Saturday in the First Week of Ordinary Time, January 13, 2024

Mark 2, 13-17

Jesus went out along the sea. All the crowd came to him and he taught them. As he passed by, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the customs post. Jesus said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed Jesus. While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners sat with Jesus and his disciples; for there were many who followed him. Some scribes who were Pharisees saw that Jesus was eating with sinners and tax collectors and said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus heard this and said to them, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

All four of the Evangelists give accounts of the Lord Jesus calling the men whom he would later name his Apostles.  One reason they do this is to highlight the difference between Jesus and the teachers and philosophers of the day: Jesus seeks his students out of his burning passion to share what he has to give — and which he alone can give — and teachers are hired by students eager for knowledge.  Another reason they do this is to show that Jesus calls ordinary people, not particularly educated and not necessarily literate.  Nor does he call those based on their wealth and influence.  Levi, called in the Gospel Reading for today’s Mass, proves a bit of an exception.

“As he passed by, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the customs post.”  Jesus is abiding in Capernaum at his time, still in the first months of his ministry.  He sees a man whom St. Mark identifies as Levi collecting taxes.  St. Luke also named the tax collector whom Jesus calls as Levi (Luke 5, 27), but St. Matthew supplies the name “Matthew”, a Hebrew name that means “gift of God”.  We know that this is the same man from comparing the Apostle lists in the Gospels.  Mark and Luke even use the name “Matthew” for him in their lists.  It is possible that Jesus changed Levi’s name just as he gave nicknames to James and John and changed Simon’s name to Peter.

“Follow me.”  The Lord Jesus does not ever waste a word.  We notice here that he promises nothing, does nothing to entice the tax collector, using no persuasive language.  He says to him, “Follow me.”  The Lord says this to us, summoning is to him, throughout our lives, and will say this to the elect on the last day.  We should understand that Levi is clearly ready to follow him.  He must have heard him preaching there in Capernaum and felt the draw of his personality.  It is also clear that he knows that this is a permanent call, for he makes a great feast after leaving his customs post.

“And he got up and followed Jesus.”  Mark uses the present active imperative to translate into Greek what Jesus said to Levi so that it has the sense of “Be following me”, in the continual sense.  Notably, Mark does not use the aorist tense which would indicate a one-time, limited action.  When Mark says that Matthew followed Jesus, he does use the aorist tense, implying that he followed Jesus to some local place, as though Jesus led him back to his house where Levi threw the feast.  Matthew, then, follows Jesus even when Jesus leads him home: Matthew does not attempt to lead Jesus.  That is, often in life we think we know very well where we are going but we must always take care not to anticipate the Lord.  Once st the house, Levi knows what Jesus wants him to do.

“Some scribes who were Pharisees saw that Jesus was eating with sinners and tax collectors.”  The Pharisees were founded as those who kept separate from those who compromised with Greek culture, and so for them what Jesus does in eating with sinners and tax “collectors” comes as a direct challenge to their reason for existing. “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  The Pharisees attempt to deal with Jesus by discrediting him with his followers.  Earlier they had tried the same strategy with John the Baptist.  Peter, Andrew, James, and John may not yet have been ready to answer this question but the Lord comes to their rescue.  “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”  The idea of repentance seems utterly foreign to the Pharisees.  For them, to be saved required membership among the Jews and the careful practice of the Law as they saw it.  A Jew who falls into sin or does not adhere to Pharisaical practices is lost.  Jesus offers redemption to those who have sinned, even gravely.  “I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”  While the Pharisees avoid sinners lest they be contaminated by them, Jesus sits and eats with them so that he might convert them.  The Lord in no way validates the sin but rather shows the love of God to the wayward.  This reminds of how Almighty God sent Moses to lead the Hebrews, who had quite forgotten their God in the generations after Joseph, to the Promised Land.  

“I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”  How this must have astonished his hearers!  Who can say, “I have come” that is, “I came into the world deliberately”?  And who is he who has come into the world “to call sinners”?  As in his claim to forgive sins when he healed the paralytic, Jesus attests to his divinity.  This flies in the face of his humble appearance just as the burning bush does: it is on fire and yet does not burn.  It defies logic and experience.  It, indeed, surpasses logic and experience.  The Pharisees reject him here as though they were looking at the burning bush and all they could see was the bush.