Being Light to the Lost - Eating With Sinners

The last few days I have been reading the following parallel passages - Matt 9:1-12 and Mark 2:1-17, having to do with Jesus' visit back to his home in Capernaum. This morning my attention went to the story of the calling of Matthew (Levi). In all three Synoptic Gospels the flow is exactly the same for this happening, here is how its recounted in Mark:

(NIV)Mark 2:14-17
As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him. [15] 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. [16] When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” [17] On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

What caught my eye was what happened immediately following Jesus invitation to Levi to follow Him, namely that Jesus was invited to a banquet at Levi's house and Levi invited all his unsaved friends, and Jesus was absolutely OK with this. In every account it was exactly the same - Jesus invited Levi to follow Him, and the invitation to dinner at Levi's immediately followed.

I was thinking that if we, in the church, needed any reason to focus our outreaches on the lost, this passage gives a great example of why we should. The lost, when they get saved become an instant doorway to a whole group of equally lost people. The other day I was meditating on the woman at the well, and many in her town got saved after she did - which is awesome.

One interesting thought about this passage, Jesus went to Levi's house, not the other way around. I wonder if the church's focus on bringing people into the church - getting them in the building - is backwards? What if the church went to where the newly saved person lives or hangs out, and brought Jesus there too? We have that mindset about foreign lands, why not have that mindset here at home. Call it micro-missions, whatever. The chances of ministering to the lost is much higher out where they live, than it is in our church buildings. Programs are great, but are only going to reach a small percentage of the population. Lord give us the courage to break out of our western religious mindests and see that the world needs the loving, merciful, accepting, life giving, Body of Christ in their midst, not in our church buildings.