Justin Appel

Friends,

Today’s Gospel lesson has Jesus eating with “tax collectors and sinners,” much to the consternation of the Pharisees who observe his behavior.

Jesus has a telling riposte to their objections. He will be with the outcasts and with those whom the society censures for their discreditable associations. What is his rationale?

“I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

This full passage tells me several things. On the one hand, that Jesus cares about those who suffer as a result of their sinfulness.

The wounds we develop by means of the sins we commit separate us from God, yet Jesus cares about us and provides the healing we so desperately need. So, this story reminds us that our Lord cares about each of us, about our spiritual state, about our self-inflicted spiritual injuries—for none of us is without sins.

However, Jesus went to those sinners who were less socially acceptable, which suggests that healing must involve humility; for, without self-recognition, how can we be healed of our malady?

Spiritual blindness, Jesus taught, was a problem characterizing the religious guides of the day. Somehow, the “harlot and the thief” are the ones Christ heals, and the truly blind “see.”

Finally—and this feels urgent in our day—our churches should provide this therapy so needed for sinners to be healed. Not mere aesthetic pharmakeia, not a pill to ease our discomfort, not just the gentle commonplace that “God accepts you as you are” or generally diagnosing the problems elsewhere. None of these things capture the church’s essence, which is to be a hospital for sinners…for you and me!

Jesus meets us where we are: yes, that is true; but he will restore us back to health and to the wholeness we were designed to embody, if we will approach him in humility and repentance.

Yours in Christ,

—Justin