Today's Gospel

A Most Unlikely Invitation

Hi, I'm Matthew Kelly and welcome back to Radical & Relevant where each day we take a couple of minutes to explore the gospel of the day, looking for a word or a phrase or an idea that the Holy Spirit uses to stir your soul and to draw you into the day, to live the gospel practically. Today's reading is from the Gospel of Mark 2:13-17. He went out again beside the sea and all the crowd gathered about Him, and He taught them. And as He passed on, Jesus saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, "Follow me," and he rose and followed Him. And as He sat at a table in his home, many tax collectors and sinners were sitting with Jesus and His disciples for there were many who followed Him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that He was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to His disciples, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?" And when Jesus heard it, He said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but to call sinners."

What chumps out at you today? The call of Matthew obviously has a special meaning for me. And there's some famous lines in here, right? The healthy don't need a physician. But what struck me today was the invitation itself and how unlikely the invitation was. You can see, by the way, the scribes and the Pharisees were talking that tax collectors were held in very little regard and very much looked down upon by the religious leaders and the religious people of that age. And so for Jesus to invite the tax collector to become his disciple was radical. Okay? We talk about the gospel being radical today just as it was radical 2,000 years ago. So Jesus' invitation to Matthew to follow Him and become a disciple was radical. He was maybe, from a worldly point of view, if worldly people would have been putting together the list of disciples, Matthew wouldn't have been anywhere near the list. And what makes that important is that we all feel unworthy at different times in our lives. We feel unworthy of different experiences. We feel unworthy of God's mercy. We feel unworthy in all sorts of different ways. And what Jesus is saying today is no. Your worth, your value doesn't come from anything that the world says about you. Your worth, your value comes from being a child of God. And as a child of God, I am inviting you to become my disciple.

And so Jesus' words to Matthew or Levi were, "Follow Me." And those are His words to us today. He's calling us to follow Him. Are we following Him? Do we think of ourselves as His followers or are we just wandering off? I go out with my kids and they have no idea where they're going. But they'll just start leading, they're wandering off, and then they're like, "Well, where are we going?" Well, they turn around and I'm like going in a different direction. And we're all like those kids with God, right? We just wander off sometimes. And Jesus is refocusing us today, He's saying, "Follow me." Have a great day and, remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.