You may have noticed it over on the 15th tee at the Tanasi Golf Course. On the surface, it looks like a simple vending machine, dispensing drinks like Power Aid and other energy beverages to help you finish your round of golf with a flair. But when you get closer, you see that this is not any ordinary machine. Oh no, this is a dispenser with a twist. A sign on its face goes something like this: to get a cherry-flavored drink, you'll have to push the button labeled Lemonade. To get Lemonade, you push Gatorade. To get Gatorade, select the button that says Spring Water!

It is the most fouled-up thing you've ever seen! And I've been wondering why someone doesn't just fix it so mere mortals like us can simply put our money in and get out what we expect we'll get when we push our favorite button!

But now I think I understand. This is not a mere vending machine over on the 15th tee at Tanasi.

As I was studying today's Scripture readings, it occurred to me that the problems the religious authorities had with Jesus were the same problems we have with that darned machine. I'll try to make that connection for you in a moment, but first, let's understand the situation.

These religious leaders described in today's reading from St. Mark could not, for the life of them, understand why anyone claiming to be the Christ, the Son of the living God, would associate at table with tax collectors and sinners. Why, tax collectors were people who had turned their backs on their fellow Jewish countrymen, serving the occupying forces of Rome. They were ruthless in their ability to separate people from their money, and to take advantage of the poor and widows. It was a very bad thing to be a tax collector.

And it was even worse to be a sinner. This was a term reserved for a special class of citizen. The people of that day did not use the word sinner in the same way we do - as a kind of catch-all phrase indicating that everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Oh no, this was much worse. Sinners was a label assigned to people who had been expelled from the synagogue for some moral failure or for some ritual uncleanness. These were people whose lives and actions were so offensive to the religious community that they had to be excommunicated from the family of faith.

And Mark tells us two upsetting things about these onerous tax collectors and sinners, and our Lord Jesus Christ. First, in verse 15, Mark reports that many such people followed Jesus!

So much for our idyllic little mental picture of Jesus and his goody-two-shoes band of disciples traipsing all over the Galilean countryside like a bunch of Boy Scouts on a nature hike. Instead, Mark provides a portrait of Jesus followed not only by the twelve disciples, but along with them, a whole cast of unseemly characters. There was Peter the Rock, of course, but also Amber, the prostitute. Not only James and John, the sons of Thunder, but also Murray the loan shark and small time hood. Not only Andrew, the one who introduced his brother to Jesus, but also Caleb, the crack addict. Not only Thomas the twin, but also Helen, the practitioner of magical arts and the occult. Not only James the elder, but also Frank the adulterer. Not only Nathaniel the faithful one, but also Madelyn the atheist. And there was Mary, the mother of Jesus, and right alongside her at table there was Annie, the conniving welfare-supported single mother of six children by six different fathers, with one more on the way.

"There were many such people who followed Jesus," writes Mark.

The second upsetting thing Mark tells us is that Jesus sat at table with them - these sinners and tax collectors. Why, in Middle Eastern culture, table fellowship meant full acceptance. What in the world did Jesus think he was doing?

After all, shouldn't life - and faith - be like a trusty old vending machine?

You put in your seventy-five cents and push the right button, you should get out a Coke. And, in like manner, many of us want God to be like a vending machine. If you put in sin, we expect that you should get out judgment. If you put in righteousness, the expectation is that you should get back blessing.

And so our Pharisee forbears bring a question to Jesus that day. Acting in our behalf, they go to him and ask "Why are you like that messed-up vending machine on the 15th hole at the Tanasi golf course? Why do these people pull up in their little, immoral, unrighteous, disgusting golf cart lives, and go over to that machine and put in sin...and get back...love...and mercy...and forgiveness...and acceptance at your table?

And Jesus gives an intriguing answer. He says, "Because those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick."

I don't know if you realize how very revolutionary these words are. Just a few verses from now, they will be described as new wine which cannot be contained within the old wineskins of the existing religious status quo. The way we've been taught to think about God, and about ourselves and about others is wholly inadequate to contain this new idea put forth by Jesus. If we were to put this new wine of Jesus into the old wineskins of what we've been taught all our lives, we'd...explode! This is not the oldtime religion Jesus has come to proclaim. Jesus has cancelled that once and for all. Now, a newtime religion has come onto the scene.

And the oldtime religious ideas expressed with words like righteousness, unrighteousness, and judgment have now been replaced by brand new terms Jesus uses to describe salvation. Did you hear the new words in verse 17?

