Jesus came to call the sinners. But why do we answer to this call? Where does the will to answer in us come from? It would be easier and more rational to first of all recognize the almighty action of the Holy Spirit that produces in us such a will. But our own participation, our consent to answer to this call are also necessary. Where does this come from? It is difficult to guess the possibility of such appetencies by looking oneself from outside. The one who in his pettinesses, takes care only of himself, who is thirsty of peace and a big granary full with all the necessities till the end of time, who don’t trust any creature will not make out even the hundredth of the indispensable will to answer to this call of Jesus. Besides, such a person by seeing others who are similar to him finds that they have in them strange and horrifying things, and he sees nothing more, no qualities that can compel to say “yes” to God. Nevertheless, when people suffering of sin encounter face to face with the impeccable, the innocent, sinless Jesus Christ, they agree to follow Him. It is not very probable that we can completely define the reasons, but one is well known. Speaking about Jesus as being a Man in all, except sin, we just don’t mean that He ate and drank, spoke and was quiet, laughed and cried, but also that He has never committed evil. When we meet with Him, we recognize for the first time a Person that will never think badly about us; will never condemn us; will never say malignant gossip about us in our absence. It is this everlasting "never" that generate in us the vital necessity to never part from him.  

Have you really ever met a man without illness? It is not to say that we all have something paining us, but each of us has something wrong somewhere; it can be a physical defect, quite as it can be a spiritual infirmity … So, we don't divide people between the sick ones and the healthy, but we divide them between those who feel sick and those who feel healthy. That is why everyone indeed needs the doctor, even if there are some who think that they don't need him, and consequently do not go to the doctor. But we also meet various categories of people among those who feel sick; some people don't believe the normal medicine, don't trust the doctors and so they visit sorcerers, wizards, charlatans and other "specialists" of the same category and finally become slaves of their own health, to be more precise slaves of their disease and this without knowing it.

The analogy between both verses read today is clear. There are not sinless people, and Jesus came for each of us. But some people don't consider themselves as sinners, and others don't believe that Jesus can deliver them of sin and his corollaries, and they look for something else. The Healing is stretched out at us, but we have to visit the doctor in order to receive it. To be conscious of being spiritually sick and call out to God for a spiritual cure is what we call repentance.

Today's reading offers us two accounts linked by a single theme: religion and Revelation. The first describes Jesus healing a man whom Luke calls a “paralytic” (vv. 17-26). Jesus heals him by saying, “Thy sins are forgiven thee,” thereby displeasing the Pharisees present, who are absolutely certain that only God can forgive sins. In their view Jesus' words were therefore tantamount to blasphemy: by saying what He did, He placed Himself in God's position in their eyes (v. 21). In response Jesus reminded them of a generally accepted belief of the time: the Messiah, the “Son of Man,” has authority from God to forgive sins, for the messianic Kingdom comes into the world with the Messiah and the day of Judgment arrives. He immediately proved by His action that His words were not mere theory and that He truly had authority from God to forgive sins. The man He healed really did rise and walk, and Jesus had connected this healing precisely with the forgiveness of sins (vv. 22-25).

It is no wonder that everything that happened made such a strong impression on those around Him. They understood that before them stood no ordinary teacher, of whom there were many at the time, nor even a prophet, but perhaps the Messiah Himself, although He did not speak directly of His messiahship (v. 26). But such a Messiah did not fit the Pharisees' theological theories. They saw in Him only a man who did not heal by revealing the fullness of the Kingdom but cured the sick as others cured them, sometimes likewise resorting to the power of prayer or possessing a special gift of healing from God. A cure, even a supernatural or miraculous one, did not go beyond the boundaries of religion; those boundaries had no room for the Kingdom.

We see the same thing in the account of the events that took place in Levi's house (vv. 27-39). For a religious person, fellowship with a sinner is not merely unpleasant but dangerous: sin defiles, while religion presupposes the mandatory observance of the norms and rules of ritual purity. But Jesus had no intention of creating a new religion. He brought the Kingdom into the world in order to give everyone a chance at a new life in that Kingdom. So He asks an entirely natural question: who needs a physician, the healthy or the sick (vv. 31-32)?

The question is rhetorical, but within the framework of religion it has no solution. Even a religious person can essentially do nothing to help a sinner beyond calling him to repentance and conversion. Religion has no power to heal or renew a person by changing his sinful nature. The most it can give him is the possibility of temporary cleansing from the consequences of a particular sin, and even that is not always possible. A religious person really has nothing to do among sinners; he cannot help them in any way. But Jesus is not the founder of a new religion. He is the Messiah who brought the Kingdom into the world. He can heal and cleanse. And in His disciples He sees servants of the Kingdom who can help everyone who wants to enter it.