A Friend of Sinners

Different sides to politics: You have those on the right and those on the left. You have differing beliefs, differing standards. In the last number of years, there doesn’t seem to be much love about in this increasingly divided society of ours.

Now with an increasing tendency, people are starting to categorise others by the group they belong to, whether that is a colour of skin, identity preference, tribe/group, class, or ideological belief to which a group innocence or guilt has been assigned. The individual bears the responsibility assigned to the group rather than the individual bearing responsibility for his or her own actions.

It is true that there has always been a tendency for humanity to classify the worth and dignity of a fellow person by slotting them into categories.

But this is a far cry from the Christian position which advocates for individual responsibility and worth apart from a category (“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus – Galatians 3:28). This is the stance of the Gospel of Christ as it is exercised in the Christian church.

People are praised or condemned for their character and how they, individually, behave in the sight of God. Remember the Reverend Martin Luther King who said: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colorof their skin, but by the content of their character”.

Martin Luther King was a Christian who understood the teaching of Christ and he expressed that teaching through the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.

Jesus refused to categorise a person’s worth by their ethnicity, sex, class, job or type of career.

Recently, I have been teaching through a series from Mark’s Gospel that is emphasising the power of Jesus. From a scale of 1-10, Jesus is an 11 (Mark 5).

In this Gospel, it shows that Jesus helped an upper-class Synagogue ruler by raising his daughter from the dead. However, while He was on His way to this man’s house, He came across a woman who had a constant bleed for 12 yrs. The only help she gained was from doctors who, tragically, made her condition worse. But she was not in the same class as the Synagogue ruler.

Whilst the Synagogue ruler was on the top rung of the honour scale, this woman was on the bottom rung. But it made no difference to Jesus. She received the same attention and care that the Synagogue ruler received.

She was healed and restored to good health as was the Synagogue ruler’s daughter restored to good health.

There is more to this as well. The woman’s haemorrhage made her religiously unclean which meant that she could not attend worship nor have contact with any person – for 12 long years.

But that all changed after she had touched Jesus and received healing in her body.

The point I’m making today is that we are under an illusion if we think we can live on this “group innocence/guilt” platform and retain our individuality.

Rather, Jesus’ position is unique in assigning personal innocence or guilt to the individual. Only in this way can true worth and individual dignity be known.

Pastor David McAllan

Echuca Community Church