Hilton Head Island, SC – March 20, 2022
The Chapel Without Walls
Mark 2:13-17; Mark 2:18-28
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – 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.” – Mark 2:17
The Gospel of Mark is what might be called “the lean” Gospel. That is, of all four Gospels, it usually supplies the least amount of background information about the life of Jesus. For example, when it tells how Jesus called a tax collector named Levi (better known to us as Matthew) to become one of his disciples, it just says he did it. Specifically, Marks says that Jesus “saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting in the tax office, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he rose and followed him” (2:14.) Period; end of story. No explanation of why Jesus called Matthew, or why Matthew (Levi) agreed to become a disciple; he just got up from his tax office, walked out the door, and presumably never went back again. There had to be much more to that story than Mark wrote, but he didn’t bother to fill in any of the blank spaces.
Next Mark tells us that Jesus was “at table in his house” (2:15). This house was in the village of Capernaum, as was mentioned in last week’s sermon. And, Mark says that there were many tax collectors and sinners who were sitting around the table with Jesus and his disciples. But at this point we have been told that Jesus had named only three disciples: Peter, Andrew, and Matthew.
This whole episode occurs very early in Mark’s account, so we may assume that from the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus made it his business to hang out with some pretty disreputable characters. None of the followers of Jesus was listed in Who’s Who in Judea, but Mark has no interest in explaining why that was the case. It just was the case.
First-century Judean tax collectors were Jews who were employed by the Romans to extract taxes from Judean Jews, none of whom wanted to give the Romans a single shekel. Tax collectors were considered Jewish traitors. They had the reputation of being “on the take” in their mercenary activities on behalf of the Roman occupiers of Judea. Not only did they seize money from their fellow Jews, but they also were widely believed to take an unauthorized percentage of the taxes for themselves. Thus for Jesus to name Matthew as a disciple would be like him very publicly making Bernie Madoff a disciple. Mr. Madoff was a Jew who swindled wealthy Jews out of millions of dollars in his massive Ponzi scheme. This is how Galilean Jews would have perceived Matthew the Jewish tax extractor.
From the beginning to the end of all of the Gospels, we are told that Jesus frequently was seen in the presence of some very dubious people. He had two other disciples who also were not thought to be pillars of the community: Judas Iscariot and Simon the Zealot. Both of them may have been part of that group of anti-Roman cutthroats who quietly but effectively killed Roman soldiers on lonely roads. (It is not surprising that Jesus ended up on a Roman cross. With followers like that, the occupation army of Rome would be highly skeptical of Jesus.)
Then there were other, less lethal types who sought out Jesus, and whom Jesus sought out: prostitutes, adulterers, deliberate breakers of the religious law, and even Gentiles. The latter category will be addressed in next Sunday’s sermon. Back then, the most orthodox Jews had nothing to do with Gentiles. They didn’t necessarily treat them badly; they just ignored them altogether. And in speaking of “them,” of course we are speaking of “us.” But Jesus was not like that. He welcomed everyone into his presence, even Goyim. No one was ever excluded.
His rationale for that is explained in the second half of our first reading for today. Mark writes that “many tax collectors and sinners were sitting with Jesus and his disciples” (2:15). Then Mark says, “The scribes of the Pharisees” (who were among the most orthodox of the orthodox). “when they saw that (Jesus) was eating with tax collectors and sinners, said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’” Note: they didn’t have courage to ask Jesus himself; instead they asked the three disciples, who may then have been on the job for only a few days or weeks. Hearing them, Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (2:17).
Jesus may have said that softly, but it was not a soft statement. It was hard-edged. He was telling the leaders of the religious establishment that he didn’t seek out the type of people whom everyone admired and respected, and who were genuinely religious in the best sense of that word. If such people sought him out (and they did), it was okay, but he sought the kind of people who had bad reputations, either deserved or undeserved. He spent a good portion of his ministry in company with folks whom most respectable people would avoid like COVID-19.
In so doing, Jesus knew he was creating a lot of trouble for himself. The most influential religious leaders would be incensed by this. Nonetheless, Jesus never seemed to walk away from any trouble if he could provoke it.
Those who are essentially respectable and respectful of the laws of God are probably going to stay that way for their entire lives. But the sordid types that Jesus found, and who found Jesus, had a hard time keeping on the straight and narrow. Incidentally it was Jesus who put that notion into the everyday lexicon (see Matthew 7:13-14). As I said, Jesus welcomed everyone into his presence, but he especially welcomed reprobates, because they were the ones who needed what Jesus had to offer them, namely, the astonishingly good news that despite their deficiencies, they were loved and accepted by God.
Everybody needs acceptance, but too many people never get it. Some people are so stunted by where or to whom they are born or by circumstances or misfortune that they never get a break. Jesus frequently took note of that, and he was determined to do something about it. He particularly wanted to give forgotten people some encouragement in their lives.
But that makes trouble, because other people want to see to it that those kind of people who want and need help don’t get it. Widely despised troublemakers are people like Harriet Tubman or Martin Luther King or the Uighurs of western China or Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And they are despised by people like John C. Calhoun or J. Edgar Hoover or Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin.
