Father Stephen De Young: Verse 27:

After these things He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax office. And He said to him,†ìFollow Me.î So he left all, rose up, and†followed Him.

So we’ve talked before about tax collectors, but it bears repeating again, this isn’t just people don’t like the IRS, which people don’t, but tax collectors, remember, are Roman collaborators. They’re Jewish people who have decided to work with the Romans, who are oppressing and terrorizing the Jewish people in order to enrich themselves, in order to make themselves rich.

And the way tax collection worked, there wasn’t a sliding scale or a percentage or you filled out a return. It was the Roman governor would say, “I need so much money, now!” And he would send out his tax collectors and tell each of them how much money they were required to get. And the tax collector’s job was to get that money out of the people. However he needed to do it. He could threaten them with prison, he could threaten them with slavery, he could threaten them with execution for tax evasion, whatever it took to get the money out of them.

And they didn’t get a salary from the Roman governor. They made their money by collecting more money than the Roman governor wanted them to collect. So if he wanted them to collect ten talents of silver, they’d go out and collect twenty and keep the other ten. And the Romans were fine with that. That’s how the system was supposed to work. So not only are they working with the Romans, not only are they walking around committing extortion of the people, threatening them with violence if they don’t pay up, but they’re robbing them blind and getting rich themselves.

So these are the lowest of the low. These aren’t just, “Oh, this guy is a sinner, this guy’s no good. He’s done some bad things in his life.” If they could get away with killing a tax collector, they probably would. They probably would. And again, sort of like the lepers, they were treated similarly to the lepers, in fact, if you touched one, if you came near one, you were unclean and had to ceremonially bathe before you could go into the temple. That’s how filthy and degenerate they consider these people to be.

But Jesus walks up to this one. Levi, who, by the way, is St. Matthew, walks up to him while he’s in the tax office, while he’s sitting there counting the money, he says to him, “Come, follow me”. Not like, “Hey, we’re going somewhere”, but “You’re going to become my disciple. You’re going to become one of my friends.” Again, this is a strange thing that we don’t normally see happening, but notice what Levi does. He must have had some familiarity with Jesus’s preaching because he sees this as an opportunity, he gets up, leaves his money behind, and again, like Peter, it’s not like he could come back the next day, reconsider, leaves the whole thing and goes and follows Jesus.

There’s a really amazing painting, you can go Google it later, that Caravaggio did of this moment in the Renaissance. Caravaggio is kind of famous for doing a lot of stuff with light and shadow. And in his painting of it, Matthew was sort of sitting hunched over this table, counting money with these other tax collectors. And it’s a dark room. We sit there in the dark counting his money, and the door is open and there’s this shaft of light coming in from the door where Jesus is, and he’s pointing at them and that shaft of light is falling, like right on his face. He’s counting and he’s looking up at Jesus. Jesus is saying… and the reason I think it’s a great painting is not only is it beautiful, but it captures the point of this moment. What Jesus is doing when he calls him to abandon this and follow him, is he’s calling him to leave that darkness that he’s been living in, right? Leave that behind and come follow him. And again, he’s taking a leap into the unknown because he just left all his money sitting on the table. And the fact that he’s now following this rabbi is not going to cause everyone to just suddenly socially accept him either, right? “Isn’t he that tax collector?”, “No, I quit”. That’s not going to go anywhere. So the one trade off, you’re going to be a social pariah, but at least you’ll have money. Well, now he just got rid of his money.

Interlocutor: Have you encountered any writings there may been a previous encounter by some of these disciples?

Fr. Stephen: Not in any kind of detail. I mean, we know before Simon was called, we just saw he already knew Simon. And we’ve seen that Jesus is going and preaching in these cities and villages. He’s also been preaching in synagogues. But Levi presumably wouldn’t have been in the synagogue; he wouldn’t have been welcome there. So he was sort of familiar and he’s healing all these people, and it says that word spread everywhere about what he was doing, so they would have some familiarity. But I don’t know of any literature that talks about previous actual… gives any details about any previous encounters. He would have at least known by reputation who this was.

Interlocutor: [Inaudible, probably question if Levi was baptized by John the Baptist?]

Fr. Stephen: Well, there is a tradition that he was one of the tax collectors who was baptized by St. John the Baptist. There’s not a good source on that. That may be the case because we were told by St. Luke that tax collectors and sinners were coming out and being baptized. So he may have been one of them.

