Mark 2:13-17. "Does Jesus Offer Hope to Sinners?"

Jesus' offer of hope to sinners; the Pharisees' approach offered hope only to the righteous. The fundamental conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees wasn't about specific laws but rather about who deserved hope and salvation.

Jesus encounters Levi (Matthew), a tax collector despised for his perceived betrayal and exploitation of fellow Jews. Despite this, Jesus calls Levi to follow him, and Levi immediately leaves his job to do so. Levi's immediate and unquestioning response highlights the compelling nature of Jesus' call.

Levi then hosts a gathering at his home with other tax collectors and sinners, causing the Pharisees to criticize Jesus for associating with such people. Jesus responds by saying that he came not for the righteous but for sinners, comparing his role to that of a doctor who is needed by the sick, not the healthy.

The Pharisees' refusal to see their own sinfulness and need for Jesus' message is likened to patients denying a critical diagnosis. In contrast, sinners who acknowledge their brokenness find hope and salvation in Jesus.

Tim emphasizes that Jesus' call to follow him extends to all sinners, and that righteousness is found not in self-perceived purity but in trusting in Jesus. It encourages believers to embrace their identity as sinners redeemed by Christ, who offers true hope and reconciliation with God.

This Sunday sermon, based on Mark 2 verses 13-17, was preached at Grace of God Lutheran Church on June 9,2024.  This sermon is preached by Pastor Timothy J. Walsh, a member of WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod). Scripture selections come from the New International Version.

Our services are at 9:30am every Sunday morning, at our campus in Dix Hills on Long Island. Visit our website for more information, at www.graceofgod.church 

Intro Music "On the Way" by Vlad Gluschenko https://soundcloud.com/vgl9
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Outro Music "Divenire" by Ludovico Einaudi
copyright (℗) by: Ludovico Einaudi (in 2006)           

Transcript

Grace and peace to you in Jesus’ saving name, sinners. Amen.

We’ve jumped backwards a bit in Mark’s Gospel this weekend from last. We heard last week about the Pharisees, these opponents of Jesus, feuding with him one Sabbath over the issue of observing the Sabbath. What was permitted, what was forbidden, on Saturdays, on the Sabbath day?

That wasn’t the first time Jesus had butted heads with these Pharisees. And this week’s Gospel reading, moving backward in time a little bit, shows us what the real conflict was between the Pharisees and Jesus. It wasn’t Sabbath stuff. It wasn’t rules about divorce or about church offerings (other topics on which they disagreed). The fundamental issue dividing Jesus and the Pharisees was that the Pharisees offered hope to righteous people. Jesus offered hope to sinners.

“Once again,” we’re told, “Jesus went out beside the lake.” This is the Sea of Galilee, in northern Israel. Jesus’ earliest disciples came from the fishing communities around the lake. “A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them.” What was he teaching that day? We’re not told. But as Jesus walked and talked - he’s smarter than me, catch me trying to walk and teach and not fall in the water - he stumbled on a sinner. A tax collector, Levi, who we learn elsewhere in the Bible was also named Matthew.

Tax collectors were among the chief sinners in Jesus’ time. They were largely known to be extortionists. They worked for the Roman occupying government, but they themselves were Jewish. Their fellow Jews hated them. The way tax collectors made their money was to assess the property people owned, the income of their businesses, so on and so forth, and then to demand a tax payment at a commensurate level. On top of that commensurate tax payment, tax collectors added their own service fees, and that’s where they made their money, and that’s where they had the opportunity to absolutely fleece people. 

People have never loved paying taxes. Haven’t, don’t, won’t. But for the Jews of Jesus’ day, tax collectors were more than an annoying but necessary factor for life in an organized, governed society. Beyond the fact that they padded their pockets with the pecuniary proceeds, tax collectors were traitors. The Jewish people didn’t have a problem with taxes per se. They did not want to pay Roman taxes. They wanted independence. They hated the fact that they nationally answered to pagan Gentiles across the Mediterranean. And so, often, the only people who would take this job were the type of people who would exploit their power.

So Jesus runs into Levi - Matthew - at his booth. Capernaum, the town where this took place, was located right on the shoreline, on a busy road. Matthew’s tax collector booth was well placed to monitor, and appropriately appropriate, the earnings of various economic activities. 

What does Jesus say to this Roman puppet? “Follow me.” 

“Where?” “When, now?” “Why?” “For how long?” All natural questions to ask. Not a single one comes out of Matthew’s mouth. “Levi got up and followed him.” Our sermon hymn today, “Christ Be My Leader,” is the one our family sings to our Levi each night at bedtime. All our kids have their own hymn. Levi’s is quite appropriate. Christ led that Levi; Christ leads our Levi.

It’s pretty shocking, isn’t it? It’s hard to believe that a man with a good job - a very financially rewarding job - would just leave it all behind, no questions asked, and start following this Jesus character alongside a bunch of fishermen who probably are looking at Levi with some hostility. Given that they were fishermen, small business owners in this town, Jesus’ other disciples - Peter, Andrew, James, John - have probably walked away from transactions with Matthew, Levi, before, feeling cheated! What did this Jesus have that Levi hadn’t seen before? What did he have that would make Levi fall in line behind him with a group of other men who had no reason to like him?

