Mark 5 - Mathew's Party

Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. [14] 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."

The tax men have just visited, and completely cleaned them out, furniture and all. Other times in this strip, the tax men are shown with large axes over their shoulders as they visit the hapless taxpayer. That’s pretty much how we feel about it. Nobody likes the tax man. Probably very few of us have ever personally known an IRS agent, and most of us don’t want to.

In first century Palestine, it was much the same. The government would hire tax collectors for a given region, and tell them they had to get so much from the people. The problem was, the people never knew how much they owed, so the tax collector just tried to get as much as he could, and everything over what the tax actually was he put in his pocket. As a class, they were professional extortionists, and were typically very good at it, and very rich as a result of it.

Levi, who was later called Matthew, was a tax collector there in Capernaum. As Jesus walked by his tax booth, He stopped and called him to be one of His disciples. Amazingly, Matthew immediately got up, left his work, and followed Jesus. Later, he threw a party for Jesus and his new friends, and also invited many of his old friends. But the Pharisees saw Jesus at the party with the tax collectors and other notorious “sinners” and they felt this was improper. Tax collectors of that day were seen as traitors to the Jewish cause, because they were working either directly for the Romans, or for the Herodian government, which was in league with the Romans. According to one Greek writer[1], tax collectors were in a category with “adulterers, panderers, and self-seeking flatterers.” Not the kind of people you want to hang around with.

This incident is the first time in Mark’s gospel that we see the Pharisees starting to play a role, so let me give you just a bit of background on them. They were lay people, not priests or teachers of the law, but they were really influential in Jesus’ day because of their very strong emphasis on keeping all of the Torah, or Law. They had scoured the Old Testament and found 613 specific commandments, and then they elaborated on each one so that no one could break the commandments unknowingly. It is significant that the root meaning of the word “Pharisee” means “one who is separate.”[2] They believed that a person could contract ceremonial uncleanness by contact with something that was unclean, so they worked very hard to keep themselves separate from unclean practices and people. That’s why they were so scandalized by Jesus associating with the riff raff at Matthew’s party.

Many Christian churches and individuals today feel the same way. They will quote passages like 2 Cor. 6:17, “Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” They say that this passage and others like it are commands not to associate with non-Christians. Such people would never enter a bar, for example, because that’s where “sinners” are, and someone might think that they, the Christians, are doing something sinful in there. They believe that you can be guilty by association, i.e. that you can be tainted morally just by hanging around people who are immoral.

Just to test your own Pharisee-quotient, ask yourself what you would think if you saw a fellow member of our church, or one of the staff, coming out of the Top Hat bar, or the White Buffalo. Would you think that was somehow inappropriate for them to be in there? Would it raise suspicions in your mind about them?

A. Jesus’ example Mark 1:40-42; 2:13-15; Luke 19:1-10 Luke 7:36-50; Luke 7:1ff; Mark 7:24ff; John 4:4ff; John 8:2-11

A quick glance at the life of Jesus will show the fallacy of such a view. Jesus frequently associated with people of ill repute. For example:

· He touched the man with leprosy, as we saw last week, even though the Law said no one was to touch him, and if they did, they would become unclean as he was. (Mark 1:40-42)

· Levi, or Matthew, who we meet in the passage today, as a tax collector, was the most unlikely and unacceptable person in all of Capernaum to be a follower of Christ, but Jesus made him one of the twelve apostles. He couldn’t have been any closer to Jesus than that.

· Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10) was a chief tax collector, so that’s a further step down the social ladder. He would have been even richer and even more despised than Matthew, but Jesus invited Himself to his house and had a meal with him, which was a sign of intimate fellowship in that culture.

· A further step down was the prostitute who came into Simon the Pharisee’s house and washed Jesus’ feet with her hair (Luke 7:36-50). Simon was scandalized: Luke 7:39, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is--that she is a sinner.” Implication: if Jesus knew what kind of woman she was, He would never allow her to touch Him. (There’s that guilt by contact idea, again.) But Jesus let her stand behind Him while He was reclining at the table, let her tears of repentance fall on His feet, let her dry His feet with her hair. (The very fact that she let her hair down to do that was scandalous in that society, because it was associated with prostitutes; but that wasn’t a concern for her, because she was a prostitute!) Then He let her pour perfume on His feet. This was all too much for Simon the Pharisee, but not for Jesus, the Holy One of God!

· Then there was the woman caught in adultery (John 8:2-11). Jesus refused to condemn her, even though the law was clear on the matter of adultery, and there was no question of her guilt.

· Another step down the ladder of acceptability was Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman He met at a well (John 4:4ff). John, the writer who describes this event, explains “the Jews have no dealings with Samaritans,” and that was an understatement; there was real hostility and prejudice between them. The Jews thought of Samaritans as religious half-breeds, unorthodox in their theology and practice, and generally despised them. The fact that Jesus had an extended conversation with this Samaritan woman was really amazing.

