Lenten Reflection | Day 19

Mandy Long

We encourage you to read the passage before engaging the reflection. Click on the reference below.

Matthew 9:9-13

by Mandy Long

Jesus is keeping company with his disciples but also a bunch of “disreputable characters,” as Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message. 

In Jesus’ day, a proper Jewish meal was characterized by cleanliness. Clean hands, dishes and hearts. A meal was to be shared with those of the same faith, as an act of worship to God. We all know that Jesus offended a lot of people by who he sat around the table with.

Barbara Brown Taylor uses her own words to describe who would’ve been around that table:

“So if I were putting together a sinners' table at Huddle House, it might include an abortion doctor, a child molester, an arms dealer, a garbage collector, a young man with AIDS, a Laotian chicken plucker, a teenaged crack addict, and an unmarried woman on welfare with five children by three different fathers. Did I miss anyone? Don't forget to put Jesus at the head of the table, asking the young man to hand him a roll, please, and offering the doctor a second cup of coffee before she goes back to work.”

She goes on to imagine that a group of well-groomed Christians (the local ministerial association) walk into the same café and huddle in a booth far away from Jesus’ table. As much as I want to identify with Jesus, (and let’s be honest … you do to), let’s put ourselves at the booth with the Christians. 

What group are you with at this café when you see Jesus? 

Are you meeting with your small group at Steelcraft after church with your young kids? Are you hitting up Nona Mercato with a group of like-minded church folk to discuss the next church service event? Are you a part of the men’s group from church meeting at Ten Mile to connect and share life together? I definitely find myself at these tables. 

And often. 

It’s where I feel comfortable and safe. When our food, coffee, beer, etc. comes, we bow our heads and pray while trying not to stare too hard at the large group of misfits across the restaurant from us. 

Barbara Brown Taylor goes on: “The abortion doctor has on her blue hospital scrubs, the single mom has hair that has not been washed in days and the garbage collector smells like spoiled meat. The addict cannot seem to find his mouth with a spoon. But none of this raises much ire. The heartbreaker is Jesus, sitting there as if everything is simply fine. Doesn’t he know what kind of message he is sending?”

The heartbreaker is Jesus. 

Jesus reacts to the religious people astounded by those at his table: “Who needs a doctor? The healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this scripture means. I am after mercy, not religion.” 

Mercy. 

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

Mercy must be pretty important to Jesus because just a few chapters back in the Sermon on the Mount, he reminds us, “Blessed are those who are merciful for they shall receive mercy.” 

Jesus seems to be teaching us what mercy looks like by sitting at a table with a bunch of sinners, misfits, and disreputable characters. I often find myself around the table with friends in my life who feel safe and comfortable. As I pondered this passage, I couldn’t help but imagine the people God has put in my life to share his beautiful, mercy-filled table with: 

My friend, 66 days sober, is sitting across from me. My gay friend and her wife are to my left, exhausted from just having a new baby with her toddler on her lap. The kid in my son’s class (who prefers to go by “they” instead of “he”) is to my right. A few chairs down are the friends I’ve met through my kids’ school who often voice their disdain for Christianity because of the hypocrisy they have experienced. 

I am only at that table among them because of Jesus’s severe mercy shown to me. He sits at the head of that table among disreputable characters, like myself… the one who yells at her kids, gossips, takes pride in her own accomplishments, covets, envies, lusts, and looks to food, drink, money, and vacation to satisfy.

He teaches me, at that table, that He desires I give up the idea that I can love Him while questioning, hating, or condemning the people around that table. Being right with God–He  teaches me–is to not let the rules of Christianity get in the way of including all people at His table. 

Thanks to Jesus that He is after mercy and not religion, or else I would not find myself at His table. Thanks be to Jesus that He shows me what it’s like to make room at my table, alongside Him, for other image bearers whose lives look different than mine. Thanks be to God that the way to work out our relationship with Him is to work out our relationships with each other. Thank God that (in the words of 1 Timothy), “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.”