The Wrong Crowd
Text: Matthew 9:9-13
I’ve said before that I am an avid political watcher. I’ve also learned to keep my political opinions to myself out of respect for the wide varieties of political views that will exist in any congregation. That having been said, after watching a few of the political events both with our neighbours to the south, as well as our own Parliamentary goings-on, I’ve come to the conclusion that Jesus could never have been an elected official.
Such a revelation might send the religious right in the United States off into conniptions… but let’s be honest. It’s true. In the talk around the resignation of Maxime Bernier last week, one commentator said that in politics, one is indeed judged by the company that they keep. Many political and business careers have come to a crashing halt this way. Not a year goes by without at least one happening somewhere in the world. US Presidential Candidate Barack Obama has been forced to distance himself from the congregation he came to faith in, because it means people could judge him by the company he keeps. Hanging out with the wrong crowd can truly be a career-killing move.
It was something that Jesus knew… but didn’t particularly care about… if anything he deliberately stomped all over this social convention, and to show all of us how truly hypocritical it really is.
The story from Matthew:
10And as [Jesus] sat at dinner in the house, many tax-collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. 11When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’
Why does your teacher eat with tax-collectors and sinners? It’s a rhetorical question. They’re not looking for an answer, they’re already pronouncing judgment on Jesus because he is hanging out with the wrong crowd. This was absolutely scandalous. If anything they were trying to seed some doubt amongst the people that Jesus had already called to be his disciples… After all, this scene, at least in this gospel comes immediately after Jesus calls Matthew, a known tax-collector, a Roman Stooge to be one of his followers. Even some of Jesus’ own disciples must have been wondering what Jesus was up to by having this traitor in their midst.
If Jesus had any political advisers at this point in time, they might well have resigned in protest because he was doing all the wrong things to win over the public trust. Despite how the Pharisees are portrayed in the gospels, they were the good church-attending folks. They were the publicly righteous, the upstanding citizens that everyone aspired to be. In the gospels, however, they are treated as the bad guys… and it’s not without good reason. After all, they knew the score, they knew the social rules, they knew who was “in” and who was “out” and Jesus was definitely not with the program.
Well… actually… Jesus knew the score… he knew what ‘the rules’ were, and frankly he didn’t care. Why? Because those rules were ones that people had made, that had developed in a society to determine who was in and who was out. They were not rules that God had created and handed down, they were social conventions that people made to somehow distinguish themselves as being better than the people around them.
If anything, when Jesus heard the Pharisees engaged in this whispering campaign, he responds to them by saying:
‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’
Although ironically, the Pharisees themselves show that they are actually clueless when it comes to understanding how far off base they are when they talk about the wrong crowd. It shows how unrighteous and sinful they were for pronouncing such judgment themselves.
But then again, there’s a couple of ways to take what Jesus says. Conventionally, we might take that to mean that Jesus is working with this wrong crowd in order to turn them into righteous people. Although really, I don’t think that’s what Jesus was after. He doesn’t hang out with them to turn them into righteous folks. After all, Jesus knows that the world didn’t need any more Pharisees!
Instead, Jesus is demonstrating the grace of God. By being with the people where they are, for who they are, he blatantly ignores the potential social consequences of hanging out with the wrong crowd. He shows that God does not care about social conventions, about who is in or who is out… but that nobody is beyond the love that God has for us as human beings. If anything Jesus was challenging the Pharisees to break out of their own rigid social structure, to be able to see that there was no such thing as “the wrong crowd” in the eyes of God.
The tragedy is that the Pharisees weren’t able to let go of that, and to actually come and sit with the wrong crowd themselves. Ironically, by doing so, the Pharisees showed themselves to be just as sinful as the tax-collectors and sinners they were berating Jesus for associating with.
So maybe it’s a question that I need to put us into the shoes of the Pharisees. If you and I personally encountered Jesus… how might we respond with him being with the wrong crowd? To be honest, we might well think that Jesus WAS the wrong crowd in every respect. After all, Jesus was a poor carpenter who couldn’t get respectable work out in the field. He was too poor to live on the land, and had to eke out a living in a small hick village. Not only that, he gave up that work to be a wandering preacher, living off the generosity of others. By all circumstances Jesus was indeed the wrong crowd! No wonder the Pharisees had a hard time with him.
