Sermon Preached at Bloomsbury
Central Baptist Church
11
September 2016
Mark 2.13-17 Jesus went out again beside the
sea; the whole crowd gathered around him, and he taught them. 14 As he was walking along, he saw
Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, "Follow
me." And he got up and followed him.
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. 16
When 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?" 17
When 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."
Psalm 22.23-31 You who fear the LORD, praise
him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you
offspring of Israel! 24 For
he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide
his face from me, but heard when I cried to him. 25 From you comes my praise in the
great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him. 26 The poor shall eat and be
satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD. May your hearts live
forever! 27 All the ends of
the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the
nations shall worship before him. 28
For dominion belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations. 29 To him, indeed, shall all who
sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
and I shall live for him. 30
Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, 31 and proclaim his deliverance to
a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.
We have a friend who puts considerable thought
into
what she calls her "fantasy dinner parties".
Sometimes these are, at least in theory,
realistic possibilities,
because
the Fantasy-guest-list comprises people
who
are both real and alive;
but
sometimes the guests are fictional, or dead, or both.
And I can see the fun in this.
My personal Formula One fantasy dinner party
currently
has Murray Walker, Damon Hill,
Ayrton
Senna, and Juan Manuel Fangio attending.
While my Baptist Minister evening would include
Violet
Hedger, one of the early pioneers of women in ministry,
alongside
the great scholar-Pastor David Russell,
and
John Tattersall, the minister who baptised me.
But sadly they are all now dead,
so
it's unlikely to happen this side of eternity.
And I wonder, who would you invite to your
fantasy dinner party?
Would you have the great and the good there?
The
famous and the infamous?
Would you have family and friends,
or
the strange and the stranger?
Would your fantasy dinner party include Levi, I
wonder,
the
first century tax collector from Mark's Gospel?
If so, it would be an odd choice,
because
he wasn't the kind of guy to get many dinner party invitations.
In those days, unlike today (of course),
tax
collectors occupied a position on the edge of acceptable society.
They weren't doing anything illegal,
always
carefully making sure that they were on the right side
of
the first century tax evasion/tax avoidance line.
But definitely morally suspect,
and
certainly not that kind of people you would have in your house
without
first making sure all your receipts were in order.
The fundamental problem with tax collectors like
Levi
was
that they were working for the wrong side.
They were Jews working for the Romans,
they
were crossing cultural boundaries best left un-crossed.
Israel at that time was an occupied province,
firmly
under Roman control,
paying
taxes according to Roman laws.
And, quite naturally under the circumstances,
Jewish
nationalism was thriving.
"We want our country back", was written
deep in the heart and soul
of
every Jew to seethe in anger at Roman boots
on
the sacred ground of the promised land.
If there had been an option for a referendum
to
exit the Roman economic community,
it
would have passed unanimously.
But of course, no such option existed,
because
Roman economics, like the economics of every empire ever since,
was
predicated on Roman military might.
Voting to leave the Empire would have been
pointless,
and
armed insurrection was the only option open
to
disaffected young Israelis hoping for a better life
and
greater self-determinacy.
And here we have Levi,
not
only taking a job for the Imperial overlords,
but
a job collecting taxes from his own people.
More a collaborator than a collector, one might
say.
An
unscrupulous bureaucrat,
willing
to compromise his own purity for profit,
and
to betray his own people for a touch of power.
And it is this tax collector called Levi
who
Jesus ends up sharing a meal with.
Is it any wonder the ardent nationalist Pharisees
started
to get so upset with him?
They had their own plan and agenda for resisting
the Roman occupation,
and
it certainly didn't involve cosying up to compromise collaborators.
Neither did it involve armed rebellion or public
opposition.
For the Pharisees, resisting the Romans was
primarily about
exercising
what we might today call nonviolent resistance,
and
it's a perspective with which I find myself having a great deal of sympathy.
Their resistance revolved around resisting
compromise
over
the core of their religious identity.
They were going to be the best Jews they could,
as
far as possible within the letter of the law,
encouraging
the people to follow their lead,
and
avoiding assimilation to the oppressive and seductive forces of empire.
This is the world of the boycott,
the
high moral ground, the careful avoidance of compromise.
And the last thing they needed was a populist
preacher
undermining
their hard work by going to share food with a tax collector.
In ancient Mediterranean culture,
the
sharing of a meal they at the heart of society.
Traditions of hospitality ran deep
and
one of the greatest honours you could pay to another person
was
to give or receive food.
This was, after all, and agrarian society,
and
the link between the land and the food people consumed
was
much more apparent than it is for us in our world.
To break bread with someone was to honour them,
and
so the Pharisees had strict rules
over
who it was permissible to share food with.
If they could control who ate with whom,
they
could control a significant aspect of the way society functioned.
But here's an interesting thing,
it's
not just Levi the tax collector at this meal.
Mark tells us that Jesus ate food with tax
collectors (plural),
and
with sinners.
