Saturday – February 21
Scripture: Luke 5:27–32
“I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners. He sits at tables others avoid. The scandal is not merely that he forgives; it is that he shares meals.
Repentance is relational. It is not shame-driven isolation but restored belonging.
The Pharisees were not wrong to care about holiness. They were wrong to confuse holiness with separation. Jesus reveals a holiness that moves toward brokenness, not away from it.
The Church must wrestle with this question in every generation: Are we more concerned with guarding our boundaries or widening the circle?
To repent is to change direction. It is also to change posture.
Whose table have we avoided? Whose story have we dismissed? Whose presence unsettles us?
In Christ, God moves toward us in our fractured state. As recipients of that grace, we are sent outward—not as judges, but as fellow travelers.
Lent invites us to become the kind of people who sit where Christ sits; alongside the lonely, the unwelcomed, the disfigured, the widow, the outcast, the broken, the disenfranchised, the foreigner, the immigrant, the stranger in our midst, the orphan, and those with whom we disagree.
Reflection Questions:
- Who in my life feels “outside” the circle?
- Where might God be asking me to widen my welcome?
- How has Christ met me at a table of grace?
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