”This Fellow Welcomes Sinners and Eats with Them.”

Read Luke 15.1-10

Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost

The Pharisees and scribes are grumbling about it: "What is he doing eating with the outcasts and the unimportant?" God intends for his house to be full and for his eternal food to be enjoyed. So God sends his Son to give his life as a ransom for many; the ransom (Jesus) is the one who was sacrificed in our place. The one who lived the life we should have lived: Jesus, our exemplar. Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, personally called the guests to God's heavenly banquet. But the scribes and Pharisees are too much in love with the seats of honour, the ordinary things of this world, their fields, their oxen and their families. They are too much in love with their stuff to care much about heaven, to care much about people with bad reputations. So what does Jesus, our exemplar and the author and finisher of our faith, do? He goes to the roads and lanes to find the poor, the crippled the blind, the lame and the tax collectors and sinners, and he eats with them.