Saturday, January 18, 2025
First Week in Ordinary Time
Heb 4:12-16/Mk 2:13-17 (Lectionary #310)
Capernaum was near the Sea of Galilee/Tiberias. When Jesus went out for a walk on the seashore, Mark tells us, “the whole crowd gathered around him” again, and “he taught them.”
He taught in action as well. On the shore was a booth where a man named Levi collected a tax on the fish people caught. Levi was ostracized as a collaborator with the Roman government. He felt excluded from whatever enthusiasm the Jews “in good standing” felt about Jesus.
Jesus didn’t blame Levi, didn’t call him to clean up his act, and didn’t show him any condescending pity. Any of that would have turned Levi off completely. He just looked in Levi’s window and said, “Let’s go. Follow me.”
Levi invited him to dinner with him and his own friends, who were mostly other ‘tax collectors and sinners” — that is, Jews who were considered “unclean.”
Being “unclean” had nothing to do with morality. It simply banned one from participating in certain public acts of worship. It was incurred, not by guilt, but by designated physical actions (e.g. eating with non-Jews) and removed by set ceremonies. The closest thing to this in the Catholic Church is the frequently encountered pastoral practice of denying Communion to people who, though they may not, in their own consciences, be guilty of “mortal sin,” are nevertheless considered not in “good standing” because their actions would lead some people to judge that they are and be “scandalized” if they received Communion.
The religious experts of the Pharisee party were scandalized when Jesus himself became unclean by eating with “tax collectors and offenders against the law.” His answer was, “People who are healthy do not need a doctor. Sick people do. I have come to call, not the righteous, but sinners.” This was his second self-identifying statement in Mark’s Gospel. (The first was that he had “authority to forgive sins”).
Jesus is bad news for those whose main concern is to keep the unworthy from appearing to be accepted by the Church — and for whom the “unworthy” are those who break explicit Church laws, not those who exploit and kill people in conventional ways that are legally and socially acceptable. But he is good news for the “poor in spirit” who are just looking for a Savior. Is this the kind of news you rejoice in?
Initiative: Rethink the standards by which you judge yourself or others to be “acceptable” to God or within the Church. Whom did Jesus exclude from what?
