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Hospital policySaturday, February 9, 2008
Luke 5:27-32 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"
Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
Jesus nailed his critics with their own words. Why would a sinless Pharisee need God? Surely God would welcome him as an equal. It's the regular folks who need the touch of God, the forgiveness of the Father, the love of Jesus, the breath of the Holy Spirit in their human lungs. Because the regulars (that's us, folks!) commit sin on a fairly regular basis. Jesus' diagnosis of the Pharisees thoroughly defies conventional wisdom in Matthew 23. "Woe unto you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!" He calls them snakes, vipers ... they are blind, blind, blind. Most importantly he insists they distinguish their true self from the appearance they thrust toward others: "You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside are full of greed and self-indulgence ... You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean." Jesus' prescription for the Pharisees, those who don't need the doctor, is to "first clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean." For the rest of us regular folks he gives a different call: "Whoever humbles himself will be exalted." Levi, like me, knew he was a sinner. The limits of his obedience were unacceptable, but they were limits nonetheless. And Jesus loved him. As the song goes, "What could wash away his sin? "Nothing but the blood of Jesus." Not a conventional diagnosis, but the right one. My humility, like everything else in me that pleases you, is so limited, Lord. Increase it. Put me in places and positions where it will grow. |
Gregory House M.D. is a brilliant diagnostician. At least that's how the plot paints him. We watch him on TV and wish he was here. Friends and family and all of us could use a little brilliant diagnosis now and then.