The Savior of Sellouts and Sinners

The Call

By a show of hands, how many of you have ever experienced one of your favorite bands or musicians selling out? Be honest. Let’s set aside the fact that it’s really arrogant of any of us to judge the quality of someone else’s art, that’s a different sermon. What does it take for us to determine that a musician has “sold out”?

I used to classify musicians as sellouts a lot when I was younger, and I don’t know if that is just common for us in our youth, or if its because I haven’t had the energy to discover new music in the last decade. A band would get the sell out stamp from me for one of two reasons. One is because they would go mainstream. I prided myself on listening to the music that no one else knew about. Once they became popular, I would feel betrayed, like how dare they become successful. Naturally it wasn’t me that was the problem but them. Sellouts!

Second is when they would change their sound. How dare you go on an artistic journey and try something new. You must be doing it for the money! I’m done with you traitors!

What do we mean when we call someone a sell out? Well, it’s either that the person betrayed their own values, or the values of their community. The person was not loyal to the community to which they belong; to be a sellout is to betray one’s self or community. They’re a traitor. Treasonous. A collaborator. A conspirator.

I was a sellout once. During my undergrad at James Madison University I worked for the campus police department as campus security, which is just as awesome as it sounds. I had the shirt, the puffy jacket, the walkie, the big flashlight, the giant roll of keys, the works. I even drove a sweet van with flashing yellow lights.

The job was exactly what you think it was. I locked buildings and reported my fellow students when they broke the rules. We were a dry campus, which meant most of the time I was calling fellow students in for being intoxicated or having alcohol when they shouldn’t.

What do you think that made me to my peers? I was a snitch. A sellout. A traitor. And when people saw us in our puffy jackets and blinking yellow lights, what did they do? Cold stares, walked the other way, often some creative language was thrown our way occasionally we were physically threatened. Why? Because we were traitors! In the eyes of the student body, we betrayed our fellow students and ratted them out for a paycheck.

Levi, better known as Matthew, was a sellout. As a tax collector, he was the kind of person that nobody loved. Nobody, that is, except for Jesus. And in this story of Levi’s call we see Jesus’ abounding love for sellouts and sinners, and the power that Jesus’ call has on our lives.

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Levi was a tax collector, which meant he would’ve been hired from the native Jewish population to collected taxes for the occupying Roman forces. He would’ve needed to be a very intelligent man, well-versed in several languages and very good at math and accounting.

It is impossible to describe the level of hatred and disgust the Jewish people had for men like Levi. He was a collaborator with the oppressive Romans, selling out his own people to serve the gentiles and make a fat paycheck for himself. And it wasn’t just that men like Levi collected taxes for the Romans, but they often collected more than was required, and more than the Jewish citizens were able to pay. They were regarded as shady extortioners, disgusting, unclean, unfit for fellowship.

As a class, the Rabbinic law in the Talmud classified tax collectors as robbers who were disqualified from witness in court and who were excommunicated from the synagogue. Levi had no social or religious significance.

The Romans, of course, would not have viewed Levi with any significance either. To them, he was a dog, a body to be exploited for the glory of the Roman emperor. A sellout to his own people, and worthless to his employer, Levi’s only rest was in his money, and in other tax collectors who were ostracized just like him.

We don’t know much about Matthew prior to this point, but it’s not difficult for us to imagine how he must have felt. Many of us here know the power that shame and guilt can have over us; it is not before too long where we start to internalize the shame we carry. We start to believe, Maybe I really am worthless. Maybe I really am incapable. Maybe I really am unworthy of love.

Luke cuts right to the point. Here sits Matthew, collecting taxes like any other day, and Jesus saw him. With compassion, tenderness, hope, and love, Jesus looks upon his beloved Matthew and simply says, “Follow me.”

And not unlike the leper, who felt physical touch for the first time in who knows how long, Matthew hears perhaps for the first time in his whole life, “You are wanted and loved. Follow me.” And immediately, leaving everything behind, Matthew follows Jesus.

There is no shame or guilt that is too great to keep you from the love of Jesus. In Luke’s gospel, who have we seen are the recipients of Jesus’ grace and mercy? Men and women, religious and nonreligious, the poor, the sick, the outcast, the marginalized, the sellout, the sinner; in other words, people just like you and me.

