The Bishop is said to have complained to his clergy: "Why is it that wherever Jesus went there was a revolution and wherever I go they only pour tea?" It is a good question. Why is there such a gulf between the church on one side and the Christ on the other?

When Mark sat down and wrote the first gospel he wanted those early believers and the world to understand just how revolutionary this Jesus was. He begins his gospel by saying that Jesus came preaching good news. (1.15) And his first work is to call ordinary people to follow him—fisherman. Peter, Andrew, James and John. (1.16-20)

This is followed with a story of how he taught in the Synagogue on the Sabbath and healed a man with an unclean spirit. Those looking on said even the unclean spirits obey him. (1.21-28) He would leave there to heal Simon’s mother in law. (1.29-31) And this is followed by that summary statement of how they flocked to him: the broken, the wounded, the troubled and the sick and Mark says he healed all kinds of diseases. (1.32-34)

Then Mark tells us the secret of Jesus’ power. He prayed, out there alone, and God strengthened him for what he was to do. (1.35-39) And so when a leper came, Jesus broke all the rules of his day by touching him and he made him well. (1.40-45) And so after that encounter we have the story of how, in Capernaum there were so many that crowded into a house to hear Jesus preach that these four men could not get their sick friend to Jesus. And so they opened up the roof, let him down at Jesus’ feet and Jesus said: "Take up your pallet and walk." (2.1-12)

But all this is prelude really. He called a fifth disciple—Levi, a tax collector of all things. He called someone to be a disciple that was hated and despised because everyone knew that tax collectors cheated and got rich off poor folk. It was true. Of all the people Jesus could have picked as a disciple—a tax collector was as bad as you could get. (2.13-14) Levi was so happy that Jesus called him until he threw this huge party for all his friends. Mostly tax collectors, riff-raff—the wrong kind of people. The wrong kind of people. And Jesus was invited and came to the party. The Pharisees and the Scribes were furious. They could not understand Jesus being at this party.

How could he do this? Why, not only were these people ceremonially unclean but their reputations were terrible. They raised their eyebrows and their voices: "What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?" And what he said was so revolutionary that even after all these years the church does not fully understand what he said. "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."(Mark 2. 17)

Mark drums it into our heads every chance he gets. For everywhere this Lord went he turned everything upside down. Hearts, values, standards, institutions, even faith. It is as close a mission statement as we have in the gospel, except for those words in Luke 4 when Jesus opened the Isaiah scroll and began to read. Here he says it plainly: My work is with the sick—my work is with the sinners.

When we move away from human need — we move away from Christ. Revolutions degenerate into tea parties when we forget our real business. What we find in chapters one and two is an amazing array of folk. Calling ordinary people as disciples, healing unclean spirits, lepers, paralytics. He touched even tax collectors—the most unlikely ones—and changed their lives. He ate with people with shabby reputations. He stayed close to human need.

Back in the sixties some of you may remember Bel Kaufman’s Up the Down Stair Case. Which was an indictment on the public school system. If this was true in the sixties, what would she say forty years later? But in that book she writes about this young teacher who graduated from college with stars in her eyes. She wanted to teach. She wanted to make a difference. And so she took her first job. She couldn’t believe what she had got herself into. Surrounded by paper, beauracracy, endless meetings—irate and apathetic parents her dreams began to fade fast. She didn’t have time to teach.

One of the big rules posted everywhere for the teachers was: DO NOT TOUCH THE WOUNDS! Why you might get sued or catch something. Do not touch the wounds, the administration said. Hold those you teach at arm’s length. And the teacher said how in the world can you teach anybody if you cannot touch the wounds? It is still a good question.

This is why got Jesus in trouble. He touched a leper which violated every rule of the Levitical law. He ate with those who not only did not observe the ritual regulations of cleanliness but they didn’t even know what they were and couldn’t care less. What was a nice man like Jesus doing in a place like that? He caused a stir because he moved close to human need. He touched the wounds. For, above everything else, he knew this is what he had come to do.

I remember reading that in the early part of this century one of the thriving businesses was making buggies. But with the advent of the automobile the buggy making business began to slide. Finally it dried up completely. Nobody wanted buggies. Somebody observed that they went out of business because they thought their business was making buggies. They were wrong. They were in the transportation business and when they forgot their real purpose — they went out of business.

The Pharisees never understood Jesus. We move away from human need and we move away from the Christ. Inasmuch as we do it unto the least of these we really do see the face of Jesus. Move toward human need — we move toward God.

I think we sometimes forget who Jesus really is. Some time ago an artist named Barosin painted a head of Christ with a blue background. People complained that the blue did not match many of the colors in their houses. So Christian Education Press obliged the malcontents by providing Barosin’s "powerful" portrait with a neutral background. Christ was made to fit into the environment around him.

Where did we get the idea that when he comes into our lives that he will adapt to us? The picture of Jesus here never changes colors to suit our needs. Years ago Bruce Barton wrote a book that became a best seller, The Man Nobody Knows. It could be written in our time. Political candidates with Jesus sitting on their platforms. They color him pro-life, pro-choice, pro-capital punishment, anti-capital punishment, pro-welfare, anti-welfare. Pro guns, anti-guns. Just take out your crayolas and color him as you would like.

