WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:16.399 One of the truths that we see just brimming, pouring out of the pages of the gospel reading today is something that may be extremely ironic, but it's really potent. 00:00:17.359 --> 00:00:25.039 That is, divine love is really offensive. 00:00:29.120 --> 00:00:32.320 Divine love is really offensive. 00:00:33.679 --> 00:00:39.920 Divine, unconditioned, unconditional, indiscriminate love is offensive. 00:00:40.159 --> 00:00:52.399 It's offensive precisely because it goes and moves towards those people we deem undeserving of such love. 00:00:53.439 --> 00:01:03.039 Yet it's only in a world of the undeserving wherein we need a love, like divine love. 00:01:03.920 --> 00:01:06.799 It's a bit of a double bind, isn't it? 00:01:07.680 --> 00:01:17.920 But this is what is on full display in Jesus' eating and reclining at table with tax collectors. 00:01:18.079 --> 00:01:36.319 Now this word tax collectors may be lost on us and our modern ears, but in Jesus' time, a tax collector, this language is emotionally and socially and religiously charged to the extreme. 00:01:37.599 --> 00:01:44.239 Scholars, it's very rare that you find like New Testament scholars to like agree with each other. 00:01:44.560 --> 00:02:02.799 But this is a near consensus that one of the most outlandish, unbelievable, and frankly offensive aspects of Jesus' ministry in Judea was his eating and fellowshipping with tax collectors. 00:02:03.439 --> 00:02:08.960 It's nothing like this ever before. 00:02:10.159 --> 00:02:12.240 So what is a tax collector? 00:02:12.319 --> 00:02:18.319 I want to give some description to put some teeth on the bite of this offense of Jesus here. 00:02:18.560 --> 00:02:20.800 That is the offense of the love of God. 00:02:22.639 --> 00:02:28.000 As we all know, empires, nation states, they love and need taxes. 00:02:28.800 --> 00:02:39.360 And as the Roman Empire was growing, as it expanded depending on the region it was in, they would then appoint somebody from that region to be the tax representative. 00:02:39.439 --> 00:02:45.280 So they could pull from the people in that community the taxes that would then go to the empire. 00:02:45.439 --> 00:02:54.080 And often the way that Rome did this is he would actually they would actually choose people that were embedded in the community. 00:02:54.400 --> 00:03:05.680 So the people who were appointed with the task of collecting taxes would have, in fact, been like your first cousin or brother, your own flesh and blood. 00:03:07.039 --> 00:03:32.319 And the income for these tax collectors could get very exorbitant because they would demand that you give them X amount of money, and they didn't tell you how much of that was going to go to Rome, and they would take a sweep off the top, and so they were essentially, I mean, by our modern account, like thugs. 00:03:32.879 --> 00:03:38.560 But the only problem is that they're thugs that actually have the backing of the state. 00:03:39.120 --> 00:03:41.599 They're protected by Rome. 00:03:42.960 --> 00:03:55.280 But more than this, this tax collectors, these are people who we know sell out their own flesh and blood for money. 00:03:55.840 --> 00:03:57.759 They are betrayers. 00:03:58.159 --> 00:04:00.080 They are turncoats. 00:04:00.479 --> 00:04:02.080 They are compromisers. 00:04:02.240 --> 00:04:07.759 They're uh the people that everyone can agree to hate. 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:19.199 Now this is this is an incredible achievement to have all the peasants hating you and all of the religious people hating you. 00:04:19.360 --> 00:04:21.120 This is quite an achievement. 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:27.199 But the tax collectors did this like a functional equivalent, right? 00:04:27.360 --> 00:04:42.800 If you were to imagine some Machiavellian individual, maybe a narcissist, who everyone in their world is upon for their gain, for their money, their wealth. 00:04:44.000 --> 00:05:06.399 And they are in I'm I'm sure that you don't have to try really hard in your imagination or your newsfeed to imagine, right, folks that would inhabit this kind of space, the space of the tax the tax collector who is willing to sell out anybody and anyone for the sake of some cold hard cash. 00:05:06.639 --> 00:05:18.319 But these are the people, these are tax collectors, the turncoats that Jesus reclines at table with. 00:05:32.319 --> 00:05:33.920 Now, what does it offend? 00:05:35.279 --> 00:05:46.879 What in us takes offense to the way Jesus is using his table seemingly so promiscuously is to invite tax collectors. 00:05:47.439 --> 00:05:51.199 I mean, these are, everyone can agree, the bad guys. 00:05:53.279 --> 00:06:06.959 What is offended is our own delusional sense that we may not put language to, but it gets exposed as something that we actually believe internally. 