You are exactly the kind of person that Jesus loves to save and shower with his grace.

This we know to be true when we, like Levi, have been called. What does it mean to be called by Jesus? Is it religious profession? Faithful church attendance? Knowledge of doctrine? An ecstatic spiritual experience? To be called may include any of these things, but it cannot be defined by any of them. Some may faithfully attend church their whole lives and have never been called.

To be called is to know, deep down in our bones, that come what may, no matter how far we may be prone to wander, we cannot escape the God who loves us and died for us. It is an internal force on our hearts that tells us Jesus must be above all and in all. It is a trust in Jesus to have complete control over our lives. It is the conviction that Jesus knows me, loves me, and wants to be with me.

You know sometimes, when I get in a funk, I start to stew on who I was before I knew Jesus. I think about what I did, how I treated people, my crass and offensive humor, and sometimes an audible groan wells up from deep down in my gut. I might just be driving or getting stuff down around the house and almost out of nowhere it’s just an, “UGH!” The shame can be overwhelming.

It’s in those moments where I need to remember, I am one who has been called. Jesus sees me, loves me, and wants to be with me.

When Jesus says “Follow me,” we experience the deep, shame-piercing, guilt-ridding love of our Savior. It’s in his call where we find joy and freedom.

The Called

Levi isn’t the only one in this encounter who needs to hear and receive this call. Conflict is brewing in Luke’s narrative, and Jesus’ second confrontation with the religious leaders happens over a meal. As proud and religious as they are, Jesus knows they need him as much as Levi does.

Meals are a central theme in Luke’s gospel, with at least ten major moments in the gospel happening in one of Jesus’ meals with others. One scholar has said that in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is killed because of who he ate with. This account certainly proves the point.

Levi’s response to the call was to leave everything and follow Jesus. He immediately holds a great banquet for Jesus and invites all his sellout friends to join him. The banquet is called great not because of the guests who were invited but because of the feast that is prepared. Levi uses his wealth to throw a party for Jesus, and it’s clear that Jesus is enjoying it.

Not in a self-glorifying way, of course; nor in a glutonnous way that many of the guests may have been enjoying themselves. But Jesus is said to be reclining at table in their company. His behavior is leisured, relaxed. It’s clear that Jesus not only loves Matthew and his friends in some abstract way, but he actually likes and enjoys them. He genuinely wants to be with them. Jesus is unhurried, because he relishes the company of those who are hated and rejected by everyone else.

The religious leaders can’t believe it. They can’t imagine a Rabbi who would not only have tax collectors as disciples, but would actually enjoy them and put his feet up and leisure with them.

Yet there’s no place that Jesus would rather be than in the company of sinners who need his forgiveness and grace.

The Pharisees often get a bad rap for being really judgy, hypocritical people. And maybe in some respects thats true. But that isn’t what is directly in view in this passage.

Remember, their moral code was built around purity and separation. Think about all of the purity laws, the dietary restrictions, in the Old Testament. Purity was a big deal. Cleanliness was next to godliness. In their eyes, Jesus was throwing their entire book out the window. Tax collectors were impure and not welcomed into the synagogue. Like the lepers, to be in their company would make one unclean. Jesus is presumed to be unclean by association, violating the religious code, grouped in with the unworthy sinners.

So in some respects, the Pharisees were right. Their desire to uphold their law and ethics was a good one. Many of them genuinely wanted to obey and please God. It was the code itself, and how it hardened their hearts, which became a problem. They wanted to be close to God; which was good. But they thought nearness to God came by separation from sinners. This same attitude would characterize them on that first Palm Sunday, when they rebuked the disciples for worshipping Jesus.

They thought godliness came by separation. So they didn’t have eyes to see when the God they longed for came in the flesh and drew near to sinners. They couldn’t even see the desire of their heart when he was staring them right in the face.

Every religion in the world has some kind of boundary principle. In his book The Art of Community, Charles Vogl traces this dynamic through every major religion and various kinds of social groups. He says that boundaries are important to mark insiders and outsiders of a given community. But boundaries ought to primarily be about making the inside space feel safe for insiders, rather than about keeping outsiders out (p. 33).

