There's a line in Star Wars A New Hope where Obi Wan tells Luke about a Spaceport. "Mos Eisley spaceport you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." Jesus was sent for a very particular mission one that churches often try to overlook. I've heard it said the church is not a hotel for saints but a hospital for sinners. We often seem to miss this and judge those in church around us but look what Luke 5:27-32 says.
27Later, as Jesus left the town, he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. 28So Levi got up, left everything, and followed him.
29Later, Levi held a banquet in his home with Jesus as the guest of honor. Many of Levi’s fellow tax collectors and other guests also ate with them. 30But the Pharisees and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with such scum?e”
31Jesus answered them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. 32I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.”
The Pharisees and religious leaders of Jesus day had missed the mark they wanted perfect people in their church and well it's not exactly going to work. See the song says "Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me." Jesus came to be the Great Physician and perform a radical surgery on the cross for our sins. We exist as Christians to bring sick sinners to the Great Physician. Don't lose the goal. Sometimes we forget we used to be part of that "wretched hive of scum and villainy." The church is for the citizens of the Mos Eisley Spaceport. Why? Because we used to be them!
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