It's not just Levi and his accountancy friends at
this table.
Others,
the sinners, ate there too.
Now, from the point of view of the Pharisees,
there
may not have been much to differentiate tax collectors from other sinners,
but you can be sure that in the non-purist world
of the everyday Jew,
there
was a whole world of difference,
and
it had to do with indebtedness.
The nation of Israel was in debt to a foreign
power.
In
a situation that has striking similarities to the financial enslavement
experienced
by many countries in the developing world today,
Israel
owed a debt to Rome that they could never repay.
All they could do was service the interest, so to
speak,
through
paying exorbitant taxes,
hoping that the Romans wouldn't just send in
their crack legions
to
call time and strip the country of its remaining assets.
And whilst Levi and his fellow tax collectors
were servicing this system,
the
other sinners where is the victims of it.
The "sinners" were those in debt,
while
the tax collectors were those collecting the debt.
Tax collectors and sinners would not normally sit
down and share a meal together,
and
yet here they all are, at Levi's house,
sharing
food with Jesus,
while
the Pharisees look on disapprovingly.
All of which begs the question of just what is
going on here?
And
it also asks us to make our own difficult choice:
where,
in all this, do you our sympathies lie?
Are we with Jesus, destroying the taboos and
breaking the boundaries,
or
are we with the long game of the Pharisees,
faithfully
and is legally resisting the temptation is to compromise?
I, for one, don't think that this is a
straightforward question to answer.
Let's look at the story a little more closely
and
see where it takes us.
The class enmity between sinners and tax
collectors
could
only have been broken down
if
there had been some kind of debt relief,
some
kind of release from an obligation;
and this is exactly what we meet, time and again,
in
the stories of the ministry of Jesus.
Perhaps the most obvious example is the Lord's
prayer itself,
which
we often recite as,
"forgive
us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us".
However, Matthew’s Gospel gives us an alternative
way
of
saying the same thing, and he puts it
"forgive
us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors" (Matthew 6.12).
The sinners who eat with Levi
can
do so because their debts have been released,
their
sins have been forgiven.
The gospel, or good news, of Jesus to tax
collectors and sinners
concerns
the equalisation of power;
the
forgiveness of sins is about the cancelling of indebtedness.
Of course, this is no new insight.
The
Jews knew very well that the people of God
were
called to have a radically different approach
to
issues such as power, debt, money, property, and relationships.
The ancient Jewish laws relating to Sabbath and
Jubilee
enshrined,
deep within their society,
mechanisms
for the restoration of relationships
across
socio-economic divides.
So, the stories of creation speak of a rhythm of
work and rest,
six
days God labours, and on the seventh God rests.
This is where the pattern of the working week
comes from,
and
we know that it is good.
The seven-day pattern continues in the story of
the mysterious manna in the wilderness,
which
sustained the Israelites for 40 years.
Every day the food appeared on the ground,
but
only enough for that day,
until
the sixth day when there was enough for the seventh day as well.
Taking this pattern and enshrining it in law,
the
Jewish Torah also required a Sabbath for the land.
Every seventh year the land was to be rested,
left
fallow, rather than over-farmed.
It has only been with the introduction of modern fertilisers
that
farming has moved away from this practice,
and
there remain serious environmental questions
about
the over-use of the land without allowing it to rest.
But in addition to its ecological wisdom,
the
practice of resting the land functioned at a psychological and spiritual level
to
break the sense of ownership of the land,
and
it reminded the people that they were merely stewards
of
a world that existed far beyond their own life span.
And then every seventh seven-year cycle,
after
49 years of labour and rest, once in a lifetime,
there
was to be a year of Jubilee,
when
debts were forgiven,
when
land reverted back to the tribe that originally owned it,
when
slaves were released,
and
when wealth was redistributed.
Whether this ever actually happened is a moot
point,
it
may just be an economic thought experiment,
but
the principle is clear.
In an agrarian society, the cycle of poverty
begins
when
a family has to sell their land,
and
the process of one family growing richer
while
another descends towards bond slavery is begun.
Again, the similarities to global cycles
of
poverty and wealth in our own world are striking,
as
the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Sabbath and Jubilee challenge this cycle,
and
assert a counter-narrative
that
the purpose of economics should be to guarantee enough for everyone,
not
to facilitate surplus accumulation by the few.
The theological insight underpinning the economic
idealism here is straightforward.
"The
Earth belongs to God, and its fruits are free,
so
the people should justly distribute those fruits
instead
of seeking to own and horde them.” (Say
to this mountain).
And so we come back to Jesus eating with tax
collectors and sinners.
Sharing
food with the debtors, and with the agents of enslavement alike.
And it's all about sharing, and it's all about
forgiveness,
and
it's all about food, and power, and inequality, and sin.
And the Pharisees don't like it one bit
because
it is messing with their status quo.
A rabbi like Jesus should not sit to eat
with
the tax collectors or sinners;
and neither should tax collectors share table
with sinners.
