“Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and ‘sinners.’”

“Living large” isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.  That’s an expression that means living the lifestyle of the biggest, richest, best, ultimate, top-of-the-line, latest, state-of-the-art, popular, smartest, most powerful or whatever other way to describe the envy of the world.  But when it comes to weight, forget it.  You could have simply asked Rosalie Bradford.  She’s the world record holder for being the heaviest woman (over 1,200 lbs) and the female who lost the most weight (917 lbs).  She admits to being a glutton, driven by her parents’ abandonment and tumultuous foster family experiences.  At 14 she weighed 202 lbs.  A year later she was 309.  At 25 she incurred a blood infection that left her immobilized for 8 years.  With her food addiction spiraling out of control, she became what doctors call “morbidly obese”.  At one point she was 8 feet wide.  It took her 90 minutes to bathe.  Her doctor said she was “committing suicide with her fork.”  A weight loss guru got her to turn around, and the weight started dropping off.  She had 5 skin removal operations, the last of which damaged her lymph nodes in her legs.

Of course, when it comes to people and their bodies, using food in this way is obviously wrong and completely over the top.  But money?  The latest gadgets and high tech gizmos?  The fastest car?  The most expensive … (fill in the blank)?  You see, it’s a lot harder to see the complications and negative effects of those excesses on the soul than it is with too much food on the body.  Whichever situation we’re talking about, if improper motives bring such extremes, it’s not godly.

Perhaps this is what the Pharisees’ meant when, quoted by Jesus, they said speaking of him, “Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and ‘sinners’” (Matthew 11:19).  Jesus apparently had enough of a good time with such scoundrels of Jewish society that this refrain was widely repeated.  Look at it: “glutton…drunkard…friend of tax collectors and sinners”.  Very strong accusations that cut quickly to the heart of one’s character.  Was he really a glutton like Rosalie and a friend of drunks and IRS agents?

Friends are universal; they’re found in every culture.  Sure, they do friendships somewhat differently, but friends are friends nonetheless.  Friends are usually bound by mutual interest, affection and esteem of some kind.  Proverbs 17:17 says, “A friend loves at all times”.  Since Jesus acted like the compassionate shepherd for scattered sheep, laying down his own life for them, we see God demonstrates “his own love for us in this” (Romans 5:8).  Who else was a better friend who loved people better?

Friends usually have some things in common.  I have found this to be true in personal experience and that of my kids and their generation.  Remember back in high school how much you wanted to not stick out, to be like everyone else, i.e., conform to a certain look or style?  Magnify that today by 10,000 or more for today’s kids.  These days, young people do friendships in small group networks.  They typically don’t have more than 4-6 really (or pretty) close friends.  Members of these small friendship units have the perception that each member has several things in common, acting like an identity badge or profile of sorts.  So what did/does Jesus have in common with Jewish riffraff?  Maybe the best way to answer is to ask the opposite: With whom was Jesus not a friend?

Jesus was not a friend with the Pharisees, the religious do-gooder crowd, the ones that claimed the moral high ground with their own supposed personal ‘goodness’ and endlessly self-inflated ‘righteousness’.  Jesus had nothing but scorn, ridicule and condemnation for them and anyone else driving in the fast lane to hell fueled with pride and arrogance.  Compared to them, tax collectors were easy, “sinners” a breeze, gluttons and drunks no problem.  Morally they knew they were bankrupt.  They knew death was closer.  They knew they were losers at life.  On a prior occasion responding to the same concern, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’  For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9:12-13).  He was that “friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24).  And it may have sullied his reputation just a bit.

Do your friends monitor and critique your reputation, or do they help you serve your other friends: the broken, the lonely, the losers, the outcasts, and the needy? Are you a friend to all of them like Jesus?