Eating and Drinking with Sinners
Read Mark 2:13-22
Reflect
It’s politician season again. Men and women line up to jockey allegiances and positions to switch the top chairs of authority in our countries’ leadership. A good campaign in our kingdom is about power, influence, wealth, and loads of lofty promises to fix, change, and overhaul. Kingdom expectations haven’t changed much over the centuries. Every body loves the powerful Jesus who drives out demons. They can’t get enough of the healing Jesus who proves capable of bringing new and real change. But dining with tax collectors and sinners is a moral campaign train wreck, unless His kingdom is truly new and different.
“Why is he eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?” These are the greedy and corrupt businessmen and their opportunistic companions – any who care little of righteousness and are more concerned about the company they keep than being of good company. And that’s where Jesus goes. Jesus obviously isn’t as religious as we might expect him to be. He isn’t careful to avoid the wrong company.
While dining with sinners Jesus reveals the real power and promise of his kingdom: He came to be with those who are sick in their souls and calls them him for healing. This is a different kind of message than the world markets in old clothes and dried up wineskins. There is far more to life than power, money, influence, and attention. It’s why we don’t fast on Sunday mornings around the Lord’s Table.
It would be easy to offer critique of the church for being more like the Pharisees and unwelcoming to the sinners of our world. I think “we” like it when “they” aren’t with us. But that’s an empty guilt-trip. Maybe it’s better to ask about my part in Christ’s kingdom, “How do I know if my soul has found healing?” Do I care about sick souls around me wherever they be – in the church, office, or home? Do I give of my precious time and resources to eat and drink with those caught up in our world, tempted to care more about themselves than anything else, and invite them to share a new kind of life in Jesus’ kingdom?
Keith Hileman
Respond
Pray for elder David Morgan, our children’s ministry teachers, and last names “I” in our church body.
Keith,
Good call to action. Don’t you sense a bit of a sea-change shift in modern evangelicalism? Maybe it is just because I have millenium generation kids but I watch their approach to faith and compare it to mine at their age and I sense a new generation of believers who expect faith to result in care and concern for the poor and oppressed. It is kind of neat and challenging at the same time.
Thanks for the comment John. I also sense a bit of a shift in thinking or ministry focus in the wake of post modernity. The refreshing thing from this text is that paradigm shifts are really not innovative within the kingdom…the whole of Jesus’ kingdom began and continues in the face of the best our cultures can offer. The proclamation of the Gospel is to have impact beyond our thinking and security and effect the relationships and society within which the Kingdom advances. That said, although the ministry focus (i.e. dinner guests) of the church may change across cultures and generations, the essence and identity of the church remains the same: sinners redeemed who find rest for their souls in Christ’s presence.