The Monday after the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity Sunday
Posted on September 1, 2025 by under
Scripture: St. Mark 2:13-17 (NKJV)
2:13 Then He went out again by the sea; and all the multitude came to Him, and He taught them. 14 As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he arose and followed Him.
15 Now it happened, as He was dining in Levi’s house, that many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many, and they followed Him. 16 And when the scribes and Pharisees saw Him eating with the tax collectors and sinners, they said to His disciples, “How is it that He eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?”
17 When Jesus heard it, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
Devotion
Jesus calls flawed men. He calls men with imperfect pasts. Jesus’ teaching is revolutionary in the ancient world. Sinners, and all who were at the bottom of society, were not to be pitied or valued. But Jesus makes a point of valuing the broken and imperfect.
Our Lord makes something from nothing. He takes a despised tax collector and makes him an apostle. This Christian valuing of all human life was a jarring perspective in the ancient world. And it wasn’t just in the Greek and Roman world. The scribes and Pharisees had a similar legalistic and unmerciful worldview. Practically speaking, there was no hope of redemption for sinners, in their minds. Sinners were spiritually sick, and the scribes would let them die in that sickness. After all, it was one’s own choice to be a sinner.
In contrast, Jesus finds the spiritually sick and heals them. Mercy is a particularly Christian virtue. Self-righteous people don’t really want forgiveness. They have their own righteousness. Men can either have Jesus’ righteousness or their own. They can take whichever one they want before the Father’s judgment. But only Jesus Christ’s righteousness saves us from condemnation and hell.
Collect: Almighty and Everlasting God, Who art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve: Pour down upon us the abundance of Thy mercy, forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
