February 14, 2010
 
Scripture:         Luke 5:27-32
 
Sermon:           “The Company You Keep”
 
            Turning our hearts and minds now to the word of God, let us read together the scripture lesson for the day.  Turn with me to the Gospel According to Luke, chapter 5, where we will read together verses 27 through 32.  You can find that easily on page 85 of the New Testament in the pew Bible.
            There are several things to mention when we look at this text.  The first is that Jesus is calling a new disciple to come and follow him.  Like others, this Levi seems to just leave everything behind in order to do so.  He just up and left his previous life at the invitation of Jesus, who said, “Follow me.”  There is something like gravity at work here.  It can’t be resisted.
But unlike the others before him, Simon Peter, for example, or James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Levi was not going about his daily routine of respectable work.  He was not a fisherman like the others.  He wasn’t a cook or a school teacher.  He didn’t work on cars down at the auto shop or sit on the line at the factory.  No.  Levi was what was known as a tax collector.  And that’s not quite like working for the IRS.
Tax collectors were a despised sort of character.  Know what I mean.  He was something like a thug doing the dirty work of the Roman Empire.  I suspect that these men had to be rather large and intimidating because they were able to collect any amount that they could and only turn in to the authorities what was required.  It was legal, you see, to kind of skim from the till.  That’s how they made a living.  More than that, tax collectors were not Romans.  They were usually Jewish folks just like the rest of the people in their towns.  Benedict Arnolds.  That’s how folks thought of them.  Turncoats.  Cooperators with the occupying forces.
That’ll help explain why others here in this bit of the gospel frankly turned their noses up at the notion that Jesus would even associate with the man.
More than that, however, Jesus and his disciples gathered at Levi’s house for a meal.  And this part should sound familiar to most of us.  I think that we’re basically the same way.  You don’t just visit anybody’s house and you don’t just sit down to dinner with anybody.  The folks you choose to eat meals with have some significance to you.  That’s where this story gets interesting.
Let’s listen for the word of the Lord…
 
            After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.”  And he got up, left everything, and followed him.
            Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them.  The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”  Jesus answered, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
 