The Pharisees were furious. He wouldn’t jump through their hoops. He called Peter and Andrew and James and John and then, of all people, Levi. It altered their lives. They were never the same again.

Dan Wakefield was a Hollywood writer. He had written bestsellers. He woke up one day on the eve of Christmas in Boston. He was an alcoholic, he was addicted to prescription drugs, his blood pressure was out of sight, he was overweight and his live-in girl friend had moved out. Everything was wrong. And on Christmas Eve he wandered into this Church in downtown Boston. Something happened. Lightning struck. He was moved in ways he had not been moved in years. He planned on going back the next week but he got the flu and didn’t go back. But months later he couldn’t get that Christmas Eve service out of his head. He came back to church. Slowly his life began to change. Got into AA. He changed his eating habits. He changed the way he lived. He began to pay attention to his body and his soul. He learned to read the Bible and to pray. And he writes about it in a wonderful book called, Returning. The New York Times was so struck with his story that they printed the Christmas Eve story in their Sunday magazine at Christmastime. The point? When he confronted Jesus he found his life changing and the changes were good and healthy.

We learn from this story that Jesus always takes the initiative. He came first to Simon Peter and Andrew and James and John. And then Mark says: He saw Levi. He saw this tax collector. Jesus spoke first. Just like that other time when he stopped and looked at the tree-tops and invited Zaccheus, another tax collector, to come down and eat with him.

He is the initiator. Luke says this Son of Man came to seek and to save those that were lost. (Luke 19.10) He did not avoid the sinners—he sought them out. Montifiore says that this was a new and sublime contribution to the development of religion and morality. He never gave up on people. He sought them out.

When I was Pastor in a rural community on the edge of Danville, Virginia we had a lot of poor people who came by the church and said: Help me. They had a multitude of needs. They lived four or five miles outside of town on country roads in two-room shacks. Many of them did not have cars. And sometimes when they were sick we would have to take them into town to the Doctor.

One family came by with this little baby so sick. And so we got into the car and I took them down to Dr. Newman’s office. Dr. Newman was not a Christian. Dr. Newman was Jewish. But he never turned anybody down. His office looked like something out of 1940. His wife was the receptionist and nurse. There was an old mohair sofa in the waiting room. Old faded pictures on the walls. But we stood there with the baby and Dr. Newman came out and said, "Come on in." He tenderly took the baby and put her up on the examining table. She was dehydrated and very sick. "You came at the right time," he said. I went out into the waiting room to wait. He called me in a few minutes and told me come back in. "Look, look," he said. He had hooked an IV up and the baby’s cheeks were red and she began to squirm. "Isn’t that the most beautiful sight you’ve ever seen—life—it’s precious." Never changed them a dime. Gave them medicines and told them to call if they needed him.

Jesus called Levi. He changed his name, this tax collector. Levi would become Matthew. Do you know what the name Matthew means? Gift from God. And he must have lived up to his name. He would one day write the gospel which would be the most popular gospel for years and years. It would have never happened if Christ had not taken the initiative.

He gave the church a new job description that day. The Pharisees asked: Why are you doing this? Why in the world are you wasting your timewith this riff-raff. Calling tax collectors, eating with sinners. God knows what you might catch. Why are you doing such a thing? Do you remember what he said: I came not to call the well but the sick. I came not to call the righteous but the sinners to repentance.

A.M. Hunter says that everyone knew that God saved sinners. No Jew would deny this—not even the Pharisees. What was new here was that God loves and saves sinners just as they are. They don’t have to become righteous or deserving or well scrubbed. The old song really is right. We come just as we are. Paul knew it to be true. He found it in his own experience: "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

Remember Robert Frost’s long poem, "The Death of the Hired Man?" Mary tells her husband Warren, "He’s back." The old hired man that had worked so long for them and just wandered off one day and never came back. She whispered to Warren, "He back. Be kind." Warren muttered: "When have I ever been anything but kind to him?" "But I won’t take him back. We can’t afford it." As they talked and learned his story, she finally tells Warren he can’t kick the old man out. He’s come home to die. "Home?" Warren says. And Mary says: " Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in." And Warren says: "I should have called it something you somehow haven’t to deserve."

Who deserves? Tell me who really deserves? None of us. All we like sheep have gone astray and turned everyone to his or her own way. We talk about the deserving poor—what does that mean. Jesus opposed every social and every religious ostracism. This is why Mark would write in koine Greek. It was the language of the Gentiles. The outsiders. For us all.

So this is the essence. At long last we come to the sermon title: What’s a nice Church like you doing in a place like this? We’re a hospital. We tend the sick. We touch the wounds. It gets messy. Sometimes it is downright dangerous. We take risks, terrible risks. Sometimes we lose someone in death or they move away—or the wires get crossed and they leave us. It breaks our hearts.

But this is the great dream. That in the church of Jesus Christ the doors are wide open, we sit down at tables knowing full well we are all sinners and there is no pecking order. We reach out to one another because somebody reached out to us in the name of Jesus. And we find our names changed too: gift from God. We really do begin to believe that we are a gift from God. And that is why the real church finds itself in some unlikely places.

George MacLeod was right: