"It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
Mark 2:17 (NIV)If you were going to start a movement in first-century Palestine, there is a fairly obvious playbook. You recruit from the religious establishment. You find people who are already respected, already educated in the Torah, already known to God-fearing people as trustworthy. You build from credibility.
Jesus did none of that. He walked past the synagogues and the academies and the people who had studied for this and He went to a lake, and He found fishermen.
Not even successful fishermen, necessarily. Just men doing their job, smelling like fish, with no theological credentials and no obvious reason to be chosen for the most important mission in history. And He said: follow Me.
He did this over and over. Every major choice He made about who to spend time with, who to heal first, who to include in His inner circle, reads like a list of people you would not put on the committee. And I think that is entirely on purpose.
"When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, 'Will you give me a drink?' The Samaritan woman said to him, 'You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?'"
John 4:7-9 (NIV)The twelve
Four fishermen. A tax collector named Matthew, which means a collaborator with the Roman occupation, someone most devout Jews would not eat with. Simon the Zealot, who was politically at the opposite extreme from Matthew and probably had serious opinions about collaborators. Judas, who would betray Him. Thomas, who would doubt Him. Peter, who would deny Him three times.
This is the team He chose after spending the whole night in prayer (Luke 6:12). He prayed all night and then chose these twelve. Which means this was not a mistake. He was not working with the best available options. He chose exactly who He intended to choose, knowing exactly what each of them would do.
Why? I think partly because He was not building a brand. He was not trying to signal credibility to the establishment. He was building something else entirely, something that would turn the world's hierarchy upside down, and you do that better with people who have no illusions about their own importance.
The woman at the well
John 4 is one of my favorite moments in the Gospels. Jesus stops at a well in Samaria. His disciples have gone into town. A woman comes to draw water, alone, at noon, which is the hottest part of the day and not when women typically came to wells. She came alone at noon because she was avoiding the other women who came in the cool of the morning. She was not welcome in that community.
She had five ex-husbands and was currently with someone she was not married to. In first-century terms she was about as socially marginalized as a person could be. Jesus was a Jewish rabbi. He was not supposed to talk to women in public, especially not Samaritan women, especially not women with her history.
He asked her for water. Not for her story, not for a confession, not for a moral accounting. He asked her for something He needed. He started with her dignity. He met her as a person before He met her as a problem. And then He had the longest one-on-one recorded conversation in any of the Gospels with her, about living water and worship and who He was, and she went back into town and became the first evangelist of her community.
The disciples came back and they were astonished He was talking with her. Not to her. With her. The posture was the thing. He was not condescending toward her. He was in conversation with her.
The people at the edges
Again and again in the Gospels, Jesus gravitates toward the people that the religious center has pushed to the margins. Lepers, who were required to announce their own uncleanness to keep people away. A woman with a hemorrhage who had been bleeding for twelve years, who was perpetually ritually unclean, who touched His cloak without asking. A blind man who the disciples thought was being punished by God for someone's sin. Tax collectors. Sinners. Children, who had no social standing whatsoever in that culture.
He touched the leper before He healed him (Mark 1:41). He did not have to touch him. He could have healed from a distance. He chose to touch someone no one was supposed to touch. The healing was not the only thing He was doing. He was restoring human dignity at the same time.
What this tells you about who He chooses
I think one of the quietest cruelties in church culture is the implicit message that Jesus chooses the polished. That the people He really works with are the ones who have it together, who know the right things, who are not too much trouble. That everyone else is a project He is waiting to be done with before He can really use them.
The Gospels say something categorically different. He chose fishermen for their roughness, not in spite of it. He chose tax collectors specifically because they were excluded from the religious community. He stopped for the woman everyone else avoided. He made time for children when His disciples were trying to shoo them away.
He said this to the Pharisees who were bothered that He was eating with tax collectors and sinners. He said it plainly: this is who I came for. Not as a condescension but as a statement of purpose. The people who know they need something are the ones who can receive what He has to give. The people who have convinced themselves they are fine cannot be helped.
If you have ever felt like you are too much, too broken, too far gone, too complicated, too much of a mess for Jesus to actually want to work with, today's reading is for you. He chose fishermen. He chose a collaborator. He chose a five-times-divorced woman at a noon well. He chose you. Not in spite of what you bring. Because of who He is.
Who in today's reading do you identify with most?
The fishermen who were just doing their ordinary job when He showed up? The woman at the well who came alone because she was not welcome in the group? Peter, who He chose knowing what Peter would do? Sit with that for a minute and ask Jesus what He sees when He looks at you.
- Which person from today's reading surprised me as a Jesus-choice?
- Have I ever felt like the wrong kind of person for Jesus?
- What does it mean that He chose me with full knowledge of who I am?
- Do I believe He chose me?
- Am I too much for Him?
- Can I trust that He wants me here?
Think about the fishermen. They were just doing their ordinary job when Jesus showed up. He did not wait for them to get their lives together. He chose them in the middle of their ordinary, messy, everyday lives. What does that tell you about where you are right now?
"Jesus, I have carried a version of You that felt like it preferred the put-together people. Like I needed to arrive at a better version of myself before You would really want me around. Show me the You who chose fishermen. Who stopped at the well. Who touched the leper before healing him. Show me that the choosing is not contingent on the condition I am in when You find me. I am here. I am not pretending to be further along than I am. And I want to know: do You want me here? In Jesus Name, Amen."
He chose you. Not in spite of what you bring. Because of who He is.
Tomorrow we are looking at His questions. Over three hundred of them in the Gospels. He was the most powerful person in every room He entered, and He kept asking questions instead of making speeches. There is a reason for that, and I think it changes how we think about our own conversations with Him.
With love and hope for your walk with Him, Claire