Interlocutor: It seemed a little unusual that there would not have been some sort of prelude? Suddenly, they are meeting the person that they know by reputation, but aren’t asking questions, “Well tell me about yourself,” that they might have recorded?

Fr. Stephen: In terms of verisimilitude, in terms of what we would want to see play out, the way we would think things would play out, you’re right. But part of what’s happening is we have to remember St. Luke’s audience. Who he’s writing this to? We talked about how St. Luke has a very wide Greco-Roman, early Christian audience, right? And in particular, he’s one of St. Paul’s coworkers. He’s writing to a lot of churches that are primarily Gentiles. And what the Gentiles have been called to do, these people aren’t Jewish, so the Gospel as it comes to them is sort of a different thing than as it goes to a Jewish person. Remember, Judaism and Christianity are not separate religions yet. So let’s say Paul goes to a synagogue and tells them, “Hey, the Messiah has come. It’s Jesus!” He’s asking them to make some adjustments in their belief, obviously.  But it’s still within their theological paradigm, right? They’ve been expecting a messiah. He’s just telling him, the Messiah came, and in a way that you didn’t expect. But still, you know what a messiah is. You have a framework to understand this.

When he comes to Corinth and converts all these Gentiles, that’s why he had to write so many letters there to explain these things to the gospel comes to them and says, “You need to leave your family, you need to leave your culture, you need to potentially leave your job, you need to give up your religion that you’ve been following your whole life. All that has to go. You have to reject all of it in order to follow Christ.” So I think the reason St. Luke is presenting these calls the way he is, is that he’s communicating to people who have been asked to leave everything and commit everything to following Jesus. And so he’s wanting to present Jesus’s first disciples as people who did that. And it’s not that he’s twisting the truth, right? It’s just in terms of how he, I mean, there are all kinds of conversations going on here that St. Luke doesn’t record, right? I mean, we just saw Jesus go out and preach on the boat, says he preached, and when he finished, it doesn’t tell us anything he said. So there’s all kinds of things happening that St. Luke doesn’t record. As St. John says there won’t be enough books to record everything, but I think the reason St. Luke is recording this the way he does and presenting it the way he does is to make that connection, the people he’s talking to, that this is what following Jesus requires. You’ve got to be willing to scrap it all.

In Corinth, all the meat in the meat market had been sacrificed to idols. That’s where they got the meat. That’s where the pagan sacrifices went. So even at the level of you’re not going to be able to go buy meat anymore, you may have to become a vegetarian. I mean, that’s the level to which they were having to upend everything to become a Christian, and a lot of them struggled with that. When we get into the letters, First and Second Corinthians, that’s what a lot of those letters are about, is about trying to say, “No, you really need to make a clean break”, because there were people trying to sort of straddle, “Well, could I give up this and this and not that? Could I do a little of this and still be a Christian? And them having to reiterate, it’s got to be a clean break. So I think that’s where St Luke is going with this, is that he wants to show us that to become a follower of Christ, you have to be ready to walk away from everything else. Family, money, job, security, all that. And we’re not even getting into persecution and martyrdom. On top of all that.

Interlocutor: What happens if you quit being a tax collector and your former employers find you?

Fr. Stephen: You could be executed for desertion. We have been greatly blessed, so blessed that we take it for granted that we have freedom or religion in this country. And that so far, and this can change very quickly, but so far, to be a Christian, we haven’t had to give up too awful much. Here and there, there have been things we can’t compromise on, but by and large, I mean, compared to Christians in history, in other parts of the world today, we’ve been blessed, and we shouldn’t take that for granted. We should thank God constantly for that, that we have that privilege. But also, we need to be aware that that can change. And no one in Russia in 1915 thought they were going to be mass executing Christians in 1917, but they were. So, things can change a lot faster than we think. And so, we should always be thankful that God has given us that privilege to be able to worship him freely and not face these consequences. But we also have to be ready to potentially face these consequences if it comes down to it. So, Levi gives everything up and follows him.

†Then Levi gave Him a great feast in his own house. And†there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them.

