THE CALL OF LEVI AND JESUS FEASTING WITH THE OUTSIDERS

Today’s Gospel Reading: Luke 5:27-32 – SATURDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY: 9 March 2019

Jesus continues to make it clear that He has come to minister to the “outsiders”, the tax-collectors, sinners, all those who find themselves beyond the boundary of social or religious approval. Regarded with undisguised disdain by their employers and their countrymen, the tax-collectors were seen as collaborators with the occupying power, ritually unclean because they mixed with Gentiles, and totally untrustworthy because of their occupation. Barred from the synagogue, they were professional outsiders, classed alongside murderers and prostitutes. It is all the surprising that the prophet from Nazareth not only speaks with them, but calls one of them, Levi, to be His disciple. Jesus’ action is at total variance with the accepted practice of the day.

The Pharisees are at the other end of the social scale from the tax collectors: they are the “insiders”, who live safe within the precincts of the law. The Pharisees would not even let their garments touch a tax-collector for fear of defilement, much less volunteer to have a meal with them. The Pharisees are therefore shocked when Jesus shares the most social of all events, the meal, with the tax-collectors. In their own concern to avoid defilement, the Pharisees were not worried about the sick, but about themselves in case they would be infected. So, the Pharisees treated the tax-collectors and that ilk as people in a large isolation ward, separated from the rest of healthy Jewry; an isolation ward, which no doctor would visit lest he would catch the disease.

The image which Jesus will often use of the Kingdom of God is the image of a banquet, not the image of the isolation ward. Jesus often uses the image of the banquet, an absolutely divine party where all the broken, and the sick and the wounded would come to be fed, as a lively image of God’s Kingdom, All the people who attend have to do is admit that they are hungry, that they need nourishment. Jesus in His turn accepts the invitation to Levi’s banquet; He does not get nervous at the business of the host; He does not check out the guest list before He commits Himself; He accepts graciously, and meets Levi’s friends. Levi, in his turn, accepts the invitation of Jesus to attend the banquet of the Lord.

Jesus speaks of Himself in the image of the physician who has come to heal the sick. Sin is seen in terms of a sickness which can be cured. Jesus makes the point that the physician’s primary concern is not whether he will catch the patient’s illness, but whether the patient will catch the cure. Jesus says ironically that He has not come to call the righteous: the righteous are incapable of being called because they refuse the diagnosis that they are sick.

Jakarta, 9 March 2019

A Christian Pilgrim