Women who carry signs in front of the Supreme Court demanding that the right to abortions be maintained are reviled by people like Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, or Greg Abbott, governor of Texas. Socially ultra-conservative morals-police-types detest those who support humane restrictions on what is legal and what is illegal. Those with closed minds abhor those who are deemed “different” and unacceptable, such as homosexuals or transsexuals, or who are Black, Asian, disabled, or disfigured. Robert Burns, who had a rather sordid reputation himself, wrote a long, biting Scottish dialect poem about the self-appointed Puritans of the world. He entitled it Address to the Unco Guid (or the Rigidly Righteous). It began with these words: “O ye wha are sae guid yoursel/ Sae pious and sae holy/ You’ve nought to do but mark and tell/ Your neebours’ fauts and folly.”
Often those who insist on the most draconian measures against those they consider profligate sinners also feel the most morally superior to everyone else. Jesus brought out the worst in such people by his constant troublemaking with them. He did not back away from their taunts and reprimands; he seemed to welcome them, because it gave him a platform from which to denounce their hard-hearted disapproval.
The influential mid-twentieth century theologian Robert McAfee Brown said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” He was referring to rampant social injustices. Jesus refused to stay silent when the kingdom of God was threatened by the puritanically self-righteous who looked down their noses at lost souls who never had a chance to get ahead in life. There were droves of such people in downtrodden Judea. They were disadvantaged by the economic system, the religious system, and by the Roman occupation. Jesus had unlimited compassion for such folks, and he spent a large part of his short ministry tending to their needs.
Which Jesus is the true historical Jesus: the one who, in Matthew 11 says, “Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (11:30), or the one who says in Matthew 7, “Enter by the narrow gate: for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (7:13-14)? Two weeks ago I referred to the Qumran Community on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. I said that I am convinced John the Baptist was a member of that group, and that I am almost convinced Jesus also may have been a member. They were part of a small Jewish sect who were called Essenes. To use a longstanding Protestant term, the three main theological “denominations” in first-century Judea were the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. The Pharisees and Sadducees are often cited in the Gospels, but the Essenes are never mentioned.
The Essenes are told about in the writings of a late first-century Jewish historian named Josephus. He wrote a long history of the Jews, and also a history of the failed Jewish revolt against the Romans. Josephus depicts the Essenes as being celibate moralizers who lived in seclusion by themselves, waiting for the end of the world, which they believed would come very soon. (Might that remind you of contemporary Christian fundamentalist television preachers who constantly preach “apocalypse now,” proclaiming that the world will end very soon, and who rail against unbelievers, what they perceive to be sexual perversion, and who insist that their way is the only way to salvation?)
Because my mind is speculative about many things, I wonder if Jesus as an adolescent boy or very young man associated himself with the Essenes, and was strongly moved by their teachings, but then threw it over for a more liberated and liberating theology, in which God was a loving, all-embracing deity rather than a malevolent, judgmental tribal deity. But in his brief, three-year ministry he had not kicked over all his Essene traces (if in fact he had any), because he himself says some very stringent things here and there in all four of the Gospels. Since none of the Gospel writers ever heard him themselves, and they recorded only what others who did hear him said he said, what did he say? Using the question they used to ask on the old television quiz show called What’s My Line, “Will the real Jesus please stand up?”
Jeb Magruder was a high-level person in the Nixon Administration. Prior to that he had been a very successful businessman and was influential in California Republican politics. He was convicted of lying under oath in the Watergate aftermath, and spent several months in prison. He later graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and became a Presbyterian minister, retiring from the prestigious First Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Kentucky. He was the equivalent of the kind of person with whom all four Gospels tell us Jesus openly associated.
There is sufficient evidence in the Gospels on both sides to believe in an all-loving, all inclusive Jesus, or in a narrow, fierce, get-with-the-program-or-you’ll-get-thrown-into-hell Jesus. Which kind of Jesus do you choose?
You know how I have been ranting and raving about the Hargray Company going out of the email business, and how that has completely upended my relationship with technology, which has always been shaky anyway, as I have often said? Well, a few weeks ago I was in Best Buy, trying to get the stuff on my ancient Apple Iphone transferred over to my brand new Samsung Android phone. While there, I was waiting behind a young man who was also trying to get something done on his cellphone.
When he was finished, I was still behind a woman, and, not having anything else to do, I spoke to the young man. He said he used to spend twelve to fifteen hours a day on his phone, and now he is down to just six hours. He said he prayed to God to help him get his priorities straight, and now it has happened, he said. I, the ancient preacher, asked him if he had been raised in a church. He said he had. It was a very evangelical church, but he had run away from it and from home when he was still a teenager. Now, at last, he said he has a strong faith. It didn’t sound like it would be my kind of faith, nor maybe not yours either, but it seemed to be working for him.
I trust that what he said is true, but anyone who still spends six hours a day on his computerized, all-seeing, all-knowing cellphone might possibly not have all of his priorities in order. Christian people, we are all damaged goods. Jesus knew that, and therefore he accepted everybody, although he did not accept everything everybody did. In the last years of his life, he was mightily put off by moralists, people who sneeringly look down on the sins of others while ignoring their own sin of dispassionate judgmentalism. Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees were constant burrs under Jesus’ saddle, as was he under theirs.
Jesus was no kindly pushover. He told sinners of every variety that they must repent, and follow the dictates of the kingdom of God. But he also believed in those who had given up believing in themselves. That got him into trouble with the people Robert Burns called “the rigidly righteous.” They didn’t pound in the nails that impaled Jesus to his cross, but they convinced Pontius Pilate that for the peace of Judea, Jesus needed to be crucified. Thus, like many other such troublemakers throughout history, Jesus was obliterated.
Or was he?