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10:30 am Worship

Friday, January 17, 2025

Mark 2: 15-17

¹⁵ And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax-collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples—for there were many who followed him. ¹⁶When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax-collectors, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’ ¹⁷When Jesus heard this, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’

Very often, when reading the Bible, our minds skip over little phrases, assuming they aren’t important. We want to get to the good stuff and ignore little, seemingly meaningless, thoughts. It’s a dangerous habit.

Mark’s tale of a confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees is like that.

“And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house…”

We skip right over it. After all, the story is about Jesus consorting with “sinners and tax collectors, isn’t it? That and the subsequent battle with the Pharisees offers the meat of the story. But perhaps we ought to look at its beginning. Levi was a hated tax collector. Jesus was in his home, sharing a meal. Is there any other normal daily interaction offering more relaxed intimacy between friends?  

Some years ago, I read a little story told by Fred Craddock, the famous preacher. He was acting dean at Phillips Seminary for a 15-month stretch which he said seemed like 15 years to him, when a secretary came in one day and said, “There’s someone to see you.”

The visitor, a woman, asked Fred to go out to the parking lot. He was nervous but followed her to a car, where he found her brother slumped in the back seat. He had been in a bad crash, had been in a coma for eight months, and she had quit her job as a teacher so she could care for him. Now, all their resources were gone.

The woman opened the car door, and said, “I’d like you to heal him.”

“I can pray for him,” Fred said, answering as honestly as he knew how. “And I can pray with you. But I do not have the gift of healing.”

The woman got behind the wheel, looked Fred in the eye, and asked a question: “Then what in the world do you do?” Then she drove off.

For the rest of the afternoon, Fred sat in his study, staring at his books, trying to forget what she had said.

We often forget as we gather to worship that very little of the ministry of Jesus occurred inside houses of worship. Nor do we like to reflect on the truth that, when he did enter such a place, it very often ended in conflict. We don’t like the idea of going to strange places, meeting strange people, doing something new and different or which seems in our own minds to be impossible. We allow doubt and fear to govern our intimate relationships.

A religion such as this can blind us to the need and pain in the world.

Our fear makes us timid. We wring our hands and say, “What could I do?”

This was not the ministry of Jesus. How do his miracles begin? He takes the first step. He goes where pain lives.  

Hymn of the day: Where He Leads Me. Online at Rossford UMC - Media.

Rev. Lawrence Keeler