Is there a doctor in the house? (Part 2 The Jesus party)

"While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him." (Mark 2:15)   

I’m guessing this story is the basis for the “Jesus parties” used as an evangelistic tool in the 90s. You invite all your friends over for food and games, and then when everyone’s having a good time, climb a soapbox, and ambush them with a sermon about their sin. The difference between that and Levi’s party? Levi’s open house flows naturally and honestly out of who and where he is. 

When I was at writing school in Saskatchewan this May, I was surrounded by diverse people - Daoist, pantheist, atheist - some of them had grown up in church and Christian camp and now felt like they’d been there/done that/moved on. I struggled with when to say things about my faith. I didn’t want to silence a big part of myself, but I was horrified at the thought of making my new friends feel like stickers on a Sunday school witnessing chart. I decided all I could do was invite the Spirit into my conversations. If the idea popping into my head was something I’d share with my Christian friends, like adding how God cares for fallen sparrows into a conversation about the symbolism of birds, I’d say it. If it felt defensive or contrived, I’d leave it out.

Mark says, “Many tax collectors and ‘sinners’ were eating with Jesus and his disciples.” It’s not the religious leaders who first call this group sinners, but Mark himself. Mennonite scholar Tim Geddert suggests perhaps that these aren’t just people the pious would find ceremonially incorrect, but those “known as notorious sinners, those who would agree that the designation suits them.”

Like the two Muppets in the balcony, the Pharisees jump in with heckles, criticizing Jesus to his disciples for eating with "sinners." Why are the Pharisees even there? Were they following Jesus or did they just happened by? Dining rooms were often adjacent to courtyards, it would’ve been easy for passersby to eavesdrop.

The Pharisees' critique is a valid one. If you want to be a public figure, a respected teacher, you’re going to be judged by the quality of your followers. My family was asked to leave a music class once because if we didn’t, the other families were threatening to pull out their children. Jesus’ choice to include the socially unacceptable followers meant he might lose the upstanding ones, along with his reputation in the synagogue.

Jesus responds with a popular Greek and Hebrew proverb: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick.” In the Jewish form, God is physician. Interesting choice of metaphor, since he’s spent the last chapter trying to get away from the crowds seeking him as doctor, instead of teacher. 

But here Doctor Jesus isn’t healing just individual bodies, but a community. We’d all love for Jesus to heal broken parts in our bodies and minds, and I believe he does heal, more often than we’re comfortable talking about. But here, “The [doctor] image implies that, whereas the critics see sinfulness as something simply to exclude and avoid - and certainly to judge and condemn - for Jesus ‘sinners’ are sick people in need of inclusion and healing,” writes Brendan Bryne. 

It's politically incorrect to call people “sick” today, until we truly acknowledge that this means all of us, and that “patient in treatment,” when Jesus is the physician on call, is very hopeful indeed. 

“Healing requires contact,” says Byrne, and “Like the story of the man with leprosy that Jesus touched in Mark 1, here again, Jesus has broken through a clean/unclean barrier.” Rather than contamination spreading from unclean person to clean, as the Pharisees feared, Jesus shows that cleanness goes the other way. We are infected with goodness through contact with Jesus. And associating with people others reject doesn’t lower our reputation; it raises theirs.

Jesus’ statement “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners” takes us back to the call of Levi. Jesus doesn’t just heal or call people to repent, he calls us to follow.

Which is Levi: a sinner or a disciple? The irony is that Levi and many of the other guests are already disciples, not sinners; it’s no longer possible to draw a rigid distinction. Pharisees categorized people as sinners and righteous, tax collector and teacher; Jesus is forming a new household that rejects labels.

So is Jesus saying he’s only interested in those who know they’re sinners, not the self-proclaimed “righteous”? No, his focus is those who’ve been rejected, but he includes everyone in that, even the pompously self-righteous (who today are most likely among the rejected!). I think he’s saying, between the families threatening to leave the music class, and my own needy, quirky one, he’d include us and let the other families choose.  

Conclusion in the next post.