But that’s exactly the point. Through the very life of this poor carpenter, Jesus showed us that our practice of labeling people as being part of the “wrong crowd” has no place in the kingdom of God. It is truly a unique witness to the world. It is something to remember that Christianity is the only world religion whose central figure who came from dirt poor, social outcast circumstances. All other major religious traditions, seem to come from the rich sectors of life... We often forget that Christianity was something that came out of a place where everybody else saw nothing. There is something very unique about this… and something we can celebrate about what Jesus can teach the world… Unfortunately, it is something that we have long since forgotten... and forgotten very badly.
Knowing this, we have to ask ourselves this question. If Jesus did not care that he hung out with the wrong crowd, why is it that we often have this in the church? Is it a double-standard, that somehow it is okay for Jesus, but not for good church-attending folks? That's a rhetorical question by the way... of course it's not okay.
It’s not Jesus who needs to get with the program. It’s us. It's not okay to judge a person by the crowd that they hang out with... yet our whole society is geared towards this. It's how we've been taught, despite most of us being raised in a Christian environment. We do judge people by the company they keep... so how do we resist that tremendous temptation to do so.
First... well... any time we find ourselves passing judgment on someone else by who they hang out with, or where they live, or how much money they make... Maybe we need to remember that Jesus reprimanding the Pharisees when we do that. Maybe we need to remember that physical lesson that Jesus taught by eating with tax-collectors and sinners. We are all children of God, all having received that gift and nobody is beyond redemption... Jesus calls us to resist that urge to pass judgment on some else.
The second maybe it's a little more subtle than that too. As a church, we would like to think that we're welcoming, that we're open to new people coming into our midst... but it's not always the case. We are comfortable with the people that we know... so we gravitate towards them... and yet what message are we sending to those whom we do not talk to?
Lastly... and maybe the biggest hurdle of all, is to resist worrying about what someone else might think if we're seen talking to someone who might be "the wrong crowd." Jesus didn't care about those social conventions, God doesn't care about our human desire to put people into groups... so why should we?
It really is a simple lesson in principle, that is far, far more difficult for us to keep in person. Yet, that is our challenge. If Jesus was able to demonstrate a measure of God's grace by being able to not only hang out with the wrong crowd, but call several of them to be disciples, then maybe we need to really re-think this whole social status thing. Maybe the world would see us as being less hypocritical ourselves if we ourselves were not afraid to hang out with the wrong crowd. Maybe we ourselves would learn a real lesson in God's grace.
Amen.
I’ve said before that I am an avid political watcher. I’ve also learned to keep my political opinions to myself out of respect for the wide varieties of political views that will exist in any congregation. That having been said, after watching a few of the political events both with our neighbours to the south, as well as our own Parliamentary goings-on, I’ve come to the conclusion that Jesus could never have been an elected official.
Such a revelation might send the religious right in the United States off into conniptions… but let’s be honest. It’s true. In the talk around the resignation of Maxime Bernier last week, one commentator said that in politics, one is indeed judged by the company that they keep. Many political and business careers have come to a crashing halt this way. Not a year goes by without at least one happening somewhere in the world. US Presidential Candidate Barack Obama has been forced to distance himself from the congregation he came to faith in, because it means people could judge him by the company he keeps. Hanging out with the wrong crowd can truly be a career-killing move.
It was something that Jesus knew… but didn’t particularly care about… if anything he deliberately stomped all over this social convention, and to show all of us how truly hypocritical it really is.
The story from Matthew:
10And as [Jesus] sat at dinner in the house, many tax-collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. 11When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’
Why does your teacher eat with tax-collectors and sinners? It’s a rhetorical question. They’re not looking for an answer, they’re already pronouncing judgment on Jesus because he is hanging out with the wrong crowd. This was absolutely scandalous. If anything they were trying to seed some doubt amongst the people that Jesus had already called to be his disciples… After all, this scene, at least in this gospel comes immediately after Jesus calls Matthew, a known tax-collector, a Roman Stooge to be one of his followers. Even some of Jesus’ own disciples must have been wondering what Jesus was up to by having this traitor in their midst.
If Jesus had any political advisers at this point in time, they might well have resigned in protest because he was doing all the wrong things to win over the public trust. Despite how the Pharisees are portrayed in the gospels, they were the good church-attending folks. They were the publicly righteous, the upstanding citizens that everyone aspired to be. In the gospels, however, they are treated as the bad guys… and it’s not without good reason. After all, they knew the score, they knew the social rules, they knew who was “in” and who was “out” and Jesus was definitely not with the program.
