Those who are well do not need a physician. Mark 2:17
Piety
Jesus, you came to call the sinners and that is quite a job – a job so big you needed disciples to carry on that task with you and after you. Disciples like Levi whom you call today. Levi passed his baton to modern day apostles like Dr. Martin Luther King. That baton now finds its way into our hands as a dream that still needs weavers to make it a reality. Help us dream this dream to build the
Jesus is at work and that work once again presents a direct challenge to the scribes if the Pharisees.
Once again, Jesus doesn’t shrink from the confrontation of the powerful. Jesus heard this and said to them, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” He is the physician tending to those who are distant from God by offering forgiveness.
Mark shows us that these confrontations were happening from the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. In word and deed, Jesus shows the overflowing mercy of God which is in stark contrast to the way the authorities would behave.
The confrontations exist because Jesus came to change the way things are with his “conviction about an alternative reality he called the
What do we need to change in our society? How do we change it?
If he were alive and preaching today, we could envision Dr. King having dinner with the modern day equivalent of the sinners who sat with Jesus in today’s reading. He came to call the sinners and confront the rich and powerful as well. His “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial became the Sermon on the Mount for
Dr. King led a modern-day Exodus story in the civil rights movement. He wanted to set his people free from bigotry and prejudice. He wanted to change where people went to school, where they could eat, where they could walk, where they could ride. Most of all he wanted to improve how all people thought about each other and how they treated each other. Like Jesus, Dr. King espoused a philosophy of active love which said “nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time -- the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.”[1]
When he accepted the Nobel Prize, Dr. King said: "When years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvelous age in which we live -- men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization -- because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness' sake."[2]
His fight, rooted in Biblical concepts of justice, for equality and to conquer poverty continues today.
Where can you help pick up his fight today?
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