“We’ve never seen anything like this!” No, you bet, Jesus was a new thing, yet people kept trying to fit him into old boxes and old ideas. But that never quite seemed to work. Who was he, and why wasn’t he like anyone else?
We can’t really be critical of the scribes and Pharisees for trying to comprehend Jesus and figure out where he fit because the Church has been trying to do the same thing ever since the Church became an institution. Institutions have a way of requiring conformity, squeezing whatever comes along into some prescribed pattern of behavior that doesn’t threaten the status quo. For those of you who know Systems thinking, it’s similar to what happens in Systems: everyone works to keep the System functioning as it’s always functioned — even when someone within the system is trying to do a “new thing.”
Jesus was always doing new things, and in today’s story, what’s made abundantly clear is that old containers won’t suffice for this dynamic and life-transforming person. The scribes and Pharisees, of course, represent the old way — the way religion had been practiced and taught for thousands of years. You can’t blame these men, really, because they didn’t know any other way. Maybe they should have because, heaven knows, they’d had enough prophets through the centuries telling them that their rituals WEREN’T what God wanted, that God wanted people to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.” But they hadn’t listened to the prophets, and eventually, the voices of the prophets fell silent. Until John the Baptist, that is. John came along and said “Repent” — turn around and see things in a new way. It seems SOME heard his message, but like any new prophet who comes along, people also misunderstood.
And then along came Jesus. In many ways, he was lots worse than John. John after all, was an ascetic. He lived primarily out in the wilderness, and while people may have followed him out there, he didn’t much disturb the status quo within the city limits. And he even followed some of the rituals prescribed by religion — like fasting. John may have been on the fringes, but he wasn’t quite outside the box.
Not so, Jesus. He comes along and it’s almost as if he deliberately slaps the religious authorities in the face — or so they thought, though that wasn’t his intention. He was simply doing a new thing, and if that thing bothered the old guard, well, they’d simply have to learn to live with it. Or get rid of him if they couldn’t.
But that’s the rest of the story, and we don’t want to go there yet. Right now, we need to figure out why Jesus caused so much unrest and displeasure among the religious authorities. What was it about this man that caused so many people to love and follow him and so many others to loathe him? And where do WE fit in; what are OUR feelings about Jesus?
Maybe a look at today’s story will offer some clues. Jesus is walking along and sees Levi, a tax collector. Now a tax collector probably brings to mind someone from the IRS and while we don’t generally like the IRS much, we know that those who work there don’t make the rules, they just follow them. That’s quite different than a tax collector in Jesus’ day, a tax collector like Levi. You see, tax collectors worked for the Romans, so that automatically made them scum to the Israelites. On top of that, they were considered “sinners” of the first order because they often used dishonest accounting to line their own pockets. They were cheats — oppressing people who were already oppressed.
But Jesus calls to Levi. It’s significant that Jesus took the initiative in this call. Levi hadn’t beckoned to Jesus or asked to be included or forgiven. There isn’t even a mention of repentance. No, Jesus just calls Levi and tells him to follow him. And Levi does. And Levi seems so pleased by this invitation that he throws Jesus a dinner party. Now, as you can well imagine, Levi didn’t have many friends. Good citizens would have shunned his company, so tax collectors and sinners would have been his only friends. They were there because they are the only ones who would have come. And Jesus’ presence at dinner implied his acceptance of the other guests.
It’s not that Jesus necessarily approved of what tax collectors or the other guests did. It’s just that Jesus was always willing to take people where they were and invite them to follow. I think Jesus figured that his message would transform people because it offered them a new way to evaluate things. There wasn’t any coercion, just an offer of welcome and acceptance. And, if you’ve ever been on the margins or excluded, you know just how important it is for someone — anyone — to offer you acceptance.
And Levi’s way of thanking Jesus was to invite him to dinner. Eating has historically been an activity that nurtures human relationships even as it nourishes the physical body. In today’s world, we lose some of the meaning of sharing a meal because today’s lifestyles often preclude families from sitting down with one another at the table. We wonder why relationships in families are so often strained; maybe the lack of this simple gesture affords us a clue. Yet for some of us — just as in the ancient world of Jesus — inviting someone to dinner makes a statement. It says: “I want to spend some time with you.” And there’s something about gathering around a dinner table that lends itself to conversation and the building of relationships. It’s hard to look across the table at someone without speaking.
In Jesus’ day particularly, dinner was “the” social activity; nothing matched it. And whom you invited to join you — or whom you chose to accept invitations from — said a great deal about who you were. So, here’s Jesus — dining with tax collectors and sinners. If he wanted to “make a statement,” this one said it all.
And it did, for immediately the questions begin flying: “WHY does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Implied within this question are other questions: “Doesn’t he know any better? What’s his problem?” Jesus is pushing the envelope, no doubt about it. While those sitting around the table may have found their lives transformed, those on the periphery of THIS scene found his presence and actions radical and threatening. But Jesus knows what his purpose is: to demonstrate God’s incredible inclusiveness to the world. Mark’s gospel, if you recall, was written to Gentiles, people who didn’t figure they’d ever be included in the promises of the great God of Israel. Yet here Jesus is making it crystal clear: God welcomes you; God welcomes everyone.