At some point the Pharisees got this twisted. And whenever we adapt a similar attitude, we wander far from the heart of our Savior.

Pre-Covid, back in the DC area, I led an outreach ministry at a local brewery near our church. I would get pushback on this ministry all the time from other Christians. They couldn’t understand what a pastor would be doing in a brewery. I remember one time I was in a group of Christians trying to explain the ministry, and how I wanted to create a space for non-Christians to meet Christians in a really safe, common ground environment. One of the people at the table, an older gentleman, interrupted me and in his deep growl of a voice said, “WELL WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ONCE ALL THESE BAR PEOPLE ARE COMING TO CHURCH?” His boundary couldn’t conceive of a particular group of people being welcome.

By the way, he later become one of the biggest supporters of the ministry, so don’t give up on people.

See, this is what is supposed to make the Church unique. We’re the only fellowship in the world where the one requirement for membership is our unworthiness. The only boundary Jesus gives us is to acknowledge that we are sinners, in need of his physician’s touch, in need of the cleansing power of his forgiveness. That’s it. It’s not your wealth. It’s not your abilities. It’s not your pedigree. It’s not your knowledge. It’s not your family. The only ones who are out are those who are too proud to say they’re sick.

It is this quality that ought to make us a people who can only be defined by the gospel; an odd but beautiful mixture of people which you could not find anywhere else in the world. A people who cannot be explained in any way other than, “God has done something beautiful here.”

You know, this is so much of our heart in planting a church on the Near Westside of our city. We want to see a church planted that can only be explained by Jesus doing something otherwise inexplainable, if not for his gospel at work in and among a people. One of the questions we get most often when we talk about this ministry is, well Why the Near Westside? Often what is behind that question is, What business do you have there? or, Why do you even care? Well for one, Jesus cares a whole lot about the Near Westside. So how can we not?

But don’t miss that the places Jesus leads his people aren’t always going to make sense. It’s not always going to be explainable. Look at his followers. Who is Jesus’ starting lineup? A group of stubborn fishermen, a former demon-possessed woman, a sellout tax collector, and a zealot who was trying to take down the Roman empire. That’s his crackshot team.

How did the church in Philippi in Acts 16 get started? A wealthy businesswoman, a demon-possessed slave girl, and a Roman jailer. How does Paul say the church in Corinth got started? By God choosing what is foolish to the world, the weak and the lowly, to shame the wise and the powerful. None of that makes any sense! Not unless Jesus has done the impossible.

That’s our heart for the church plant. And I hope that’s our shared heart here for Redeemer; not to draw lines around what we think makes sense for who belongs here, but to ask Jesus to draw us out to those who aren’t here yet.

But it’s not just the religious person who can fall victim to this mindset. We all do this. We all have codes, moral, social, or religious, that we seek to uphold. We all draw lines. You say, “No I don’t, only those people do it.” See, you just did it.

Everyone has a line. Everyone does this in some way. Politics, education, class, you name it. And our boundaries so quickly become the means by which we separate from and condemn others. In our polarized world, so many of our boundaries are drawn based on keeping common enemies out rather than common cause and concern for each other.

Jesus is saying here, no no, no, no, no. No more lines. Don’t you see? You’re no better. You’re no better. You’re no better than “those people.” Do you know who I came for? A plumber unclogs the drain, a mechanic fixes the car, a physician heals the sick, I call sinners and sinners only. To be on Jesus’ side is to be one who in humility can say, “Yeah, Jesus, I need you to do a work in my heart. My sin has made me sick, and I don’t have an answer for it.”

Look, be honest with yourself this morning. We’re sick. For some of us that’s spiritual, others that’s emotional or physical. We’re angry, fearful. We’re divided. Boy are we ever. We feel superior or inferior. We’re sick.

Jesus is saying, I have something for you. It’s me. I’m what you need. Let me take your sin sickness, receive the health of my righteousness. Receive my death for your sins, receive my new life by faith, let me Spirit cleanse you of your sin sickness. This is Isaiah 53:

But he was pierced for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his wounds we are healed.

