would set a tax goal for a section of the city. And a tax collector would then buy the rights to collect from that district.
And there are two types of taxes. There are stated taxes and duty taxes. Stated taxes were a fixed amount on things like income and crops and the like. A duty tax… was like a use tax on roads, harbors, carts, any types of equipment really. And here there was a tremendous opportunity for profit, but also a tremendous opportunity for corruption and extortion because the tax collectors had the ability to stop you at any time they wanted and say, hey, open up that bag. Let me see what’s in there. Oh, I think you owe me a tax on that. you have a bunch of tax collectors who got rich by overtaxing or exploiting their fellow Jews by raising more than the required amount by the Roman government on these duty taxes. And as such, everybody knew about it and everybody hated them. They were the lowest of the low.
Nazi collaborators in Europe during World War II were considered to be the lowest vermin in existence by their fellow countrymen. They bettered themselves by making nice with their vicious enemies and turning their backs on their own people for the sake of personal security and personal gain. Men and women alike were found to be collaborators to the Third Reich. Women who did so often slept with Nazi soldiers or officers. And after their… collaboration was discovered either through social gossip or pregnancy, in France anyway, they would mark these women out in society by shaving their heads so that everybody would know that she was a traitor.
Earlier, the Dutch government announced that they were digitizing millions of pages of records from World War II and were making them available to the public online. That in and of itself is an enormous task and will be a fascinating study in history. But there’s a fear that underlies the whole thing among the people of Holland. The fear is that… these records public will raise new suspicions and accusations, maybe even against them of their own relatives, their own forbearers, who may have been Nazi collaborators.
The Jewish tax collectors were Roman collaborators who made their wealth by taking from their own people while getting in the proverbial bed with the enemy. And Jesus just called one of them to follow him. And it gets worse. Because after the tax collector agrees in what we can only presume to be a fairly dramatic conversion, he leaves the tax booth and says, I want to celebrate this with all of my buddies. And all of your buddies. So why don’t you and the disciples come on over to my very nice house that’s made on the backs of all these people around us and have dinner together tonight. It’ll be a good jolly old feast. And Jesus and all the disciples went.
Some of the people notice who Jesus is hanging out with. That tends to happen when you’re with the wrong sorts. And so you can almost hear the old lady who walks by and catches what’s going on out of the corner of the eye and says, oh, that’s just too bad. He got in with the wrong crowd. Or the man that comes by and says, oh, he had such potential, but it’s all wasted now. And the scribes ask the question out loud that everyone is thinking, and they say to the disciples, why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? Now, some questions are asked with a neutral curiosity behind them. Other questions are asked laced with accusation, and this one is definitely the latter. You can almost hear the tone dripping off of it. Why does he eat with them?
And Jesus hears the question. And he gives them a very clear and direct answer in the form of a metaphor and then an explanation. He says in verse 17, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but the sinners. And Jesus’ response indicates a couple of important aspects of his purpose. Purpose number one, and very clearly, I have come to call sinners. And within that, there’s a recognition that is implicit, and it is the recognition of need. Because the Pharisees who separated themselves from the rest of society in an attempt to remain pure and righteous saw no need for a great physician. They saw a need to be pure, a need to be righteous, but their self-righteousness blinded them from seeing that no matter how hard they worked and how hard they tried, that nothing could actually heal the sin issue that was going on in their heart, and thus they would become pure. But Jesus indicates those who think they are well will actually remain sick because the physician’s not going to come to them. Those who think they’re righteous because of what they do, will remain unrighteous because their actions actually won’t heal the true sin that exists in them.
I’ll never forget the quote by businessman Michael Bloomberg, now a number of years ago. At the time, one of the richest men in the world, wildly successful, and when asked about how much time he had left on earth to accomplish the things that he wanted to accomplish, he expressed little or no doubt about what would happen to him on judgment day. Pointing to his work on gun safety, on obesity, on smoking cessation, he said with a grin, “I’m telling you, if there is a God, when I get to heaven, I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I’m heading straight in. I’ve earned my place. It’s not even close.”
You see, some people think that they have no spiritual need. Some people trust in their actions or their lifestyle. Others, and very commonly today, others rest in the notion that, well, I’ve always been a good person and I try to do what’s right. God’s gonna work it all out in the wash. It’ll be fine. But Jesus says, those who think they are well will not benefit from the work of the Savior. And so here’s the very clear diagnostic question for me and for you. Do you think that you’re well? Or do you recognize that your sin is a sickness that needs to be healed by the great physician. If you think you’re just fine without this physician, then you will not receive his benefit. But if you recognize your sickness, the physician comes.
And the amazing thing about it is that Jesus not only comes to the sick, but he actually befriends them. Jesus shows very early on, Jesus is the friend of sinners. He came to heal those who know that they’re sick and not those who think that they’re well. Those who know that they’re sick will get well because the physician is with them. And something amazing that happens here is that he chooses to illustrate this principle with the worst type of sickness, the worst type of corruption, the worst type of status. He chooses to illustrate the principle with Levi, the tax collector, who’s a Roman collaborator. No sin is too great. No status is too disgusting. Jesus is the friend of sinners, and Jesus is the friend of even the worst types of sinners. He’s a friend of Levi, the tax collector. Even the one with a sordid sexual history. Jesus is the friend of even the one who cheated or stolen from ones that they know. He’s even the friend of the one riddled with addiction. Jesus is the friend of the worst sinners, even you.
And so let’s pray. Let’s pray and thank him for the invitation of people who know they need him. People who are not well, people like me, people like you. Father in heaven, we praise you for your mercy and grace that your kingdom that knows no end and has no bounds even extends to the worst of the worst of the worst. God, when we think about ourselves, help us to see and to know our need among them. That we would not think of ourselves as being righteous or well, and therefore not in need of the great physician, but that we would know the prick of conviction upon us and the sweet mercy that comes from the invitation of the king. May more know this, experience this, love this king. May we find joy and express devotion in his nearness. We ask for this in Jesus’ name, amen.
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