· Another step down was Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24ff) who approached Jesus to heal her daughter. She was a Gentile, and the prejudice of the Jews toward Gentiles was even worse than toward Samaritans.

· And then finally, there was the Roman Centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant (Luke 7:1ff). He was a Gentile, and a member of the military occupation force, who would have been hated and despised more than any of the previous people, but Jesus didn’t avoid him, or turn him away; He treated him as worthy of His love and power like anyone else, and healed the man’s servant.

So Jesus kept associating with people who were totally unacceptable. He just would not be boxed in to the safe little Jewish bubble that the Pharisees wanted to live in, but instead, really pushed their buttons and their boundaries.

So what’s the rule for us? Can we do that? Should we follow His example, or do we need to keep ourselves safe by staying away from people who could lead us astray? After all, 1 Cor. 15:33 says, “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’” And we’ve all seen it happen to people we love. Maybe our children got in with the wrong crowd in high school, or were led astray in college, and pretty soon they fell away from their faith. That’s a real danger.

Yes, it is. So the question we should be asking ourselves is not whether these people are “sinners”, but Which way is the influence flowing? If we are strong enough in our relationship with God that positive influence flows from us to them, as it always did with Jesus, then it is not only permissible for us to associate with them, we are commanded to love them and do everything we can to influence them toward the Lord. But if they have a negative influence on us, if they lead us into sin, or cause us to doubt our faith, then we need to back away from that relationship until we are stronger and can be of help to them.

Now you could just say that you are too weak to be around non-Christian people, and retreat to the safety of the Christian bubble, but that’s not how Jesus wants us to be. He has sent us into the world in order to take His love and compassion and truth to those who need it the most. A lamp is not supposed to be put under a basket; it is supposed to be set on a stand so that its light shines into the darkness. Salt is worthless in the salt-shaker; we have to get out into the world where we can bring the flavor and the preserving power of Christ.

We may not consciously subscribe to the thinking of the Pharisees here, with their separatist holier-than-thou views, but practically, functionally, we live much the same way. Kent Hughes puts it this way:

“We come to Christ, and in our desire to be godly, we seek out people “like us.” Ultimately, we arrange our lives so that we are with nonbelievers as little as possible. We attend Bible studies that are 100 percent Christian, a Sunday School that is 100 percent Christian, prayer meetings that are 100 percent Christian. We play tennis with Christians and eat dinner with Christians. We have Christian doctors, Christian dentists, Christian plumbers, Christian veterinarians, and even our dogs are Christian(!) The result is, we pass by hundreds without ever noticing them or positively influencing them for Christ.”[3]

All sorts of phrases have been used to describe this pattern: the holy huddle, living in the fortress, the club, the Christian ghetto, or living in a bubble. We have become like an oil refinery that uses all the oil it produces to lubricate its own machinery; none of it ever gets out to the people who need it. Each of these phrases expresses the idea that we have separated ourselves from the people in the culture who most need what we have to offer.

The result is that while we may have acquaintances who are not Christians, we do not have many friends like that. One of the most telling questions I have ever heard in this regard asks: If you were about to have a birthday, and it was a big one with a zero at the end of it, and you got to pick the guest list for your party, how many non-Christians would there be on that list? See, we know lots of people who don’t go to church or have an interest in spiritual things, but when it comes to a personal celebration, we want our friends there, and our friends are all Christians.

Now there are several reasons for this, but the least convicting one is time. (I’ll speak to the more convicting one in another sermon.)

We have gotten ourselves so busy, so overscheduled with Christian activities, that we simply don’t have time to build friendships with our non-Christian neighbors and co-workers. I certainly feel that. I sometimes feel like the priest and the Levite in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. There was a man lying bloody and beaten up by the side of the road, and these two professional religious people just walked by. Jesus doesn’t say why they ignored the poor man, but I know why it was—they had to get to the synagogue to lead a Torah study. They had a prayer meeting to attend. They were on their way to put on a children’s program, or to pray with someone who was sick. I know all about that, and you do, too. I know some people who are in two weekly Bible studies and a fellowship group and Sunday School and worship service and they volunteer in some ministry or other, and wish they could be doing more.

The result of this good activity is that our obedience is incomplete. Look at our three priorities up here on the wall: Exalt the Son; Edify the Body; Evangelize the World. There are three priorities, not just two, but we don’t often get to the last one here in Loveland. We send lots of money to other people so they can do it overseas, but we are so busy in activities related to worship and building up the Body, that we simply don’t have time to build relationships with people outside the church.

So here’s a radical thing for a pastor to say: You should not attend more than one Bible study a week. You should only be in one supportive small group a week, and that should be your Bible study. You do not have to volunteer for every need that is mentioned from the front on Sunday or in the bulletin. You should not associate only with Christians. You do need to rearrange your schedule so that you have time for unchurched people. And yes, I do know that I am cutting my own throat here: after all, I’m the president of the club, and it’s important to me that all the ministries of the church are fully staffed and running well. But it is more important to me that people in Loveland find eternal life and the joy and peace and love that is only available in Jesus Christ. If that means that we have fewer programs at the church because of lack of volunteers, so be it.

In fact, I think we will find that if we were all more actively involved in sharing the love of Christ with people in our community, we would grow more spiritually than if we just continue gazing at our navels and patting one another on the back. Philemon 1:6 says, “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.” We will understand our relationship with Christ better when we are actively sharing our faith with others. Getting out into the life of the city, learning to mix it up with folks who have a very different world view, serving the poor and the needy, giving instead of always getting, will insure that we don’t become like the Dead Sea, which takes in plenty of fresh water, but has no outlet. If you don’t find the Christian life all that exciting, maybe it’s because you have become so insulated from the world around you that you don’t give God a chance to demonstrate His awesome power and love for the unlovely.

Matthew’s party is a good place to start. He meets Christ, has a personal encounter with Him, leaves his job and agrees to follow Jesus as His disciple. Shortly thereafter, Matthew throws a party for some of his friends, including Jesus and the other disciples. Apparently, Matthew, like most tax collectors, was pretty wealthy, because Luke 5:29 tells us that he, “held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them.” He probably had one of the bigger houses in Capernaum, so he could host a lot of people. But the people Matthew knew, apart from Jesus and the disciples whom he had just met, were not the most upstanding citizens of the town. They were the social riff-raff, the undesirables, the people who were unacceptable in polite society.

So what would it look like for us to throw a “Matthew Party”? It’s a simple matter of using any excuse to get a bunch of people together, some of whom have a relationship with Jesus, and some of whom don’t. Maybe it will be your birthday, or an anniversary. Memorial Day is a great day to have a picnic or a BBQ and invite a bunch of people over. If your son or daughter is graduating from high school or college, that’s a great excuse for a party. The city sponsors a neighborhood night out in the summer, and we’ve had block parties that evening that were received really well. Or the Fourth of July. Or for those of you whose summer is already completely booked, plan for Labor Day in September!

But you have to be careful who you invite. I don’t mean be careful about the unchurched people—they’ll be fine. I mean the Christians. Because if you don’t brief them ahead of time, the chances are they will just clump together around the punch bowl, and never interact with the rest of the guests. You want people who have eyes for others, and who have a heart to engage people in meaningful conversation. You ask them to come “prayed up”, having asked God to use them that day in the contacts they make. Ask them to make a special effort to reach out in friendship to the others you have invited, so they all feel welcome. You don’t have to engineer the contacts of who interacts with who; you don’t have to feel responsible that someone prays to receive Christ that day. Leave it up to God; He’s sovereign; He loves them more than you do; and He’s the one who can draw them to the Savior if we will just make an effort to be friends of “sinners”. (You do know why I keep putting quotation marks around “sinners”, don’t you? It’s because we are all sinners in God’s sight.)

When the Pharisees heard about Matthew’s party, they approached some of the disciples and asked, Mark 2;16, “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.” The very fact that they are “sinners” indicates that they need what Jesus can offer them—a right relationship with God. They are the spiritually sick, the very ones the Great Physician of souls has come to heal.

At one point in His ministry, Jesus responded to the criticism He was getting for hanging around with the likes of Matthew. Here’s what He said. Luke 7:31-34 "To what, then, can I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? [32] They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other: 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not cry.' [33] For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, 'He has a demon.' [34] The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners." ' They meant that last phrase as the harshest criticism they could think of. How do you think Jesus felt about it? I think He wore that label proudly. That’s exactly right; that’s who I am. A friend of tax collectors, notorious sinners, and the riff-raff of society. They may be rich, they may be poor, but they are far from God, as seen in their lifestyle and their choices and their morals, and I love them to death. In fact, I love them so much I’m going to die for them.

We can be like Matthew. We can be the connectors, the relationship builders, the ones who introduce our friends to Jesus. But we have to make time for it in our busy schedules. It has to become one of our priorities, or it will never happen.

Would anybody who knows you call you a “friend of sinners”? Friends spend time together. How much time each week do you spend just being with friends who do not know the love of Christ? I’m not sure anyone would apply that label to me, and I’m embarrassed by that, because I have pledged my life to follow Jesus, and I need to follow His example in this, as in every other way. I want to be a “friend of sinners” but it is going to take a major overhaul of my schedule. It may mean I won’t have time for some things I currently do for or at the church. I may have to readjust my priorities, and maybe some of you will feel left out. You may criticize me for not “doing my job.” But what is my job? What’s your job? Are we keepers of the aquarium, or fishers of men?

[1] Lucian; cited in Barclay, The Gospel of Mark (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975), p.53

[2] Matthew Black, “Pharisees”, in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 3 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962), p.776.

[3] R. Kent Hughes, Mark, vol. 1 (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1989), p.71.