Eating with Jesus | Mark 2:13-22
Do you love to eat? We live in a world of foodies. We love to watch tv shows about cooking and eating. We spend thousands of dollars each year on eating out. We spend so much money, mental energy and effort on eating.
One of the things we see in the life of Jesus was his love for eating with people. All throughout the gospels, Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal or coming from a meal. Jesus and his disciples ate so much that some called him a “glutton and a drunkard.” Jesus was neither, yet He loved to eat with people; the excess of food was a picture of the excess of His grace. Every meal Jesus ate with others was a picture of what His grace can do.
Mark frequently presents a series of stories linked by a common theme and these stories often overlap. The healing of the paralytic showed us that Jesus had the authority to forgive sins, but it also begins a series of stories in which the religious leaders oppose Jesus and question his authority. It grows from them only thinking it to themselves, to confronting Jesus and then eventually plotting Jesus’ death. The next two stories are centered around food and eating. Both stories get to the heart of Jesus and his love and grace for people who do not deserve it. We see that Jesus loves the least likely and calls them to a totally new life in Him.