Saturday after Ash Wednesday – Feb. 20, 2010
Luke 5:27 – 32
After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
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."
Jesus is invitational. He doesn’t traffic in coercion. He doesn’t force followers. Rather, he extends invitations.
He invites persons to follow him, to take on his way of seeing the world and his way of living in the world. He invites persons to full personhood, becoming completely the person God created them to be even as he completed what it meant to be fully human and fully God.
Our response to his invitation will vary by person. This tax collector, on the underside of social acceptability, gets up, leaves “everything,” and follows Jesus.
For all of us, there is some kind of “leaving” involved as we follow Jesus, a movement from one way of being to another, new way of being with God, others, and the world.
Too much contemporary Christianity seems to treat Jesus as a rabbit’s foot, as handy to carry in one’s pocket, but not really interested in any kind of inner transformation. Christians tend to be interested in adding Jesus to lives that are already successful, productive, and in full-swing.
The Gospel reminds us that to follow Jesus we may not need to add anything to our lives, but we may have to leave many things behind. We have to leave behind self-centeredness and paradigms that oppress those on the underside. We have to leave behind patterns of thinking and living that are destructive to ourselves and those around us. We have to leave behind control and manipulation.
This is the sense of the “repentance” Jesus mentions. Repentance is a turning around, but more than that, it suggests that we take on a new mindset, that we see God, ourselves, others, and the world more expansively.
The word for “repentance” in Greek is metanoia, which literally means, “a larger mind.” We’re invited to a larger framework, to leave our narrow, constricted notions of ourselves, God, and others. This is the “repentance” to which God calls us.
Lent is a wonderful season to consider this work of “repentance,” to open oneself in metanoia to a deeper connection to God, and to step into a larger view of God’s entire created world.
After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
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."
Jesus is invitational. He doesn’t traffic in coercion. He doesn’t force followers. Rather, he extends invitations.
He invites persons to follow him, to take on his way of seeing the world and his way of living in the world. He invites persons to full personhood, becoming completely the person God created them to be even as he completed what it meant to be fully human and fully God.
Our response to his invitation will vary by person. This tax collector, on the underside of social acceptability, gets up, leaves “everything,” and follows Jesus.
For all of us, there is some kind of “leaving” involved as we follow Jesus, a movement from one way of being to another, new way of being with God, others, and the world.
Too much contemporary Christianity seems to treat Jesus as a rabbit’s foot, as handy to carry in one’s pocket, but not really interested in any kind of inner transformation. Christians tend to be interested in adding Jesus to lives that are already successful, productive, and in full-swing.
The Gospel reminds us that to follow Jesus we may not need to add anything to our lives, but we may have to leave many things behind. We have to leave behind self-centeredness and paradigms that oppress those on the underside. We have to leave behind patterns of thinking and living that are destructive to ourselves and those around us. We have to leave behind control and manipulation.
This is the sense of the “repentance” Jesus mentions. Repentance is a turning around, but more than that, it suggests that we take on a new mindset, that we see God, ourselves, others, and the world more expansively.
The word for “repentance” in Greek is metanoia, which literally means, “a larger mind.” We’re invited to a larger framework, to leave our narrow, constricted notions of ourselves, God, and others. This is the “repentance” to which God calls us.
Lent is a wonderful season to consider this work of “repentance,” to open oneself in metanoia to a deeper connection to God, and to step into a larger view of God’s entire created world.
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