I Need A Table.

"Those who are well have no need of a physician,but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous,but sinners to repentance". Luke 5:31-32.  I am absolutely put in my place by this verse.  Even as I study and journal it wrecks me out.  Jesus is talking to the pharisees and their scribes about why he is eating with tax collectors and sinners.  It sounds kind of funny as I read it that they would ask why he was eating with "sinners".  I mean aren't we all sinners. The answer is yes but that is not the point I am trying to make.  I forget that I am the sick who is in need of a physician.  I often try to wrap myself up in the group of the "righteous".  I think I read enough or go to church enough or whatever the case may be so that I am no longer with those sick people.  The truth is I need a hospital visit every single day usually, multiple times a day.  I will sometimes go longer than I should without one of those visits because I don't want to be seen as sick, or broken.  I don't want to forget that I am one of those people sitting at the table with Jesus eating. I am a tax collector. I try to get up from that table everyday as if I have graduated from needing Jesus anymore.  I will say to Jesus "Look, I have read everyday and I went and served the needed, now I can stand and be called righteous." If I can be honest, I really think like that sometimes. And there I am just as blind as the pharisees and scribes were.  Just standing right in front of Jesus listening to the words he is saying to me but not hearing a single one because I am holding on to the comforts of the law so tight.  The beautiful thing about that verse is that Jesus was willing to sit with sinners and tax collectors.  Jesus wasn't afraid of the "unclean" making him sick or unclean because he was the one who could make them clean and make them new.  He called me when I was a sinner not because I was already righteous.  So I am reminded of my place at this table.  When I look around and see the "righteous" afraid to sit or talk to me because I am unclean or sick, I have a high priest who didn't see any of that at all when he looked at me. He clothed me in his righteousness and made me clean by his touch.  I don't want to stand in a group of people who just look at Jesus, I want to sit at the table with him and eat and talk and hang out and when he gets up and leaves I want go with him and stay in his company.  So, I will repent and confess that I am a sick man who is in need of a savior everyday.  I repent because my pride often times keeps me from sitting with Jesus and knowing who he really is. "Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance." Luke 15:7