            I think we all have moments in our lives that we’d like to have back.  Do you know what I mean?  There are moments I’d like to have back and do things differently than I had actually done.  I’d like a do-over for a few things here and there.  You know?
            I’m going to make a confession about one of those moments.  And mind you I am not proud at all of it.  We tell stories sometimes to illustrate what not to do.  The Bible does, too.  Not everything in the Bible is meant for us to draw positive examples from.  And not everything in our lives is, either.  We can still learn from them.
            I don’t know what grade I was in.  Maybe tenth grade.  Old enough to be in high school, but young enough to make a mistake like this.  I remember getting to the cafeteria, going through the food line and sitting down at the same table that I sat at with my friends every day.  School is like that, you know.  There are people that you eat with.  Your friends.  And there is this daily ritual of gathering around the same table in the lunch room.  You expect to see each other there.  And that’s your place.  You belong there. 
Me and my pals, well we kind of belonged together because we had our own way of wearing our clothes.  We wore our hair a little differently than other folks did.  We liked art and music and such.  The table where I sat every day at lunch was where I belonged.  These were my kind of people, you know.  And while we weren’t the coolest kids in our school, not the most popular by any means, we had each other.
Now I do admit that sometimes there were people that I wished I could eat with.  I wished that I could sit at the table with that group over there that seemed to have a certain something about them that made them popular.  They were good looking kids.  They looked like they were always full of confidence.  They laughed and they made others laugh.
Do you know what I used to believe?  I used to believe that those kids had it made.  I used to believe that they were the rich kids and that they didn’t have anything to actually worry about.  And I projected onto them this belief that they looked down their noses at everyone else.  I believed that they set up some sort of caste system that not even Mahatma Gandhi himself could have broken down!
I sat down at my table this one day, waiting for my people to arrive.  And before I knew it there was this kid named Chris Hoffines walking my way with his tray in his hands.  And, by golly, it looked like he was going to sit down at my table!  Now, we didn’t know a great deal about conditions like autism back in those days.  My guess is that Chris Hoffines had what is known as Asperger’s Syndrome.  And he was terribly unpopular.  I don’t ever remember him having friends.  But, he talked about things that folks found to be strange.  And he had a difficult time interacting with other people.
I tried not to look at him.  I tried not to make eye contact.  My God, I worried—what if other people saw him sitting here with me.  And he just sat down right next to me anyway.
I believed that the people I belonged with were actually different than everyone else.  I thought that we were more compassionate people and somehow better.  We weren’t popular, but deep down inside me I believed that we were better people.  And I didn’t want to sit next to this kid anymore than the 3,000 other kids at my school.  And when all of my friends came toward us, they saw Chris Hoffines sitting there with me, looked at me kind of funny, and just kept right on going to another table somewhere.  And I was stuck there with this kid who, bless his heart, couldn’t make friends for how different he was.
For 45 minutes we sat there together, alone at that table.  And it turned out that Chris Hoffines was hilarious if you gave him the chance.  I actually started to think that maybe I could be different, that maybe I could rise above the world and help this kid out by being his friend.
But, when I came across my real friends in the hallway later, they just laid into me.  “What was it like to eat with Chris Hoffines?  Is he your buddy?  Is he your new best friend?”  I had no idea that we could be so cruel.  I really didn’t.  And do you know what I did?  I denied that I even started to take a liking to that boy.  I was afraid of what people would think of me.  I was afraid of what my people would think of me, and what I could lose.  So, I acted like I was angry and told all my friends that they were jerks for leaving me there alone with that freak!
The Bible says that Judas Iscariot sold out Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.  I sold this kid out for a lot less.  I’d like to have that moment back for a do-over.
I was afraid of that haunting truth that you are known by the company you keep.  You are known by the company you keep.  You are associated and judged by others because the people around you, who they are, and what they do.
My parents used to warn me about that.  Did yours?  They were worried about some of the characters I called friends.  Some of them winding up in jail.  Some of them winding up pregnant.  Not a few of them getting mixed up with drugs.  My parents would warn me that “you are known by the company you keep.”
Folks said to Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  They were complaining.  That’s what the Bible says.  They complained to his disciples.  “Why do you eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  Know what that sounds like?  Yeah.  “You are known by the company you keep.”
That’s what the Pharisees were saying, isn’t it?  “You know who you’re eating with, don’t you?  You know that, right?  A tax collector.  This whole room is full of them.  And sinners of every stripe.”  It kind of colors the way folks might look at Jesus himself.
Have you ever read through these stories?  Have you ever read through these stories of Jesus and the kind of people he spent most of his time with?  Tax collectors, who nobody liked.  It’s like a dirty little secret about the Son of God that folks don’t seem to want others to know about.  Tax collectors.  Prostitutes, who nobody respected.  Have you read through these stories?  Goodness.  Lepers with skin diseases nobody wanted to touch or be around.  And there were folks that people said were possessed by demons.
Now, you ever wonder if there might have been some people then with conditions we’d diagnose today as mental illnesses, syndromes of the brain and nervous system, or genetic disorders?  I don’t know.  I’m not trying to explain away the idea of demons and being possessed.  I certainly have known folks who seem to be under the control of some sinister thing bigger than they are.  But, I wonder if ancient people might have also believed some folks were possessed if they had been born with different mental capacities than most folks have.
It haunts me, actually.  I have no doubt that Jesus would have gladly sat down in my high school cafeteria with a different sort of kid like Chris Hoffines.  I’ll bet you’d find him down at Main Street Methodist Church on Wednesday nights at their soup kitchen.  He’d be sitting there with the homeless and the people who are addicted to various things.  I’m sure of it.
I know.  The church doesn’t always want to talk about it.  Maybe we’re not entirely comfortable with the idea.  But, these stories about Jesus are just full of incriminating pictures of the people Jesus actually spent his time with.  People in need.  People in need of a physician, as he put it.
Billy Joel once wrote this song called Only the Good Die Young.  Maybe it’s your dirty little secret that you actually love this song.  (I do.)  He sang, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.  The sinners are much more fun.  Only the good die young.”
But, stories like these about Jesus…they almost paint a picture of a man that preferred to be mixed up in all kinds of sordid human details.  You read enough of these gospels and it starts to get pretty clear.  He’s known by the company he keeps.  And the company he keeps is the entire spectrum of sinners.
Not everybody was impressed, you know.  Not everybody was impressed.  Not everyone is able to get past the fear of being known by the company they keep.
I don’t know.  Maybe you’re here because you heard whispers.  You heard hints here and there that this one they call the Son of God might actually be different.  Someone let it slip in your presence that Jesus has been known on occasion to help out a sinful, broken, or despised person.  On occasion, at least.  To go slumming, as it were.
You open these stories sometime.  Go ahead and read them.  Seems like a secret that those who follow Jesus have tried to keep under wraps.  But, this book is just screaming out.  He’s here.  He’s different.  And you are invited to his table.  Doesn’t matter to him what others might say.  He doesn’t care.  He’s under the impression that if you’ll join him for a meal that your life will never be the same.
 
Rev. David James Brown
Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)