Sinners
Day 534, Tuesday, Jan. 27
Mark 1:20 – 2:17
Jesus quickly gets down to the business of freeing people—freeing them from evil spirits, from sickness and from sin.
After the call of Levi (who we more commonly know as Matthew) we see Jesus and his followers having dinner at Levi’s house.
“When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’
“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.”
The first part of that story is popular with people today who want to take an anything-goes approach to Christianity. Jesus, they are quick to say, hung out with sinners.
That is absolutely true, but incomplete. Jesus was comfortable spending time with broken people, but he recognized that they were, in fact, broken and in need of release from their sin.
We are also called to be friends of sinners, but that doesn’t mean becomes friends with their sin. Jesus calls us to follow his example of meeting and loving people where they are—and loving them enough to show them the freedom that Christ offers.

-Rev. Mark Fleming

Tuesday meditation

Psalms 69:30-36
I will praise God’s name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox, more than a bull with its horns and hooves. The poor will see and be glad—you who seek God, may your hearts live! The Lord hears the needy and does not despise his captive people.
Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and all that move in them, for God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah. Then people will settle there and possess it; the children of his servants will inherit it, and those who love his name will dwell there.

Prayer focus
Remove the fear and pride that keep us from loving those you love, God. Let us show them your freedom.