Being a Sinner Isn’t So Bad

Click here to read this week’s passage, Luke 5:27-32.

The book of Luke is largely an attempt to answer the question, Who gets to belong?

This begins with John the baptist. He’s inviting all people to the water to change their hearts and lives in order to live in accordance with God’s values. John warns the people that merely being a “descendant of Abraham” (aka a Jew) is not enough in order to count as a follower of God. A person’s life must somehow reflect the nature or character of God. 

This is a bit abstract- so let’s update the point John is trying to make. There were plenty of people in the church I grew up who lived one way during the week, while they were away from church, but show up on Sunday mornings with smiles on their faces, in their Sunday best, and saying things like, “I’m too blessed to be stressed.” They would then return home and verbally abuse spouses or children and, I’m sure, a whole host of other things. They could call themselves Christians because of the time spent in church- but their lives did not reflect the grace and mercy of God. 

Just as it was not enough to call oneself a descendant of Abraham, it is not enough to call oneself a Christian. It’s a way of life- not a title. People were confused by this in John’s day and age and they continue to be confused by it today. Christians are people who go to churches on Sundays and who vote in very specific ways and so on and so forth. This is who belongs. 

But, to my eye,  it’s easy enough to get to a building one day a week. It’s easy to cast a vote. It’s quite difficult to be a gracious kind of person. 

And yet, we have so often settle for titles and a couple of hyper specific behaviors and less so on a person’s actual character. 

In walks Jesus and he’s here to tell us, “You might be surprised who has character.”

One of the things I’ve started doing in the last few years is interventions. The first thing I do when I sit down with a family is I ask them, “What do you love about your person? What do you admire?” 

We might assume these would be difficult questions to answer if we are assuming that people with a substance use disorder have low character, or whatever. But I’ve yet to meet a family that struggles with this question. They say things like, “He/she has a gentle spirit. They’re kind. They’re always checking in on all of us. They’re hard workers.” And so on and so on. Now, substance use likely makes these relationships quite difficult and it quite likely changes some of the behavior these families are used to seeing in their loved ones. But they know that the character is still in there. Even someone who is down and out, and who has fractured relationships, maybe even committed crimes, might have quite a bit of character in there. 

People in Jesus’ day and age would have assumed a tax collector had low character. They were working on behalf of the Roman government and were stereotypically known as cheats, who would demand a little extra and shave a bit off the top. 

Levi might have been one of these- but it doesn’t say so. In fact, Joel Green and others have written on the use of the word “sinner” in the book of Luke and illustrated that being a “sinner” is not necessarily about being a person who does bad things. It’s being a person who is not a part of our group. For a Pharisee, a Sadducee is a sinner, even though they are a religious person. 

So we don’t know what we have in Levi. There’s no evidence that he’s a bad person, in fact, when Jesus refers to him as a sinner, it’s possible that he’s observing that this man is not a member of the group he’s talking to. 

This would totally change how we see these last words in this passage. Healthy people are people who are included and part of the group. Sick people are outsiders. And this is the type of person Jesus comes for. 

Jesus comes not for the person wearing the Sunday best (and a happy mask). He comes for the outsider- the person who does not feel particularly welcome because they don’t have the Sunday best, or they can’t even pretend to have their life together. 

The good news is- neither is required because God’s logic about who belongs doesn’t work the same way ours does. Anyone gets to belong. And the type of person who wants to belong might surprise us. 

Once we belong, there’s a question of what’s expected of us. And the answer to this is to live a gracious merciful life, wherever you are, that reflects the character of God. You might be surprised, again, at who has character. It might not be the person with the neck tie and the brightest white teeth. 

At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter who has character and who doesn’t. It’s up to you to decide what it looks like to live as a gracious and merciful person. The offer of inclusion is available to you, regardless of what you’ve been told. How to live as an included person is up to you. 

Will you settle for a title? Or will you choose the path of mercy?