Saturday after Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2022

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 Lord Jesus would have called Levi — Matthew — in the morning if the “great banquet” was held that afternoon or evening.  Otherwise, and this is likely, the call was issued one day and the banquet occurred on another.  Since the verb translated here as “he followed” is in the imperfect tense, it is possible that Matthew followed the Lord for some days before the banquet was given.  Matthew shows how completely he followed the Lord by standing up from his desk without a word to do so.  The word translated here as “he left” also means “he abandoned”, so he abandoned “all things” and did not look back.  “Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house.”  That is, his former house, still inhabited by the family he was leaving behind.  This included the wealth he had accumulated.  Of all the Apostles, Matthew gave up the most, in terms of worldly goods, in order to follow the Lord.  He was also the most likely to have been literate, given his position.  His knowledge of John the Baptist and his readiness to follow the Lord may indicate that he was one of the tax collectors who had gone out to the Jordan to be baptized.  The “great banquet” or reception was not merely a feast for his friends, but something on a larger scale.  It was held in honor of Jesus.  One or two hundred people or more would have gathered together in the courtyard around Matthew’s house, one of the grandest in the town.  Calves and goats would have been slaughtered and roasted for the occasion, servants would have bustled about, musicians would have made the atmosphere merry.  For Matthew, this was a celebration for Jesus, the King who was to come into the world, not a going away party for himself.

“Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”  The Pharisees and scribes ask the Apostles this question as though to cast doubt into their minds about what their Master was doing.  The Lord came to their rescue: “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.”  Jesus does two things here.  He identifies “tax collectors and sinners” as “the sick”, and he declares that they need a physician.  To the second point, the Pharisees did not see calling sinners to repentance as their job.  They studied the Law, taught their disciples, spoke in the synagogues, and enforced their interpretations of the Law on anyone they came across.  They considered themselves “the righteous”.  These were the ones who “trusted in themselves as righteous and despised others” (Luke 18, 9), about whom the Lord spoke in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in the Temple.  Regarding the first point, sinners are “sick” in that some are unable to work and others are dying.  They may have brought their sickness upon themselves with foolish behavior, but they have repented of this in their distress.  They cannot recover on their own and “need” a physician.  But the only kind of physician that can help sinners is a divine one.  Jesus thus declares his own divinity and his willingness to assist those sick with sin: “I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”  This call results in forgiveness for those who heed it.  We note here that Jesus does not say, God calls sinners to repentance, but, I have come to call sinners to repentance.  The Prophets never spoke in this way.  They did not claim to “have come” on their own into the world, nor did they say they they were calling sinners to repentance:  it was always, “Thus says the Lord.”

Each day of our lives we ought to offer a “great banquet” of thanksgiving to the Lord for calling us to him, inviting to it those around us who are in need of healing through the words and actions which overflow from our hearts.