This morning I opened my Bible to one of my favorite set of verses as it describes so well the heart and mercy of the Lord. Here are the verses - Matthew 9:10-13 NIV:
[10] While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. [11] When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
[12] On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. [13] But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
This morning I had a funny thing happen as I read the end of verse 11, I mis-read, and read it as the following, “why does your teacher eat tax collectors and sinners?” As in the modern vernacular of “eating someone or something for breakfast, when they are of little concern, and one has such total domination that they are of no consequence! I thought for a moment - “what did I just read?”
Of course the verses are expressing the exact opposite, in that Jesus was actually showing His concern for these very people groups by spending time with them and sharing a meal with them! He wasn’t dominating them, He was loving them!
Wouldn’t it be a strange expression of our churches to find them full of “sinners, tax-collectors, the hated, reviled, mistrusted, down on their luck, wounded and rejected? Yet, that is exactly where Jesus (at the Father’s direction) was spending some of his precious time!
My heart is sad that the above paragraph would probably still be considered strange in today’s church! I believe many of us have lost our sense of this simple call to be sent to call sinners, not the righteous.
We are all sinners, and I am sure that is part of Jesus’ point here too. We should see in His statement mercy for all of us, ourselves included. The self-righteous are deluded and deceived if they think they don’t really need the Lord and HIs mercy, or that they are in some way better than the “sinners”
Lord, help us to be open in our lives to sharing the good news, the Love of God for all “sinners” including our very selves! Help us to lay down our “religion” and take up mercy and love as our banner! Help us to learn to value all, even as You valued those sinners and tax-collectors!
Let us be a people of mercy and compassion!
Thankfully, what Jesus “ate for breakfast” was sin and death and He completed destroyed their power!
Amen and Alleluia!
