Eating With the Worst

Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them.  But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Luke 5:29-32

In this text Jesus is dining with some of the worst outcasts of Jewish society and when questioned he describes himself as a doctor who is healing the sick.

Just to follow up on that… what kind of medicine was Dr. Jesus using?

The text does not indicate he was doing any teaching or identification of sin with accompanying admonition. No Jesus was socializing with these spiritually sick people. Undoubtably he was going to follow up with some of those tactics but he started by sharing a meal and getting to know them.

What kind of social outcasts might we share a meal with today? Drunks and drug abusers? Prostitutes? Homosexuals?

I recall several years ago a young man came to the building asking for money to buy a meal at Whataburger. I asked him why he wasn’t working. Somewhere along the way I found out that he had been living with his girlfriend in her parents home and the father had kicked him out. I told him the father should never have allowed him in the house in the first place and he deserved to be kicked out. I was pretty proud of that answer.

In retrospect and especially when considering these verses I wish I had taken him to Whataburger and shared a meal with him. I’m guessing that’s what Jesus would have done and who knows what might have happened. O’ to be like him.