Right from the start, we know that Jesus is a troublemaker. The very first sentence of this Sunday's gospel reading says so.
"Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus".
Not just some of these people of ill-repute, but ALL of them. Tax collectors were by nature dis-honest collaborators with the Empire. First century loan sharks extorting as much money from the 99% as possible.
Sinners. Well those were everyone else who was for one reason or another ritually unclean and kept on the outside of the religious institution: The dermatologically challenged, women having their period etc....
And Jesus attracted them all. Luke tells us that every single one of them were coming near to listen to Jesus. Juxtaposed to this are the Pharisees and scribes doing what good religious folk do when they see the rules being violated: They took to grumbling. Notice their grumbling isn't in the past tense but in the imperfect tense. It's not a once and done thing. They were bitching and moaning over and over again about this guy Jesus who was breaking all the rules.
Ironic isn't it? In both the Hebrew and Christian Testaments, God is always beckoning God's people to listen. And yet these good religious insiders who could recite the rules backward and forward were unable to do what the "sinners" were doing. Listen.
"Hear O my people, and I will admonish you: O Israel if you would but listen to me...I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt...and yet my people did not hear my voice" (Psalm 81).
And Jesus says, "The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out" (John 10).
Grumbling wasn't a once and done thing in Jesus' day and so too not in ours. What do we religious insiders today grumble about? What do religious leaders like me get our panties all in a bunch over? Who does the church spend lots of time and energy condemning or worse walking right by without even noticing?
I'm going to keep wrestling with this, because I know for a fact that just about all of us have a pretty sketchy track record when it comes to being open to newness. More often than not we've dropped the ball in welcoming those who differ from us either intentionally or not.
Maybe if we listened a little more and yapped a lot less, we'd see transformation right before our eyes. Come to church tomorrow and perhaps together in the hymns we sing, the prayers we offer and the meal we share, us "Pharisees", "scribes", "tax collectors" and "sinners" will not only see Jesus, but we'll hear him as well.
Peace and Love,
Pastor Doug
