PLU? People like us… “PLU means People Like Us. Upper-class reference to describe others who have similar high-class aspirations and standards.”
The text follows the video…
“Everyone is PLU!” Friday Meditation 04-24-20. Alan Neale.
Trinity Church,Newport,RI
Mark 2
13 Jesus went out again beside the sea; the whole crowd gathered around him, and he taught them. 14 As he was walking along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
15 And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples—for there were many who followed him. 16 When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, “Why does he eat[g] with tax collectors and sinners?” 17 When Jesus heard this, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
Most evenings Wendy and I will ask, “So, what plans do you have for tomorrow?”. It’s good to have an idea of the coming day but life teaches us the truth of that oft-quoted line “if you want to make God laugh, make plans” or more elegantly “Man proposes, God disposes.”
I cannot count the number of days in parish ministry when, as I walk/drive to church I go over in my mind the plan for the day. And then… visitors, emails, telephone calls all work to make that plan permeable. It was some years into parish ministry that I came to realize and to accept that often the apparent “interruptions” were part of the plan, opportunities to engage with the Lord and see Him at work.
Throughout Mark’s Gospel we will encounter a phrase, a word, that suggests that “on his way to…” or “as he was walking” Jesus stops and gives full attention to the person before him.
He did this with the leper and now he does this with Levi – v.14 “as he was walking along… he saw Levi”. This strange and weird time (when time seems so amorphous) has caused all of us to accept that our plans are not working out well and, in turn, we are learning (or relearning) a new spiritual discipline, a new inclination of the heart… accepting the apparent interruption as an arena in which we are meeting Jesus, one another, in new and significant ways and we will be changed by this irrevocably.
Levi was the lowest of the low in Roman occupied Palestine; not only was he working for the occupation force but he was extorting grossly unfair taxes from fellow and sister Jews.
He was a quintessential Quisling; deemed as base, reproachable as the despised Samaritans. But it is this man that causes Jesus to stop, engage in conversation and then utter the simple command/or is it an invitation, “Follow me”. The Greek word for follow suggests “follow through”… now Jesus soon was to know and accept that none of his followers were going to follow through and yet the time would come when they would resume the path, the road. The call to follow Jesus is constantly, persistently re-made otherwise I and many (all?) others would be at a loss. You have heard the simple dictum it matters not how many times we fall, but how many times we get up. Jesus never rescinds the call to follow. In the first chapters of Genesis and John we observe the power of the divine word… it creates, it enables, it empowers.
As the Gospel passage continues I feel such a sense of praise and wonder and delight that Jesus does not expect Levi to cut connection with his erstwhile friends and so a dinner is served where “sinners and tax collectors” attend and there is Jesus… guest of honor and most comfortable. Some texts read that Jesus sat, others read that he reclined… my heart confirms the latter reading, Jesus can relax, be at ease, be authentic with the so-called outcasts, pariahs and dispossessed.
I finish with a true story. While serving as Rector in Philadelphia it became my custom to say, just before the Communion, “Wherever you are on your spiritual journey, you are welcome at this the Lord’s table.” One Christmas Eve a couple came for the first time to the church for many years; they (especially the woman) had been grievously hurt by another denomination and were wary of church and ministers and the like. As Communion drew close, the man pointed out to his friend the words I was about to say. She read them, paused and said, “But that’s not meant for me”. After a while they became part of the church putting behind them what had hurt and damaged them.
What is it with church and church people that we forget (v. 17) “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners”?
What is it with church and church people that we forget the call to welcome, honor, respect the outcast, the marginalized and the dispossessed?
This was never the ministry of Jesus, may we hear the word and be empowered to continue His ministry today and be ready to denounce those who ignore such divine ministry.