Daily Lesson for January 18, 2019

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 2 verses 15 through 17:

15 And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax-collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples—for there were many who followed him.16When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax-collectors, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’ 17When Jesus heard this, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’

Jesus crossed so many boundaries with his life and ministry. Just when people thought they could size him up and box him in, he was suddenly coloring outside the lines, reaching outside the fence.  Tearing down the fence altogether. 

Jesus was the center and there really was no circumference. None that he made anyways. The boundary was set between those who came and those who didn’t. And the visitors list of those who came could be quite shocking — scandalous even.

Today’s Lesson gives us a picture of Jesus at Levi’s house. Levi was a tax collector, a kind of quasi-mob job that relied on extortion and abuse of power to collect tribute for Caesar and pad personal coffers. 

Not exactly an upstanding profession. 

Yet there he was, at Levi’s house. 

It makes me wonder how Jesus would have been seen today. Would he have been demonized for reaching out to the vile and reviled?  Would he have been castigated for not calling for revolution?  Would the religious have despised him for his lack doctrinal purity and the ideologues have hated for his magnanimity?  Would the world full of conviction again have seen no place for the man of kindness?

This morning’s Lesson for me is a challenge. It requires of me that I consider my boundaries.  That I think on the walls I have built. That I reflect again on those whom I’ve so easily written off, demonized, and decided are the real problem with America today. 

I have to think again on all this today. And I have to consider: Maybe Jesus is going to Levi’s house again tonight; and maybe I should go with him . . .