You see, Jesus came not to judge people, but to doctor them. He came not to condemn, but to cure. He came not to separate the well from the sick, but to make the sick well. And he did it by welcoming them all at the table where true healing can occur.

Recently, I've been reading Desmond Tutu's remarkable book entitled "No Future Without Forgiveness." The book describes the almost unbelievable miracle of what happened in South Africa after the overthrow of Apartheid in 1994. The conventional wisdom was that, once the race classification system was eliminated, and a new government formed by democratic vote - which would assure that the black majority would take over the country - there would be massive killings and reprisals against the whites who had ruled the nation and perpetuated racism. The world held its collective breath. People were prepared for the worst.

But the worst never came. Today, the peaceful transition of power in South Africa is heralded as a prime illustration of non-violent societal healing. And the most miraculous aspect of it all surrounds the question of what to do about those who had inflicted terrible violence, murder and injustice on the nation's black population. There were some who believed there should be Nuremberg-type trials with the harshest penalties inflicted upon the guilty. Others - most of them from the white community - went to the other side, suggesting it was time to just let by-gones be by-gones. But the new leadership of South Africa chose another way.

They chose the way of forgiveness.

In a daring initiative, the new leaders of South Africa developed a national consensus calling for reconciliation. They would do this by enacting a policy of granting amnesty to those who publicly acknowledged the crimes they had committed in the name of the state. They had to provide accurate details about what they had done, when, and to whom. They had to take full responsibility for their crimes. And there were compelling reasons for this. You see, only by doing so could families who lost loved ones be able to know what actually happened to them. In many cases, evidence had been destroyed and witnesses killed. Only by full disclosure by those who committed the acts could families find answers about their loved ones, and, in some cases, recover bodies long-hidden in secret graves to give them proper burial. In other cases, those who had been raped and beaten and abused in evil ways could at last be publicly vindicated, their attackers acknowledging under the gaze of the whole world how grievously wrong they were to commit the crimes. Only by providing this vehicle by which the perpetrators of the crimes would have an incentive to bring their own evil deeds to light could the victims of the crimes get on with their lives and begin the process of healing.

And in every case, those who owned up to the evil things they had done would experience public humiliation and shame as their own families and loved ones and neighbors learned for the first time of their secret and terrible misdeeds. And, facing up to the evil they had committed, these...sinners...could begin to be transformed into responsible human beings.

Bishop Tutu says that the decision to pursue the way of forgiveness was based upon the Gospel of Jesus. This Gospel, he says, is beautifully expressed in an African concept called ubuntu. Ubuntu is the belief that a person is a person only through other persons. My humanity is caught up and inextricably bound to your humanity. What advances you, advances me. And what dehumanizes one, dehumanizes all. Victims and perpetrators alike need each other's healing for wholeness to come to the nation.

And this - I believe - is why Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners.

You see, unless they are made well, salvation is not complete for the rest of us. Unless they are made well, there is no true health for the whole community. Unless all God's children find their way to the table of God's love, the family meal cannot be served and enjoyed because our heavenly Father paces back and forth by the window, waiting for the prodigal son or daughter to come home!

The Good News of Jesus is that salvation is not for just a few people here and a few people there, but for all people everywhere! And it can only become so when salvation is no longer based upon judgment, but upon healing.

So like that cantankerous vending machine on the 15th hole of the Tanasi Golf Course, God surprises us at every push of the button. No matter what you put in, what comes out is not what you expect! For God dispenses only love...only forgiveness...only acceptance. Products that heal the human soul. As the Psalmist sang so beautifully, "God does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities..."

No, God deals with us instead according to his steadfast love!

What would happen if you and I began to live as though the healing of the broken and fallen people we know is crucial for our own healing and wellness? What would happen if we, as a church, made a commitment to not rest until every last hungry person has food, and every last runaway child has come home to their parents, and every last transgressor finds forgiveness? What would happen if we as a society began to develop public policies that refuse to discard people for their sins and crimes, and instead see the health of the nation depending upon the healing of every tax collector and sinner?

Today, I want to challenge you to believe that God's will is to bring everyone to the table of his love. And to be committed as a church to dispensing a ministry of salvation that reaches out to all, and that leaves no one out. Take up the good news expressed in ubuntu. The wellness of the community hinges upon the wellness of all its individual members! And the mark of a healthy church - of a faithful church - is its commitment to make room at the table for everyone - disciple or tax collector, saint or sinner.

For God has placed a promise of healing into the life of every person.

A promise that comes alive and is made possible through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

A promise now entrusted to you and me.