Unconditional Love

Gospel: Mark 2: 13-17

When doctors care for a patient they do not set any preconditions before visiting with them and treating them.  A sick patient is not told to get well first and then come see the doctor.  To the contrary, the doctor sees the patient as they are - in all their illness and the risk that such entails - and in that encounter the person finds healing and good health.

The same is true in the life of faith.  Consider today's Gospel: Jesus approaches a tax collector named Levi and merely says to him: Follow me.  There is no preconditions, just the invitation itself.  What is more, later that day Jesus is dining with all sorts of sinners who come to the meal.  There is no bouncer, no one there to screen attendees for their worthiness.  Instead, you have an encounter at a meal, and it is in that encounter that people come to healing and reform in their lives.

The Pharisees object to all of this.  They think they are the only ones worthy of the meal, the only ones worthy of an encounter with God.  But they do not recognize Jesus at all; they are not transformed by the meal but instead seek to control the meal and encounter itself.  But God sets no preconditions for the encounter.  God comes among us and invites us to the transformative meal.   To accept the invitation, to partake of the meal will lead to change and flourishing in our lives.