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2009-09-20 (pm) Mark 2.13-17 Jesus Calls
Growing up, I love reading books like /Journey Through the Night/, /Scout/ and other series about the Second World War.
I was always fascinated by the characters, the people who fought in the resistance and those who just went along.
It seemed that there were always a few Nazi sympathisers who resolutely stood up for what the occupying government was doing.
These sympathisers were hated by their fellow countrymen.
They were seen as traitors.
Sometimes, because of this, they were even more aggressive than the foreigners.
Levi, in our passage this evening, was like a Nazi sympathiser.
He was a Jew working for the occupying forces, the Romans.
He was expected to collect taxes on everything, and quite likely charged an exorbitant price.
He was despised, not only because people thought he was a cheat, but because of his allegiance to Rome.
We don’t know anything about his character before he was called by Jesus.
All we know is that, for whatever reason, he was working an awful job.
Socially, he was at the bottom rung.
He was lower than fishermen, lower than shepherds, lower than garbage men.
He was probably considered worse off than the morticians who were always unclean, having to dispense with dead bodies.
There really wasn’t much hope for him.
Sure, he probably made a pile of money, but he was excluded from integrating with any other believer.
So you see, the attitude that the Jewish leaders had, also shared by most of their synagogue members was that that Levi was someone who had turned his back on God.
He was purposely living a sinful life.
He knew better and yet he persisted in his sinful living.
They just dismissed him as a sinner.
It is a fine line, isn’t it?
How long do you keep going after a person who seems to be running away from the faith?
Now, we know that the Pharisee’s model of doing religion was not the best, but they weren’t totally devoid of the truth either.
The biggest problem was that they taxed and burdened believers with more rules and regulations that what God laid out.
They were program oriented, not relationship oriented.
They sought to control people through outward commandments.
They mocked Jesus and his disciples for not washing their hands before every meal and for doing things they made forbidden on the Sabbath.
The problem was that their method was religion.
It dealt with the externals, sure, they had clean hands, but their hearts were not pure.
How do we know their hearts were not pure?
By their thoughts, seen in last Sunday morning’s sermon, by their words in our passage this evening, and by the actions we’ll see in the weeks to come.
And finally, we can see it when they crucified Christ.
That Jesus would call a person like Levi would have been very shocking to the Pharisees.
Clearly, he was not prime disciple material, at least not in their eyes.
But Jesus doesn’t look at our externals.
Jesus doesn’t look at what we do.
If he did, none of us would be here, am I right?
I know I wouldn’t be!
In fact, I have no right to be standing here!
I’m here because Jesus called me.
As far as I’m able, I am trying to present Jesus’ words.
Jesus looks at our hearts, every time.
Make no mistake; Jesus is very aware of our actions as well.
But the actions, both good and bad, flow from the heart.
And what Jesus looks for in a heart is softness.
The Pharisees were hard of heart.
Not all of them, but the ones that sought his death were.
We know of at least two famous Pharisees who were not hard of heart.
One snuck out to see Jesus during the night.
He was cautious.
He didn’t want to ruin what he had.
But after speaking personally to Jesus, he became a closet Christian.
Then a friend of his became a Christian too.
They kept working behind the scenes.
Figured out who they are?
You guessed it, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.
Getting back to the Nazi sympathiser story.
In our story, Joseph, Nicodemus and Levi are all sympathisers.
All three of them have an encounter with the Truth, with Jesus.
And all three of them act on the truth.
Levi’s was public, immediate and powerful.
Nicodemus’ and Joseph’s were also public, but they were not immediate.
We don’t know exactly what happened.
They did not come out and profess their faith in Jesus immediately.
They didn’t join the resistance, the disciples openly.
However, they might have worked behind the scenes.
In those novels, the resistance always had people working for them incognito.
They would have friends who would come up to them and admit that they were wrong, that the Nazi’s weren’t keeping their promises, that they were in fact guilty of all kinds of terrible things.
And so they would ask what they could do.
Some of them, like Levi, quit right away and joined the resistance.
Others had the hard task of pretending to be something they weren’t.
Joseph and Nicodemus might have been like that.
They might have been able to calm things down from the inside.
Maybe God used them to keep Jesus’ timeline on schedule.
Frankly, we don’t know.
But while they could have chosen to reveal their allegiance earlier, perhaps even during Jesus’ trial, they tipped their hand when the chips were really down.
They demonstrated their faith when all seemed lost.
Nicodemus helped prepare Jesus’ body, and Joseph gave Jesus his own grave.
But Levi chose a different route.
He left everything he had in order to follow Jesus.
He truly denied himself.
He walked away from his lifestyle, his living, everything he knew.
He was not afraid to associate with Jesus.
He invited him over for dinner.
He invited all his friends.
All of them.
He invited sinners over to his house.
He didn’t care.
In the eyes of most people he was a sinner anyway.
No, ne was more interested in sharing his experience with others.
He had met the living and true God.
For once, someone accepted him even in spite of who he was.
But did you notice something important?
Levi didn’t stay the same.
He completely changed his life.
His encounter with Christ transformed him.
There was another tax collector just like him.
Zacchaeus was a wee little man who had a heart transplant.
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