Are religious people angry with you? That's good!

What kind of church do you think Jesus would attend today? Big? Small? Liturgical? Charismatic? Would he want smoke machines or not? Would he prefer the beautiful, stained glass cathedral or the humble pig pen converted into a church?

Perhaps a better question is: would Jesus enjoy attending your church today?

Let's help answer that by looking at the first part of Luke 15. This chapter records three parables, all spoken to the scribes and Pharisees, and all related to the same theme: lost sinners (the Jewish term for people they thought were far from God) being found by Jesus (i.e. entering the kingdom of God).

Usually we would want to jump straight to the parables themselves, but for our purposes today it’s important to understand the reason for them:

"Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, 'This man receives sinners and eats with them.'"

~ Luke 15:1-2

The first issue that led up to these parables is the tax collectors and sinners were all “drawing near to Jesus.”

Think about this with me for a moment. Outcasts and sinners were coming to Jesus. There was something about him and his message that attracted both the marginalized and notoriously sinful people. The difference between them and the religious was not that the sinners were sinful and the religious were not, but that those who came were those who knew their brokenness and had “ears to hear," and the religious people could not see their own brokenness and refused to hear.

PAUSE and REFLECT:  What about us? Does our church attract the “tax collectors and sinners” of today, or the religious? Do the deeply broken stay far away? Does our demeanour and our message attract or repel those who are in need?

This leads us to the second issue that led up to these parables. Not only were people far from God coming to Jesus, but he was also receiving them and eating with them.

This really irked the Pharisees! In Jewish culture, table fellowship meant close, personal association, and to the Pharisees, if that close personal association was with tax collectors and sinners, it meant becoming unclean.

To be fair, they were partially right. Jesus was having close personal association with them. But he is the one who touches the leper and makes the leper clean - he does not become unclean. Thus the Pharisees were incorrect in assuming Jesus would become unclean by having close contact and table fellowship with tax collectors and sinners.

PAUSE and REFLECT: What about us? Do we grumble when the truly lost, deeply broken, and sinful people show up in our lives and in our church and people accept them? Does it vex us when others don’t try to fix them / correct them / warn them / evangelize them right away?

Religious people want other to become like them as soon as possible. They demand a change in actions or lifestyle and fail to trust Jesus for the deep work of healing that sets people free. Yet in demanding people follow the same rules they forget that one of the things that made Jesus most angry was rules being placed over people!

Change always comes (because that's what Jesus does), but transformation happens through a loving connection with God that leads to the desire follow him. Change (at least good change) never happens through the plank-filled judgment of churches.

Let me put it more plainly: if we have a hard time allowing tax collectors and sinners into our lives and churches, or if we cast judgment on people who do not think / act / vote / etc.  like us (even other followers of Jesus), or if we think when people "get saved" they will start acting like us, and if our church encourages this, then I don't think Jesus would enjoy attending the same church as us.

If this is us, we need to hear Jesus next three parables as much as the Pharisees and scribes did: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. More on that next week...

Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash