Do WE Get It?

Normally, I don't like Eugene Peterson's The Message translation of the Bible.  I'm a seventh semester Greek student who also just started taking Hebrew, how could I possibly like that paraphrase?  But I have found, especially with the youth, it can be helpful in certain instances to convey The Message of the Gospel.  Here is one such particular instance:

29-30Levi gave a large dinner at his home for Jesus. Everybody was there, tax men and other disreputable characters as guests at the dinner. The Pharisees and their religion scholars came to his disciples greatly offended. "What is he doing eating and drinking with crooks and 'sinners'?"

 31-32Jesus heard about it and spoke up, "Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I'm here inviting outsiders, not insiders—an invitation to a changed life, changed inside and out."

Luke 5:29-32

Many honchos in the Lutheran Church would probably take issue with the fact that this paraphrase leaves out how Jesus said He was there to call sinners to repentance.  But it is conveyed, albeit simply, in Peterson's paraphrase.  Jesus is indeed, even still today, calling to the outsiders with an invitation to a changed life a metanoia (Greek repentance or change of the mind/self) if you will.  So long as the one presenting The Message does so understanding it is not a sound translation then I see no harm or foul in using it as a teaching tool to convey a certain point.  What is the point here?  The church is for sinners.  The church is for the sick, not the healthy.  If it were for the healthy we wouldn't confess our sins or receive the Eucharist weekly.  We are sick, twisted, unhealthy, human beings.  It is part of our condition as sinner.  We are wrong.  

One of the most damaging notions, bar none, that has come to represent the church is that we think we're better than everyone else and the "they" out there are the ones with a problem.  Yeah no kidding,  everyone has problems.  There are problems both inside and outside the church.  Even if we have the theology that says, "Yeah no kidding, thanks" we still have to realize that even us theologically sound Lutherans can come off as jerks and as pompous religious types.  So let's call the sick, as Jesus did at every turn, to the church and to healing (repentance).  Because the Great Physician, Jesus Christ, is the One who brought healing.  He is the One who was is and is to come, the Alpha the Omega, the Beginning and the End.  The phrase goes that "The buck stops here" when it comes to Jesus.  Through Him all can enjoy health and eternal life.  This is the message we need to get out there.  Jesus is for the sick, not the healthy (or those who think they are healthy).  

People are watching, stand guard and hold true to your faith in all circumstances.  You never know just when you are being watched, as I found out in a conversation last night with someone who may or may not have been sipping on grandmas cough medicine.  But that's not the point, the point is he told me he saw something different about me, and I know this has nothing to do with myself or on my own.  It is not because I am some great person, because I am not.  I am terribly sick.  But thanks be to God when it counts the Good Doctor is shining through and His remedy is working.  I say this not to be like "look at me, look at me!"  Because truth be told that's the last thing I want.  But I say this so that when people look at you, they can and WILL say "Look at so and so, man that is what I want my kids to see in religion and in this Christian God."

Invite them in, sit them down, offer them the remedy.  Jesus brings change.