Levi & his dinner guests

Intro & Reading

Story

Jess Janz - Dinner with Strangers

The intention of Dinner With Strangers is to skip the small talk and create space for storytelling, conversation, and learning from each other. To do so, the format for the night looks like this:

Mix and mingle time - question prompts on cards are provided to help get past initial nerves and get the conversation started!

Sit-down dinner with guided conversation - each dinner has a theme, and Jess will guide the group through a few questions where everyone is invited to share a response. The intention of this is to give everyone the opportunity to share, for every voice to be heard, and for the group to witness 20 different walks of life that may or may not be similar to their own.

After dinner connecting - Once we’ve all heard from each other and dug in deeper, this is your chance to follow up with someone who inspired you, ask each other questions, float around the room, go down a conversational rabbit hole, share more of your story. Debrief what you’ve learned, and then take home what inspired you. :)

Connecting to the text

Who do you most identify with in the reading today?

Levi the tax collector? Called to follow Jesus and then, hosting Jesus and a bunch of others?

The legal experts (or Scribes) and Pharisees who are concerned about the company Jesus is keeping? Why does he eat with “THEM”?

The ones looking at John’s disciples, the Pharisees’ disciples and Jesus’ disciples and wondering why the first two groups are fasting and the last group isn’t? Wondering why some God folks practice their faith differently, either from you or from one another.

Or maybe one of the parables - those stories meant to provoke us to wonder about the kingdom - did one of the images strike you or provoke you in some way? The wedding feast or the mending clothes or the new wine and old wineskins?

What questions did the reading raise for you?

Can we care for new wine AND old wineskins? Can we love the person in front of us, eat together, radically welcome people to our table AND maintain old ways of doing this, longstanding religious structures? Is this a both/and kind of thing?

Is Jesus saying “new is good, old is bad?” in these parables?

And then Jesus says, “I’ve come for the sick, not the healthy?” which group are we in? Are we among the righteous (in which case he hasn’t come for us) or the sinners (in which case, he has, but then we have to address that too)

So, let’s take a look at Levi and at the people Levi invites to his home.

And then let’s examine the 3 images for the kingdom Jesus provides in answer to the people’s questions about religious practice.

First, Levi.

a tax collector, or as some translators render it, “a tax farmer”

explain the system

working for Herod Antipas. One who named himself “King of the Jews”

Now called to follow Jesus of Nazareth

Mark is building to 8:29 where Peter, speaking for the 12, will declare that Jesus is Messiah

Next, the dinner party.

Jesus dining with tax collectors and sinners at Levi’s house

(what irony that Jesus calls Levi, Levi follows and then the first place Jesus leads Levi is back home)

Jesus - a doctor who hosts a great party, healing both physical and social ailments

Mark 2:16–17 NIV

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.”

Are we among the righteous/healthy or the sinners/sick?

Do we need a doctor?

Amy-Jill Levine:

“Tax collectors and sinners are not just people trying to make a living; they are the ancient versions of loan sharks and drug dealers, pimps and traitors.”

So the critique here is often that Pharisees are trying to avoid ritual impurity, but if we give them the benefit of the doubt, we might see that they have a genuine concern for the good of the community. They are seeking to protect themselves from those who harm the community.

What do we do with the good desire to protect people from harm?

We can critique the Pharisees, sure. But as people who belong to and participate in “organized religion” perhaps we ought to be careful about throwing stones at religious people. Sometimes we might find ourselves looking much more like the Pharisees than Jesus disreputable dinner guests.

Jesus “diagnoses the social sins of gluttony, selfishness and sanctimoniousness” and then announces that he makes house calls! Even to Levi’s house. To his dinner party full of tax collectors and sinners. And perhaps he would include scribes and Pharisees too, if they wanted to join in.

So, where do you see yourself in the story? Are you Levi, called to follow Jesus? Are you Levi’s friends, included in the dinner party Jesus attends (or hosts?)? Are you the religious folks questioning Jesus’ choice of company?

Or maybe those who question why Jesus disciples aren’t fasting like the disciples of John or the Pharisee’s followers?

When Jesus answers this question about why his disicples aren’t participating in a religious practice (and not one that Jesus says we shouldn’t do… in fact, he teaches, “when you fast”… But in his answer, we get three images of the kingdom. Three ways of seeing what things are like when God’s heart for creation is lived out.

One in a response to a question posed about religious practice. And then in two parables. Let’s look at the images in reverse order to how we see them presented in the text…

First, we have the image of new wine and old wineskins.

Then, the image of mending clothes with patches.

Finally, the image of a wedding feast not being the moment for somber reflection, but for celebration and feasting.

In all three images, we have the ideas of old and new seemingly pitted against one another.

Let’s look at each one a little more closely:

new wine in old wineskins.

longstanding religious structures - that are maybe working fine for some. But not for all.

what Jesus is doing cant’ fit into old structures and systems, old ways of thinking and doing

including old conceptions of God. In Jesus we have the full and final revelation of what God is like…. and it’s upsetting if it overturns systems built on a misconception of God

threatens what we know, what we are comfortable with

Jesus says he’s here for the ones for whom the religious system isn’t working (ie. tax collectors and sinners)

mending clothes - new and old don’t mix well together - both the patch and the garment are ruined

a wedding - Jesus compares his presence to a wedding feast, an occasion for happy festivity

two Jewish ideas about wedding imagery:

God making things new compared to a wedding

N.T. Wright: “the world in which everyone would have more than enough and there would be peace and justice for all”

Israel as God’s bride - and so Jesus saying, “I’m the Bridegroom” is a very audacious claim, especially when paired with him dining with the wrong people.

So back to Jesus at dinner with the “wrong sort” of people…

If you’re the wrong sort of people, this is good news.

If you’ve worked really hard to be the “right sort” of people, this might be infuriating, or at least disconcerting.

Meghan Good, in her book Divine Gravity (which I HIGHLY recommend!) writes about a modern day setting in which we can see the story played out…

I am going to read a section from her book, because she puts it so well…

pg 215

Conclusion

As we wrap up, I wonder what image most catches your attention… whether you have a question (or 3) bubbling up to the surface, whether you can see yourself in the story somewhere, perhaps as a questioner of Jesus, truly seeking to understand, or perhaps troubled by his choice of company, frustrated by his willingness to pay attention to trajectory instead of all the “good behaviour” you’ve racked up. Or maybe you’re surprised to realize that Jesus really does welcome you at His table…that you are absolutely welcomed and seen and wanted.

Or, maybe, like Levi, you’ve answered the call to follow Jesus, and now you’re back at your own home, surprised that this is where Jesus has led you first, and he’s inviting all of your friends to the table. Even those friends. Even that guy.

As we move into a posture of prayer, (team can come up)

I want to give us a little bit of space this morning, just to tell Jesus what we have seen in the gospel text this morning. What has delighted us or confused us. What has struck a chord.

[silence]

Now, I wonder if we could imagine that we’re sitting at a table with Jesus. That we are seen, welcomed, known, invited…

[Have you said yes to sitting with Jesus?]

Now, look around this imaginary table… who are you surprised to see included there?

Who else is running after Jesus, seeking His heart, wanting to be made more like Him?

Finally, this is really good news in a world full of fracture, polarization, splintering and hunkering down in echo chambers where everyone agrees with us.

Where might we be invited to offer this good news to someone around us? Not a sermon, but an invitation…

the same invitation we’ve been given is the one we get to give…