Luke 5:27-32
Jesus was in the habit of flipping things, not just tables in the Temple during Holy Week, but throughout his ministry, often through his teaching. His words and actions confounded expectations, flipping the script instead of tables as it were. Jesus touched the untouchable, embraced the unclean, challenged the confident, and comforted those with no reason to hope. Jesus would talk with anyone, even if by doing so, eyebrows would be raised: a Samaritan woman, several tax collectors, women with questionable reputations, a Pharisee full of questions, and even a rich young ruler with everything to lose. But it would be in his parables that Jesus most often flipped the script: a Samaritan becomes the hero, a profligate son is celebrated, and widow who wound up giving more than the rich men who didn’t even notice her.
I like to see in this subversiveness a strong family resemblance to his mother, Mary of Nazareth. In the Magnificat, Mary praised God for throwing the rulers off their thrones and raising up the lowly. Mary saw that God was in the habit of filling the hungry with good things but sending the rich away empty-handed. For Jesus, Mary was his very own reminder of God’s graciousness and subversiveness in action. He was born not in power and privilege, but in humility to a vulnerable woman without status or prospects.
In our text today, Jesus is up to this subversiveness again, as he had been raised to do. The relentless criticism the religious leaders leveled at him for those whom he chose for company and even how his disciples behaved had led to this moment. Their questions to him invited Jesus to flip the script on them, but just as his own disciples often didn’t understand his meaning, Jesus confounded the religious leaders almost without their noticing it. It would seem the irony and critique of his replies were often lost on them.
Those who don’t even realize they need forgiveness are not looking for Jesus. It’s as simple as that. Because they do not recognize their need, the rich and powerful miss what Jesus had to offer them. Jesus spent his time with and focused his attention on those who had been repeatedly rejected by the religious establishment. These were they who knew better than anyone else how their sins had alienated and marginalized them from the “healthy”, as Jesus called the religious leaders. I hear a bit of snark in that label. Jesus was flipping the script, whether they noticed it or not. They simply didn’t understand what Jesus’ ministry and mission were all about. Jesus didn’t waste his time trying to convince them of their need. Perhaps they murmured to themselves, “Why yes! We ARE healthy compared to these sinners!” The “sick” needed no such convincing.
The season of Lent invites us to remember our need, to recognize how “sick” we are, and how much we need Jesus. If we want to find Jesus among us, let’s not make the same mistake of the religious in his day, looking for him among the rich, the powerful, or the perfect. Jesus is instead to be found with his people who truly welcome him – the broken, the poor, the outcasts.
The rich and the powerful have always victimized the poor and the powerless. That story of that injustice continues to this day. Surely Jesus would recognize these same characters were he confronted by the powerful today. He would not leave them with their smug complacence, unless of course they failed to even understand his critique of them. May we as followers of this table- and script-flipping Jesus see in our mission the same courage as Jesus had to be seen spending our time with the outcasts and the poor, rather than seeking status or the approval of the powerful. And may we learn to ask questions as wisely as Jesus did, including the kind of questions that flip-the-script! Understanding his true meaning is up to the hearer, and so is their repentance.
Meditation by the Reverend D. Scott Russell
Chaplain, The Canterbury House: Episcopal Chapel and Student Center at Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Diocese of New Jersey