scum

Mark 2 

13 Then Jesus went out to the lakeshore again 

and taught the crowds that were coming to him. 

14 As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at his tax collector’s booth. 

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

So Levi got up and followed him.

15 Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, 

along with many tax collectors and other disreputable, notorious sinners. 

(There were many people of this kind among Jesus’ followers.) 

16 But when the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, 

“Why does he eat with such scum?”

17 When Jesus heard this, he told them, 

“Healthy people don’t need a doctor;

sick people do. 

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

but those who know they are sinners.”

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I've said this before, but I'll say it again, because it bears saying always.

These are the 4 things that always struck me about the calling of Matthew by Jesus:

1. "Scum" or "notorious sinners" WANTED to be around Jesus. There was something about the way He treated them that encouraged them to endure the way other Jews treated them by coming to see Him.

2. Jesus obviously WANTED to be around these social & religious outcasts.

So....

3. If we claim to be followers of Jesus & claim His Spirit lives in us, shouldn't we WANT to be around people this world considers as "scum"?

4. AND shouldn't we as people who claim to follow Jesus have the kind of attitude & express His kind of love toward people to the degree that the "scum" of our world would WANT to be around us?