You know the answer. It’s what Jesus had when he called you. When as an infant, unable to talk, walk, process what was going on, he came to you in baptism’s waters and said, “Follow me.” When you had finally had enough of everyone else’s promises, promises in bottles or banknotes or banal platitudes and packaging, suddenly the Word of God took you by the ear and you heard, “Follow me.” When you had been broken, hit rock bottom, been left empty, and someone picked you up, show you Christ’s love, and in that love you heard Jesus saying, “Follow me.” Whatever it was, whatever happened in your life that put you in one of these chairs, you have heard, will hear those same words Jesus spoke to Matthew: “Follow me.” 

When God tells us to “follow him,” there is no negotiation. Levi the tax collector was probably very familiar with negotiation. Doubtless many of Capernaum’s residents had begged and pleaded down their tax bills when he made his demands. There is no negotiating with God. When he calls us to “follow,” we either do or we don’t. As Yoda said to Luke Skywalker, “There is no ‘try.’”

God’s call to each of us is not the exact same call Matthew received. None of us will be called to be apostles, eyewitnesses who could testify to the work of Jesus and its meaning for our lives. None of us have been called to leave behind our occupations, as Matthew did (although that would not be impossible). We have been called to “follow” Jesus in the lives we already have, with the same families and coworkers and the neighbors of all kinds we already have. 

We see that this was still true of Matthew. He left his job, left his tax booth behind; yet he still had the relationships which he had had before Christ’s call. And Matthew makes use of those relationships. He hosts a party at his home, inviting both his tax collector friends, his new friends among the disciples of Jesus, and a motley crew whom Mark sums up simply as “sinners.” 

The teachers of the law, the Pharisees, are disgusted. And they approach, not Jesus, but his disciples, begging them to see the nonsense being peddled by this man they’re following. “Don’t you see who he’s making you sit next to? Look at these sinners!” Well, hopefully the disciples weren’t put off when this was pointed out to them. After all, they were sinners themselves! The stories we have handed down about them in the Gospels show this quite plainly. But the Pharisees? Well, certainly they weren’t sinners! Or so they thought. It’s tragic. These men are like patients refusing to acknowledge their doctor diagnosing them with cancer. Even as their sin eats away at them, they refuse to see it. We heard an example of this last week, from Mark chapter three, when Jesus healed a man with a crippled hand in church one Sabbath day. Did the Pharisees cheer and praise God for such a good deed to be performed among them? No! They began instead to plot Jesus’ death. Such hatred and rejection of what is obviously good is nothing other than a terminal case of sin. All sin is terminal.

Jesus heard their foolish words spoken to his disciples, and he pipes up. “On hearing this, Jesus said to them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.’” The Pharisees thought they were healthy. There was nothing wrong with them! They were God’s people, godly men, and God was lucky to have them on his side.

But they weren’t on God’s side. God himself sat under Levi’s roof, eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners, and the Pharisees wanted nothing to do with him. 

But those sinners did.

Jesus went on speaking to them: “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Martin Luther once used these words of Jesus in a letter he wrote to a friend who was struggling with guilt. Luther said, “Are you learning to be tired of your own righteousness? Are you learning to trust in the righteousness of Christ? Beware of this desire you have for such purity that you would no longer be looked upon as a sinner! For Christ dwells only in sinners. On this account Christ descended from heaven, where he dwelled among the righteous alone, to dwell here on earth among sinners.”

“Beware of your desire for purity?” Yes, beware of it! Beware inasmuch as you are tempted to place your confidence, your assurance, on your own purity and not on that of Jesus Christ. If Christ Jesus shall be your Savior, you had better be a sinner. Be confident of that fact! Delight in that fact! 

Don’t delight in your sin, no. Your sin kills. It harms others, it’ll kill you. But you can delight in being one whom Christ Jesus came to call. If you think yourself righteous, there’s nothing here for you. Christ Jesus did not come to call you. Go your merry way. But if you know yourself to be a sinner - impure, guilty - rejoice! Christ Jesus calls you to follow him.

That’s the call which grabbed Levi’s heart. That call gave him a joy which the Pharisees, with all their pious posturing, could never give him. They thought themselves righteous; they were frauds, phonies, fools. But these sinners, who came to Jesus as sinners; theirs was the righteousness of God. Those sinners became, in their Savior, salt of the earth and light of the world, everything the world needs and everything that the self-righteous person imagines themselves being but will never achieve. 

Jesus offers hope to sinners. He calls them to follow him. Follow Jesus all the way to the cross, sinners. See your sin paid for there, sinners. See him rise on the third day to prove you have been reconciled to God, sinners. Follow him all the way to kingdom come, sinners. Amen.

This sermon was adapted from a message on this text in Wade Johnston’s book “A Path Strewn with Sinners.”