scum

Luke 5

27 Later, as Jesus left the town, he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax collector's booth.

"Follow me and be my disciple," Jesus said to him.

28 So Levi got up, left everything, and followed him.

  29 Later, Levi held a banquet in his home with Jesus as the guest of honor.

Many of Levi's fellow tax collectors and other guests also ate with them.

30 But the Pharisees and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus' disciples,

"Why do you eat and drink with such scum?"

  31 Jesus answered them,

"Healthy people don't need a doctor—sick people do.

32 I have come to call not those who think they are righteous,

but those who know they are sinners and need to repent."

It is interesting to me that people considered by polite society the “scum” seemed to be very comfortable around Jesus.

But those considered by the same polite society were not comfortable around Him.

Are people considered by our society as “scum” comfortable around you or me?

And are we comfortable around them?

Or are the members of polite society the only people comfortable around us?

And are they the only people we want to be around?

I wonder where you & I would be today

if when we were in our more “unholy & unrighteous” days

we had been viewed as & treated like those Pharisees did the “scum” of their time

or as we in polite society treat them today?