That’s the new wine. The problem arises for those who try to fit God into old wineskins — old patterns. For THEM, the message bubbled over. Just as new wine bubbles and ferments and needs room in which to expand, so Jesus’ message needed open minds to hear it. But rather than being willing to let his message take seed and grow, many rejected it because they didn’t want their old ways crowded out by something new.
And that’s where the story applies to us. How open are we to newness? How willing are we to toss open our doors and welcome anyone who enters? Better yet, how willing are we to go outside our doors and welcome all those we meet? That can be threatening, can’t it? For if we do things like that, it might change us, it might change the way we do things and force us to look at ourselves in new ways.
One of my colleagues told the following story that I think sheds some light on the challenges of being receptive to newness. He tells of being the associate pastor in a church (UMC) in Charleston, SC, in 1968. He says: “Some of the saints in the church decided that it would be a wonderful idea to invite the Central Corrections prison choir to sing at a Sunday worship service. It would also be nice, they decided, to invite the inmates’ families to the service and have a wonderful meal for them afterwards. Apparently it never occurred to these people that while the church was still segregated, the prison wasn’t. So on the Sunday designated to have the inmates sing, the congregation arrived to find the sanctuary already half full of all God’s children of all colors. There was no problem having rapists and murderers in the choir, but no African Americans were to sit in the congregation! No one made a scene that morning; in this pastor’s words: “Southerners may be prejudiced but never let it be said that we aren’t polite!” But when the guests left the wine skin burst! The old skin couldn’t hold the new wine of a new day — a not-for-long segregated world.”
It’s amazing the kinds of things that can unsettle us. For some, it might be the kinds of people who show up at our doors. For others, it might be the new music that we’re asked to sing or the new ways we do communion. Or maybe it’s the new ways that the Bible is now being translated and interpreted — opening the possibility that there isn’t just ONE way, that maybe there are shades of interpretation and new ways to see things that WE thought were “cast in stone.”
I know how threatening such ideas can be for I remember my first few weeks at seminary. I came with all my learned and established ideas: God was omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent; God was also male. When I was corrected after calling God “he,” I silently muttered to myself and vowed never to change. God was male and that was that. And no seminary faculty or rationalization was going to change that! NOW, when I call God “he,” the word sticks in my throat and I wonder how it could have ever slipped out. But in order to get to that place, I had to be willing to hear a new message. I didn’t necessarily want to because it meant re-thinking so much of what I had previously learned. But as I listened — and listening is the key — I became convinced that God is far too vast to be contained by any gender.
There are many things that can push our envelopes and burst our skins. There are lots of things about the gospel that can make us uneasy, even threatened. “Love your enemies.” “Turn the other cheek.” What parts of this don’t we want to do? How about expanding the possibility of ecumenical dialogue — with those of other religions such as Buddhists, Muslims, Jews?
An article in The Kansas City Star reported on a 2-day conference held at the start of the new millennium.[1] One theologian stated: “We can’t enter the 21st century with the idea of God we learned in Sunday school.” Part of her reasoning behind that statement is that Christians in particular have isolated themselves from other religions when other faiths have much to teach us. “None of us owns the universe of faith,” she said, “…it’s time for all of our concepts of God (theisms) to be recognized.” Another speaker admitted to growing up with “an image of God as a stern lawgiver and judge who required obedience within a system of rewards and punishments.” That “monarchical model,” he went on to say, “has turned many people away from Christianity.” Desmond Tutu concluded the conference by saying: “NO religion can claim to have the whole truth about the mystery.”
Yet here we are, 12 years into the new millennium and not much has changed. Most adults still hold to the idea of God that they learned in Sunday School and many still claim to know the “whole truth.”
To be confronted with the possibility that what we’ve learned previously — particularly relative to our faith — might need to be changed or expanded is a pretty scary thought for many of us. If there’s one thing that wasn’t ever supposed to change, it was God! Well God hasn’t changed; we just need to open our minds and see God in all the fullness that God has always encompassed.
Jesus will keep inviting us to see things in new ways, to get beyond the ruts we’re in and embrace newness. If we’re willing to follow — and that remains a big IF — there will be many challenges for us, just as there were for Jesus. There will be those who say we’ve strayed and others who will say we’ve lost our faith. But faith is a journey, remember, and as long as we’re journeying with the One who welcomes ALL people as God’s children, we’ll never be lonely, we’ll never be bored, and the journey will always be filled with the excitement of newness. Who could ask for anything more? Amen.
This sermon was written by the Rev. Janet Weiblen, Intentional Interim Minister at Weston Christian Church. It can only be used with permission of the author. revj@kc.rr.com.