Jesus says, “I will take your sin upon myself. I will pour out my Spirit and make you clean. I have the power to make you new. Let me melt your heart. Follow me.”

And when you’re a recipient of that kind of love, how can you draw lines anymore? How can you look down on others who aren’t like you? How can you get caught up in culture wars? How can you find confidence in your own goodness? You can’t. This is how the gospel tears down boundaries and kills our hostility. This is how Jesus makes one new, beautiful, sometimes odd, group of people. He is the savior for sellouts and sinners.

The Call’s Power

Levi’s response to the call is imperfect, but he’s getting it. The power of Jesus’ call is working its way into the crevices of his heart. Matthew was, without a doubt, the richest of the apostles. There is a certain courage that Levi exhibits here. If following Jesus didn’t work out for the fishermen, they could return to their trade. In fact, after Jesus dies, that is exactly what they do in John 21. But not so for Matthew. There was no going back for him. Leaving everything to follow Jesus was a total and final commitment.

Make no mistake, Jesus loves sinners. But he never approves of our sin. He’ll never leave us where we are in our sin. Levi’s call demonstrates that while leaving a life of sin can be hard, risky, even scary; it is always worth it for the joy that Jesus gives to those who follow him.

We see this new joy in Levi’s life in three ways: first, his immediate willingness to leave a life of sin behind. Second, he has generosity with his stuff, using it to throw a feast for Jesus. And third, he wants to tell his friends about Jesus.

A life of greed and extortion has made a sudden change to a life of joy and generosity! Levi is experiencing the jubilee; he has found new life, and with it, new purpose in following Jesus.

For a long time I’ve been fascinated with the way millennials are viewed by the broader society. When I graduated college 14 years ago, the conversation was envious: “Millennials are so technologically advanced, they’re changing everything.” Then in my mid-20’s it was, “Millennials are the largest generation, they have money, we need to cater and market everything to them.” Now, in my mid-30’s, most of the conversation is, “Man, what happened to the millennials? What a disappointment.”

I can tell you what’s wrong with millennials in one word. Are you ready? Recycling. Yeah, recycling. When I was growing up, I was told I could save the world just by putting all of my excessive plastic into the recycling bin. And for like, 30 years I believed I was doing the right thing. Then I come to find out how little of our recycled materials is ever actually properly recycled. I learned that we actually just send our junk all over the world, and we did that long enough that now everybody else is rejecting our recyclables, and we don’t really know what to do with it.

Let me tell you something, when I found this out, it felt like my entire life was a lie. What’s the point in even trying to save the environment anymore? I was crushed.

There was a great article in the New York Times a few weeks ago titled, “This isn’t what millennial middle age was supposed to look like.” And the article captured what I think has become a really common attitude by many in my generation, which is a sense of purposelessness, a malaise, a fatigue. Some of the individuals interviewed for the article captured these sentiments really well. One of them said, “My life feels like a loss of potential.” Another said, “I feel like my life is always on the verge of getting started, but it never goes anywhere.”

Sober stuff. But I don’t think these sentiments are all that unique to millennials. Study after study shows that we are a people marked by fatigue, addiction, purposelessness, hopelessness. So where do we go? What can we do?

Levi’s testimony tells us. There is joy to be found in following Jesus.

I want to offer something if you’re here this morning and you’re still checking out who Jesus is. We’re really, really glad you’d choose to be with us today. So many other ways you could be spending your time. Here’s something I think that is worth considering this week.

Jesus of Nazareth was not the first man who was celebrated by the Jewish people as a kingly, messianic figure. There were actually several other messianic pretenders around the same time period. Some of the more prominent ones include Judas, the son of Hezekiah; Simon the Slave of King Herod; and Athronges, the humble shepherd who led a revolution. All of these figures were squashed by Rome like a bug and were all but lost to history.

So why Jesus? Why did the Jesus movement change the history of the world? Why the guy who rode to his death on a donkey? It makes no sense. Not unless Jesus truly is capable of the impossible; not unless his followers find that he really does deliver on the joy he promises; not unless it really is worth it to leave everything behind and follow him.

Jesus says to each of us this morning, “Follow me.” Is it worth it? Yes. And he gave up everything to draw near to us and prove it. Everything. Won’t you follow him?