Rev Gav

Mission

Luke 5:27-32

²⁷ Later, as Jesus left the town, he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. ²⁸ So Levi got up, left everything, and followed him.

²⁹ Later, Levi held a banquet in his home with Jesus as the guest of honor. Many of Levi’s fellow tax collectors and other guests also ate with them. ³⁰ But the Pharisees and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with such scum?”

³¹ Jesus answered them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. ³² I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.”

Reflect

Levi was a tax collector and tax collectors were considered scum! They worked for the Romans — the enemy — and were guilty by association. They were often accused of extortion — demanding money with threats of reprisal from the Roman overlords. They were also generally considered ‘unclean; by the Pharisees and followers of the religious law. For all these reasons, in that culture, if you were a law-abiding Jewish person, then you did not associate with tax collectors, yet here was the rabbi Jesus, not only associating with tax collectors, but inviting them to follow him and attending their parties!

Through his actions Jesus was demonstrated that things had changed, that the old separatist ways of the Pharisees had been replaced by a new way of living out a life of faith. You were no longer ‘cleansed’ by God through obeying the law, but through the person of Jesus, and this meant that you were freed up to engage with anyone. Hanging out with the ‘unclean’ didn’t make you unclean, and more than that, hanging out with the marginalised, broken, hurting, and despised was the very mission of God in the world.

Christians follow Jesus and believe that Jesus makes them clean. They also believe that to follow Jesus means to join in with God’s mission in the world. In other words, we are called by God to reach out to the ‘tax collectors’ of our day. It can be tough hanging out with people that might act or behave in a way we consider is ungodly or sinful — where their lives are lived at the expense of others or the environment. The temptation is to join them, however, God asks us to be with them, but not end up behaving like them. We are to love them and be a light to them — to be an influence for good and an agent for God.

Do

What friends or people do you know that need God in their lives? Commit to spending time with God and also spending time with them. You might be their only human link with a God that longs to reach them with divine love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

Pray

Holy God
Help me be a light to my friends.
Give me opportunities to spend time with them,
to listen, support and encourage.
May I not be tempted to fall and take part
in patterns of behaviour that dishonour you, others, or the environment.
Through my tolerance, acceptance and welcome,
may they come to know your love, mercy and forgiveness.
This day and for ever.
Amen.

Think

What’s the first thing a church must do to prevent themselves becoming a separatist movement — a clique with its own holy huddle?