Well… actually… Jesus knew the score… he knew what ‘the rules’ were, and frankly he didn’t care. Why? Because those rules were ones that people had made, that had developed in a society to determine who was in and who was out. They were not rules that God had created and handed down, they were social conventions that people made to somehow distinguish themselves as being better than the people around them.
If anything, when Jesus heard the Pharisees engaged in this whispering campaign, he responds to them by saying:
‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’
Although ironically, the Pharisees themselves show that they are actually clueless when it comes to understanding how far off base they are when they talk about the wrong crowd. It shows how unrighteous and sinful they were for pronouncing such judgment themselves.
But then again, there’s a couple of ways to take what Jesus says. Conventionally, we might take that to mean that Jesus is working with this wrong crowd in order to turn them into righteous people. Although really, I don’t think that’s what Jesus was after. He doesn’t hang out with them to turn them into righteous folks. After all, Jesus knows that the world didn’t need any more Pharisees!
Instead, Jesus is demonstrating the grace of God. By being with the people where they are, for who they are, he blatantly ignores the potential social consequences of hanging out with the wrong crowd. He shows that God does not care about social conventions, about who is in or who is out… but that nobody is beyond the love that God has for us as human beings. If anything Jesus was challenging the Pharisees to break out of their own rigid social structure, to be able to see that there was no such thing as “the wrong crowd” in the eyes of God.
The tragedy is that the Pharisees weren’t able to let go of that, and to actually come and sit with the wrong crowd themselves. Ironically, by doing so, the Pharisees showed themselves to be just as sinful as the tax-collectors and sinners they were berating Jesus for associating with.
So maybe it’s a question that I need to put us into the shoes of the Pharisees. If you and I personally encountered Jesus… how might we respond with him being with the wrong crowd? To be honest, we might well think that Jesus WAS the wrong crowd in every respect. After all, Jesus was a poor carpenter who couldn’t get respectable work out in the field. He was too poor to live on the land, and had to eke out a living in a small hick village. Not only that, he gave up that work to be a wandering preacher, living off the generosity of others. By all circumstances Jesus was indeed the wrong crowd! No wonder the Pharisees had a hard time with him.
But that’s exactly the point. Through the very life of this poor carpenter, Jesus showed us that our practice of labeling people as being part of the “wrong crowd” has no place in the kingdom of God. It is truly a unique witness to the world. It is something to remember that Christianity is the only world religion whose central figure who came from dirt poor, social outcast circumstances. All other major religious traditions, seem to come from the rich sectors of life... We often forget that Christianity was something that came out of a place where everybody else saw nothing. There is something very unique about this… and something we can celebrate about what Jesus can teach the world… Unfortunately, it is something that we have long since forgotten... and forgotten very badly.
Knowing this, we have to ask ourselves this question. If Jesus did not care that he hung out with the wrong crowd, why is it that we often have this in the church? Is it a double-standard, that somehow it is okay for Jesus, but not for good church-attending folks? That's a rhetorical question by the way... of course it's not okay.
It’s not Jesus who needs to get with the program. It’s us. It's not okay to judge a person by the crowd that they hang out with... yet our whole society is geared towards this. It's how we've been taught, despite most of us being raised in a Christian environment. We do judge people by the company they keep... so how do we resist that tremendous temptation to do so.
First... well... any time we find ourselves passing judgment on someone else by who they hang out with, or where they live, or how much money they make... Maybe we need to remember that Jesus reprimanding the Pharisees when we do that. Maybe we need to remember that physical lesson that Jesus taught by eating with tax-collectors and sinners. We are all children of God, all having received that gift and nobody is beyond redemption... Jesus calls us to resist that urge to pass judgment on some else.
The second maybe it's a little more subtle than that too. As a church, we would like to think that we're welcoming, that we're open to new people coming into our midst... but it's not always the case. We are comfortable with the people that we know... so we gravitate towards them... and yet what message are we sending to those whom we do not talk to?
Lastly... and maybe the biggest hurdle of all, is to resist worrying about what someone else might think if we're seen talking to someone who might be "the wrong crowd." Jesus didn't care about those social conventions, God doesn't care about our human desire to put people into groups... so why should we?
It really is a simple lesson in principle, that is far, far more difficult for us to keep in person. Yet, that is our challenge. If Jesus was able to demonstrate a measure of God's grace by being able to not only hang out with the wrong crowd, but call several of them to be disciples, then maybe we need to really re-think this whole social status thing. Maybe the world would see us as being less hypocritical ourselves if we ourselves were not afraid to hang out with the wrong crowd. Maybe we ourselves would learn a real lesson in God's grace.
Amen.
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