00:06:08.000 --> 00:06:15.040 That we are the recipients of the love of God precisely because of what we've done. 00:06:17.759 --> 00:06:21.040 And Jesus is a masterful teacher. 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:27.279 Jesus is the embodiment of the love of the Father going into the world, right? 00:06:27.439 --> 00:06:29.519 First or John 3. 00:06:29.839 --> 00:06:33.600 God so loved the world that he gave his son. 00:06:34.480 --> 00:06:38.959 So the son is the expression of the love of the Father in the world. 00:06:39.040 --> 00:06:40.959 This is the ministry of Jesus. 00:06:41.199 --> 00:06:50.639 This is the love of the Father coming to these turncoats, these betrayers, these compromisers, these despicable ones. 00:06:52.319 --> 00:07:24.240 And Jesus's reclining at table with them exposes not only the love of God, but it exposes the way that we misunderstand that love, misappropriate it, uh ways that we make claims on it, as though we, in our desserts or our merits, the things that we've done, uh can be the proper recipients of this kind of love. 00:07:24.480 --> 00:07:42.959 Now I think what Jesus is doing is exposing and showing at the same time that the love of God that has come into your life, the love of God that has transformed you, is the love of God that reclines at table with tax collectors. 00:07:44.800 --> 00:07:51.040 This is the indiscriminate, unconditioned love of God. 00:07:51.519 --> 00:08:09.120 And so it would mean that to follow this Jesus, to follow this kind of God who is more willing to offend for the sake of love, to follow Jesus is to make up our minds to be offended. 00:08:10.240 --> 00:08:19.040 This is probably why Jesus uses the image of a cross as the dominant image of following him. 00:08:20.319 --> 00:08:28.240 Jesus will recline at table with sinners, will love the loveless. 00:08:29.279 --> 00:08:40.559 And in doing so, Jesus will be vulnerable to the people that he is showing and displaying the love of God to such that he will be crucified, right? 00:08:40.720 --> 00:08:47.679 He will die a degrading, shameful, and offensive death. 00:08:52.639 --> 00:08:57.840 And this is still offensive by the time you get into Paul, right? 00:08:58.000 --> 00:08:59.360 Christ crucified. 00:08:59.600 --> 00:09:05.039 It's still offensive to Jews and Greeks, according to Paul. 00:09:06.639 --> 00:10:09.360 But what we are invited into is that we would see the love, the tenacious love of God in Christ, that is so tender, so indiscriminate as to sit at table with a bunch of turncoats, that we would see this love, and that this love would uproot in our hearts all of the excuses that we make for the fickle love that we have, that it would rob us of any basis of withholding love from anybody, that when we see this love, the love of Christ coming to us, coming to those that we deem unworthy, that it is this Christ who sits at table with tax collectors, that is the hope of the world. 00:10:09.759 --> 00:10:11.600 This is our hope. 00:10:11.919 --> 00:10:24.559 But the love and offense of Jesus is not simply a kind of toleration or pluralism of like a liberal democratic society, right? 00:10:24.639 --> 00:10:31.279 We're just gonna get together and not make any kind of claims on the way we live. 00:10:31.679 --> 00:10:34.639 This is not the offensive love of Jesus. 00:10:35.200 --> 00:10:39.919 Jesus's love offends as it goes out to everyone. 00:10:40.240 --> 00:10:49.440 And it also offends because in going out to us, going out indiscriminately, it makes a claim on us. 00:10:50.159 --> 00:10:50.559 Right? 00:10:50.720 --> 00:11:04.320 This is Jesus' teaching about uh if we who have been forgiven such great a debt and we turn around and a brother or sister owes us some petty cash and we're ready to throw them in prison. 00:11:05.840 --> 00:11:10.080 Jesus is robbing us as he's loving us. 00:11:12.799 --> 00:11:19.120 And this is the divine love that is so offensive. 00:11:19.360 --> 00:11:41.679 So I ask all of us, myself included, that we would be resolved to be offended by God, and that as we're offended by the love of God, that all the excuses we make in our heart for withholding love, for deeming people unlovable, that that is all uprooted and exposed. 00:11:42.480 --> 00:11:53.279 I think the point of this story is that it's only in a world of the undeserving where we need a love like this, right? 00:11:53.519 --> 00:12:05.679 Whereas Jesus says, it's only the sick who need a doctor, it's only orphans who need to be adopted, it's only the lost who need to come home. 00:12:07.200 --> 00:12:15.279 If we are not orphans, undeserving, lost, there's no hope for you. 00:12:17.919 --> 00:12:36.000 All your hope is that we too sit at table with Jesus with all these turncoats, that we too would find this Jesus is indeed numbered among transgressors. 00:12:36.799 --> 00:12:37.360 Amen.