The Saturday after Ash Wednesday, February 25, 2023

Luke 5, 27-32

Jesus saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were at table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”

The doctor says my last ten days of sickness are the result of bronchitis so please pray for me to get better so that I can be useful to everyone during Lent.

We know from the corresponding story in the Gospel of St. Matthew that this Levi was also the Apostle Matthew.  The name “Levi” comes down from the name of one of the Patriarch Jacob’s sons.  In the days of Jesus it was a popular Jewish name.  “Matthew”, that is, “gift of God”, may have been a name Levi took after Pentecost.  It was certainly the name by which the Galilean Christians knew him in the years following the Lord’s Resurrection when this Apostle worked among them.  At least one modern scholar believed “Levi” was a mistranslation of “a Levite”, though his reasoning is embarrassingly specious and none of the Evangelists use the term in their Gospels.  Besides, Levites did not make their livings from tax collecting.

“And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him.”  The decision to follow Jesus was final.  Unlike Peter and Andrew and many of the others who were fishermen and could go back to this occupation, Levi could never go back to tax collecting.  Once he threw up his  position, he could never hope to regain it.  The fact that he was able to do this perhaps points to him as being one of the tax collectors who listened to John the Baptist and who was waiting for the Messiah.  

“Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were at table with them.”  It is clear from the Greek text that he gave a great feast in his own house.  Luke here means to say that  a large crowd of tax collectors and others reclined at table with Jesus and his followers.  Reclining on one’s left elbow at table was a Greek custom which had seeped into ancient near eastern culture, even among the Jews.  The number of people reclining — not sitting — gives us an idea of the size of the house.  The banquet would certainly have taken place around the noon hour since that was the time for the day’s main meal.    

“The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples.”  The Pharisees try to infuse dissent among the early followers of Jesus in this way.  This is the “leaven” of the Pharisees against which the Lord will warn the Apostles later.  “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”  These “sinners” are not just other tax collectors but are simply Jews who are not afraid to eat with tax collectors.  The tax collectors work for Herod, whom the people hated and considered an illegitimate ruler.  We should notice that the Pharisees do not give a reason for why Jesus should not eat with these people.  

“Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”  The Lord eats with the tax collectors and “sinners” just as later he will eat with the Pharisees themselves.  His reference to himself as a “physician” points the Pharisees back to the many cures he has performed and makes it clear to them that these were meant to be signs of the true healing he had come to do through the forgiveness of sins.

The Lord continues to dine with tax collectors and sinners when he feeds us his Body and Blood at the Holy .sacrifice of the Mass.