This is the new economics of forgiveness in
microcosm,
and
its challenge remains as sharp in the 21st-century
as
ever it was in the first century,
especially
when we read it in a context
of
haves and have-nots,
of
vested interests and enshrined inequalities.
I'm not going to get too political about this
today;
I'll
leave it for each of us to weigh our own perspective
on
politics and economics
against
the measure of the relationships modelled by Jesus,
and
the new economics of the kingdom of God that he proclaimed.
But just for a moment, imagine with me a fantasy
dinner party
where
the street homeless person is sat at table
with
the person who paid off their mortgage years ago.
Imagine an unemployed person
sat
with the person who has just had to sanction their benefits.
Imagine a disabled person
sat
at table with a target-driven work-capability-assessor.
Imagine a junior doctor
sat
with the secretary of state for health.
And then you be the judge:
who
here is sick, and who is healthy?
And in the middle of it, hear Jesus saying,
"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".
For Jesus, those who are "sick" are the
tax collectors and the sinners.
He diagnoses the nature of society's malaise
as
a sickness in the system
which enslaves the poor and the vulnerable,
excluding
them from society,
and which co-opts good people to its corrupting
aims.
Those who think they are healthy, in this
analysis,
are
the beneficiaries of the system,
and
Jesus says that they have no need of him.
He doesn't sit and share food with the Pharisees.
All of which brings us to today, to our church,
and
to how we will live together.
This is a church which has, since its foundation
nearly 170 years ago,
sought
to care for the poor and the vulnerable,
to
see the person behind the predicament,
and
to bring relief to those enslaved to sin and sickness.
This is who we are,
it
is what we do, in very many different ways.
And then we take that hands-on engagement,
that
lived reality of equality and sharing,
and we offer our experience of it
to
a wider conversation about how we will shape society.
It's why we don't shy away from talking politics,
and
it's why we give time and energy
to
organisations like London citizens.
But it has to be real for us,
if
it is to go anywhere else.
We have two work out what it is for Jesus
to
sit and eat with tax collectors and sinners in our midst,
and for us to be honest about the nature
of
our own place at the table.
We are all of us sick,
we
are all of us indebted through sin,
we
are all of us enslaved to a system that diminishes and demeans,
and
this is true whether we own property or sleep rough.
If we deny our sickness, we deny our need of a
saviour,
and
we take our place with the Pharisees,
and
we surrender our place at the table.
Last Sunday lunchtime we continued our
conversation as a church
about
what we might to do with the basement on Sundays,
when
it reopens later this year following months of renovation.
It is clear that an important part of this
will
involve the sharing of food together,
as
we sit at the table with one another and invite Jesus to join us.
Several of the comments from the meeting have
stayed with me,
but
one in particular seems especially relevant here:
One of our congregation observed
that
we had to just shared communion in our morning service,
and
said that, for them, when we share food over Sunday lunch,
"it
is like we create a communion service
for
the vulnerable and elderly who come",
that
"it's our way of sharing Christ".
And I love this. Yes, and Amen, I want to say to
this.
Another way of putting it would be to say that
our eating together,
rich
and poor, housed and homeless, strong and vulnerable,
is
a sacramental act:
it's
something we do in obedience to the call of Christ,
in
expectation and faith that Christ joins us in the doing of it.
And this isn't just true of Sunday lunch,
it's
true of all the other times we share food together as a church.
And there are so many of those,
from
home groups to church socials, to Tuesdays,
to
the night shelter and the evening Centre,
to
shared biscuits in the foyer,
to
communion services, and I could go on.
Bloomsbury truly is a church which marches on its
stomach.
And we do so to share Christ,
because
we are his body.
And here's the thing about the body of Christ,
here
is the truth of the broken bread of communion.
The body of Christ is broken.
We
are broken, we are sick,
it's
why we need our great physician.
And if our shared food is to be sacramental,
if
it is to make Christ known in the sharing of it,
then
it has to involve sacrifice.
As Levi the tax collector had to give up his
hard-won advantage
that
the debt of the sinners might be cancelled,
so
we are called to sacrificial living.
The awful truth of the call of Christ,
the
truth that the Pharisees could not cope with,
is
that the powerful are called to give up their power.
If all we do is to try and feed the poor,
to
alleviate their hunger, to meet their needs,
then
we are not truly sharing Christ with them,
because
the difference of power remains unaddressed.
Charity has value, and it has its place,
but
it is not the kingdom of God.
Simply sharing space while food is served
is
not the kingdom of God.
The terrible truth of the call of Christ
is
that if we are to see debts cancelled, sins forgiven,
and
good news made manifest in our midst,
then we have to be willing to give away our
control and our power,
to
give up our vested interests and our personal desires.
As Nye Bevin put it, "the purpose of
power is to give it away".
And then, as we take our own seat at the table,
no
better or worse than anyone else,
tax
collectors and sinners together,
then, we meet the risen Jesus, as we gather
around his table.
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