Saturday after the Third Sunday of Easter

Lessons: Psalm 30, 32; Daniel 6:16-28; 3 John 1-15; Luke 5:27-39.

I am off early today so this must suffice.

We begin prayer in the Psalms to orient us. We pray in Psalm 32:

You are my hiding-place; you preserve me from trouble; *
you surround me with shouts of deliverance.
"I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you should go; *
I will guide you with my eye." Psalm 32:9

We affirm that we all rest our hope in God and God's teachings. Yet when we read the Gospel we see there is more than meets our easy comprehension. Jesus chooses odd company, sinners, those who are somewhat lost or have a different approach to God. And Jesus is challenged for it. The social occasion is Matthew (Levi) the tax collector's home after learning of the possibility that God would entertain him in Jesus. Good news no doubt.

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." Luke 5:27-32

When we are the settled of "religion" it can be a challenge both to see who God might welcome and to find an approach. If we use our imaginations, we have pictures: the derelict who will not labor, those utterly lost in addiction, the bullies of life, someone I detest (can I admit that?). The good news is that if God can welcome these, God can welcome the less attractive parts of me.

Today I will notice others whom I easily overlook...and maybe parts of me I hide.

We read in the Epistle:

So if I come, I will call attention to what he (Diotrephes) is doing in spreading false charges against us. And not content with those charges, he refuses to welcome the friends, and even prevents those who want to do so and expels them from the church. 3 John 1:10

From her early days the Church has had to struggle with acceptable and not so. Turf wars have occurred. What to do? Notice who seems to irritate you in the community, in life, even friends and wonder how God may be reaching toward them or be active in them. Can you drop your barriers of defense? Can you create welcome or simply let it be in others who are in your life that the unacceptable may be seen as acceptable to others in your life and/or church.

Jesus sees his and our task as one of welcome to those we least expect.