Mark 2:15-17
Jun. 11th, 2012 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack“Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
This is another of the famous quotes, and one I quite like.
It's another that would probably be more readily understandable if "sinners and tax collectors" were translated into something more familiar to a modern reader. Perhaps "people who've been to jail a couple of times" fit the same "ostracised, sinning, but fairly normal for their culture" role?
Although it's probably instructive to imagine the same passage with a variety of different sinners. People probably imagine Jesus meeting people doing something technically illegal and socially ostracised, like people who've done prostitution.
How do you feel if Jesus were eating with someone in the middle of a killing spree?
What about running a corrupt hedge fund?
What about world leaders who committed their country to expensive and pointless wars with lots of people dead?
To me, each one produces a different sort of "He can't eat with them! No, wait..."
But on the other hand, most people read this passage already know that Jesus always turns out to have known best. If you knew a long-haired hippie cult leader, but DIDN'T think they were the son of God, wandering round the country collecting bands of desperate people and leading them away from their homes telling them "it doesn't matter if you have a home or a job, as long as you're with me everything will be ok", you would probably have lots of worries about how it might go wrong, but some of the worries might actually be RIGHT.
17 On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
This is another of the famous quotes, and one I quite like.
It's another that would probably be more readily understandable if "sinners and tax collectors" were translated into something more familiar to a modern reader. Perhaps "people who've been to jail a couple of times" fit the same "ostracised, sinning, but fairly normal for their culture" role?
Although it's probably instructive to imagine the same passage with a variety of different sinners. People probably imagine Jesus meeting people doing something technically illegal and socially ostracised, like people who've done prostitution.
How do you feel if Jesus were eating with someone in the middle of a killing spree?
What about running a corrupt hedge fund?
What about world leaders who committed their country to expensive and pointless wars with lots of people dead?
To me, each one produces a different sort of "He can't eat with them! No, wait..."
But on the other hand, most people read this passage already know that Jesus always turns out to have known best. If you knew a long-haired hippie cult leader, but DIDN'T think they were the son of God, wandering round the country collecting bands of desperate people and leading them away from their homes telling them "it doesn't matter if you have a home or a job, as long as you're with me everything will be ok", you would probably have lots of worries about how it might go wrong, but some of the worries might actually be RIGHT.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-11 12:24 pm (UTC)The religious authorities of the day, the very ones Jesus is depicted as having argued viciously with. The quote makes me imagine a form of spiritual triage, where ordinary honest people can be left as they are, where garden-variety sinners get urgent assistance, and the hypocrites are swiftly abandoned as too far gone. Or maybe there are two sorts of sin, one which may legitimately be likened to an illness and one which may not.
The quote seems to conflict with "All have sinned". A quick google says that's Romans 3:23 - St. Paul, not Jesus, not the gospels.