When I began attending church twenty-two years ago, I’m not sure I knew what I was expecting.  I just had this inner sense—whispering, nudging—that God wanted me to go to church, be part of a church.  I had childhood memories of church: my family had attended one church or another one Sunday or another now and again, but I hadn’t been part of a church for some twenty-five years.  Two decades later, I now better understand just how mixed Eastminster, in East Lansing, Michigan was: politically, theologically—it’s a wonder they held together!  Unity isn’t so easy, as Presbyterians know too well.  And Baptists.  There were people at that church who, if they had known me better, would probably not have wanted anything to do with me, and if I had known them better, I probably would not have wanted much to do with them.  God unites; we divide.  We’re wonderfully gifted, that way: always ready and more than willing to make distinctions.

Jesus did not come to make distinctions.  He came to call.  He called everybody.  He never refused to call anyone, though he knew there were those, even many, who would not answer his call.  Their response would be rejection, offense, outrage.  Jesus called everybody.

Mark tells us Jesus was teaching; in this briefest gospel, the word teach occurs more than forty times.  Everything recorded about Jesus is to teach us.  The teaching won’t do us much good until we’re learning.  Learning won’t do us much good until we’re applying.  We learn as we apply what we’ve been taught.  I daresay we learn more—even much more—as we apply what we’ve been taught than we ever learned sitting and listening, or reading quietly.  If faith without practice is a contradiction, learning without practice is fruitless.  Frankly, I’m not even sure it qualifies as authentic learning.

In what I read to you today, I’m left with the impression that Jesus is teaching as he is walking along.  A mobile classroom!  A living laboratory!  Remember that laboratory is a fancy word for a workshop.  Jesus is conducting a workshop.

For today’s workshop, there is Matthew.  Mark calls him Levi son of Alphaeus.  You might just recall there’s another apostle named James, also identified as the son of Alphaeus.  Maybe Levi and James were brothers.  If Andrew could bring Simon Peter to Jesus, perhaps James brought Jesus to Levi, that day.  But how did Levi become Matthew?  How did Simon become Peter?  Jesus gave Simon a new name.  It’s conjecture, Scripture doesn’t say so, but perhaps Jesus also gave Levi a new name: Matthew, which means “gift of God.”  Imagine, a tax collector being God’s gift!

Each of us come to Jesus needing a new name.  For Scripture, name means character, even identity.  We need a new, another character.  In Christ, God’s gift, we receive a new name, a new character: “anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.  The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (2 Cor 5:17, NLT).  So much more could and should be said about this.

No one loved Levi.  Well, I suppose his brother did: he had to, after all; he was his brother.  Levi was a tax collector.  I have to suppose that job satisfaction at the IRS is either really high or really low: no meh, so-so.  I suppose there was a point in Levi’s life when he really loved what he did, loved it so much because everyone loathed him so much.  They made him miserable, so he got the satisfaction of making them miserable, too.  Sounds really dysfunctional!

No one loved Levi, except Jesus.  Jesus does not call people because it’s his job or his duty, or because he’s so naïve and doesn’t know better.  Jesus calls out to people because he loves them and knows, so fully, so joyfully, the brilliance God offers them.  Jesus knows who God makes it possible for us to become.  No one loved Levi.  Jesus loved Levi.  He saw Levi there, “at the tax collector’s booth” (2:14).  That wasn’t where Levi wanted to be, anymore; that isn’t who Levi wanted to be, anymore, but who was going to allow him to do anything else, be anyone else?  He wasn’t welcome in the synagogue.  He was barely tolerated at the shops in the market.  No self-respecting person would have anything to do with Levi, so he didn’t see any alternative.  He was stuck.  Have you ever felt stuck?  How does hope happen, when you’re feeling stuck?  For Levi, hope happened in Jesus, who saw him and came to him.  I suspect, really, Jesus came for him.

“‘Follow me,’ Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him” (2:14).  What?  Just like that?  Just left everything and followed?  Not likely!  When has that ever happened?  When you’re stuck, know you’re stuck, and don’t have much left by way of hope, and then Hope himself calls out to you, are you going to just sit there and act like you didn’t see, didn’t hear?  No!  When you’re dying inside and Life shows up, you get up, and go.

What seemed incredulous to those walking along with Jesus—the ones he was teaching in his workshop that day?—what seemed nearly impossible to take in was that Jesus would even acknowledge the existence of that wretch, that lost cause.  Why does Jesus bother with people like that?  Why does he have anything to do with them?  The Pharisees and teachers of the Law, the Law-minded, were always trying to understand and just couldn’t understand why Jesus would even think of associating with people who had so obviously, willingly, separated themselves from God’s life.  The faithful ones, the righteous ones, knew they must keep themselves pure and undefiled—that’s what God commanded, expected, and required.

What I know about myself is that I am impure and defiled.  How about you?  What I know is that this impure, defiled creature is expected to keep himself pure and undefiled.  There’s a chasm, a void, an abyss fixed between the one and the other: between who I am and who God expects me to be.  I can’t fill it, bridge it, cross it.  And it’s not because I haven’t tried or don’t want to!  What the Spirit tells me, every day, every hour, is that Christ crosses the chasm, for me; Christ fills the void, for me.  He came for me.  He came for you.  For whom did he not come?  Am I going to say, “Oh, yes, he came for me, but not for that one, not for you”?  “[A]nyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.  The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”

Though he wouldn’t have been able to put it exactly that way at the time, Levi—Matthew—had the unshakeable intuition that Jesus was new life, the way to become a new person—a renewed person, a restored man.  Mathew had the irresistible sense that Jesus was offering exactly what Levi needed and couldn’t do for himself.  And that’s just what Levi, Matthew, was wanting, wondering about, maybe even daring to pray about, in his booth that day, taking the money that was brought to him with sullen sneers, recording the transaction, saying “next,” as he had for years, fruitless, dead years of his life.  He was tired.  He was worn.  He was crying out, calling out, heart, mind, soul: “Precious Lord, is there no way?  No way for me?  Am I cast away forever?  Those who consider themselves righteous condemn me, and I want nothing to do with their costume righteousness—but what is true righteousness?  I know it’s not this.  Who can tell me?  Who can show me?”

“Follow me.”  Levi was startled.  The script had been name, amount, next, every day, for years.  “Follow me.”  That was new.  That was change.  That was hope.  Zacchaeus, there in Jericho, would feel, too.  Like Zacchaeus, Levi—Matthew—is so overjoyed, so relieved, so broken, humbled, and grateful, that he has a meal prepared for Jesus and all those with him.  It’s a celebration and a sacrifice.  The best celebrations always are.  The best sacrifices always are.  Best of all was that Jesus accepted Matthew’s invitation.  No self-respecting person would ever have accepted such an invitation from such a man—they had their reputation to think of, their reputation for purity.  How, then, could Jesus, how, then, would Jesus, the pure Lamb of God, even contemplate being in the same room with Levi, let alone sitting at the same table or sharing a meal?  No, no.

Well—if it had only been Levi, Jesus, and those with Jesus, maybe we could see how Jesus would agree: a private little matter; limited contact with the deplorable.  But Mark reminds us that, at that table, there were “many [. . .] sinners” (2:15).  What, are we talking like drag queens and child rapists?  No.  People whom the pure people knew to be impure.  Impure people who knew they were impure.  Impure people who maybe at one time in their lives thought impurity was fun, or a way of insulting the pure people who loathed them.  I’ll tell you something about impure people who know they are impure; maybe you already know it, too: they don’t want to be impure, anymore.  And they don’t know how to make that happen.  They feel stuck, helpless and becoming hopeless.  Surely there is a way?  If only there were a way!

“[T]he teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors” (2:16).  Don’t think they were inside Levi’s house, seeing all this.  Never!  The houses in those days were built around courtyards; like an open box, with a big front gate, open to the street.  The pure people who had been listening to Jesus, going along with Jesus, were all there, conscientiously outside, beyond the range of contagion, stunned, confused, angry.  Oh! We would never be caught dead with their kind!  “[T]hey asked his disciples: ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’” (2:16).  They really didn’t know.  It was honestly beyond them.  Even some of the disciples didn’t go in with Jesus; John tells us about them (Jn 6:53-66).  I wonder if they knew how to answer that question: why is he doing that?

No, such behavior does not seem consistent with a holy man, a man of God.  They’re right, that’s true.  Yet here is God’s own man, socializing with those unclean abominations, drinking and laughing—with a purpose.  Jesus is always teaching; everything he does is teaching, and Jesus always has a purpose in view.  In ancient Judaism, the thinking ran this way, impurity tainted purity.  Impurity transmitted.  The only way to keep the pure pure, then, was to keep it away from impurity.  No one asked whether purity could be transmitted.  Jesus came as the purifying power of God: can purity purify the impure?  Is purity stronger than impurity?

The pure folks couldn’t understand what possible reason Jesus could have for being there with those people.  Jesus heard the question, too, and said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (2:17).  Levi, and I like to think many of those lost people there with him that day, feasting with Jesus, listening to Jesus, were beginning to feel more and more certain that healing had come, and it broke their stubborn hearts and cracked open their hardened thinking, calloused by life.  And they were glad, glad enough to weep, glad enough to pray and sing praises to God on high.

Those standing outside, unable to allow themselves to enter in, did they not recognize the healing?  One Bible student, reading this same part of Mark, wrote: “None are so sick as the diseased who think themselves well, and none are such sinners as the sinful who think themselves holy.”[1]  If you’re healthy, you don’t need healing, true enough.  As for me, is there a doctor in the house?

[1] W. Graham Scroggie.  Gospel of Mark.  Study Hour.  Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1976, 52.