Interlocutor: Probably the only ones who show up.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, Jesus is not only, well, yeah, nobody else would have gone into his house except… But Jesus not only calls this guy to be his disciple, right? And you might have been able to explain that, right? You might have been able to say, “Well, see, I was getting him to stop being a tax collector. I’m trying to redeem this poor soul.” You might have been able to sell that to the Pharisees, but not going to his house, and not sitting and eating dinner with a bunch of his tax collector buddies.

Because, and this is going to be important later on when we get into St Paul’s Epistles too, and into the Book of Acts, we sit down and eat with people all the time. You go to certain restaurants, and they only have a couple of tables. Sometimes you end up sitting with somebody you don’t even know at a table…

But table fellowship, eating a meal with someone was a big deal in the ancient world. When you were willing to sit down and eat with someone, you’re virtually saying they were family. You were saying you were bonding with this person socially and everything. “So and so went and had lunch with so and so”. We’d be like, “So?” But you had lunch in the ancient world, you sat down to a meal with them, that meant you were endorsing them, and they were endorsing you. You were linking yourselves together.

And we’ve talked about this a little bit kind of obliquely when we talked about sacrifice, that’s part of how sacrifice worked, was that there’s part of the meat that was burnt up that was given to God. Part was eaten by the priest, part was eaten by the person who brought the sacrifice. You were sort of ceremonially eating a meal together. It’s going to become important, when we talk about the Eucharist, when we talk about Communion. We’re eating a meal together.

And so, Jesus going there and eating with them isn’t just like, “Oh, did you hear? Jesus went to a party at the tax collector’s house.” Jesus is sitting down with these tax collectors. He’s casting in his lot with them. He’s saying these people are okay. And so there’s an anticipatable response.

And their scribes and the Pharisees†complained against His disciples, saying,†ìWhy do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?î

They show up, “What’s going on? You’re a teacher, you’re a healer. We’re kind of on the way to you might be a prophet or something, but you’re going into an unclean place, eating with these unclean, sinful people, having fellowship with them. What’s going on?”

Jesus answered and said to them,†ìThose who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. †I have not come to call†the†righteous, but sinners, to repentance.î

This is sometimes misinterpreted, as if the Pharisees were the righteous. As if Jesus is saying, “Oh, I didn’t come for you, I came for these other people”, right? And it’s important I’ve talked about this before, too, because we’re going to see as we go forward in St. Luke’s Gospel, he does a lot of things with, like, the rich and the poor and these kind of things. It’s easy to misinterpret those, as if he’s saying, “Oh, all poor people are good and all rich people are bad”, or, “All tax collectors are good and the Pharisees are bad”. That’s not what he’s saying.

The point he’s making: his mission as the Messiah, is what? Salvation of mankind, right? If there was someone who was already righteous, who was already sinless, who was already perfect before Jesus came, would they need Him? If the people of the world, the people of even Judea, were righteous, would they have needed him to come as their Messiah? No.

So what he’s saying is, “This is the nature of my mission. This is what I’m here for. This is what I’m here for.” That’s not what a lot of the first century Judean people thought the Messiah was going to do. Remember what the Messiah was going to do was going to come overthrow the Romans, right? Why? Well, because in their minds, they were righteous. In their minds, they were righteous. And the problem was these evil Romans were oppressing poor righteous me, right? And when is God going to do the right thing and deliver good righteous me from these evil Romans? That was their outlook.

And so what Jesus is saying is, first off, they’ve got the problem wrong. Remember St. Luke’s always calling us back to Genesis. What’s the original problem? Long time before the Torah showed up, long time before Moses came down with the Ten Commandments. What was the problem? Sin. Disobedience, sin leads to death, right? That’s the problem. Even once the Torah came. Didn’t matter if the Pharisees kept all their laws and all their extra rules too, they still died. Still died because they were still sinful. So first of all, they’ve got the problem wrong. And so, since they don’t understand what the problem really is, they don’t understand how Jesus is the solution to that problem.

And so that’s what Jesus is trying to get them to see. “The problem I’m here to solve is not that these sinners exist and I’m going to now smite them all. The problem is that people have sinned. Now they’re under the curse, now they’re subject to death. And that’s what I’m going to fix by saving these people, which, by the way, includes you, Pharisees.” Because what he’s also saying here to them is “You think you’re well, you think you’re righteous, but you’re actually sick. And not just you got the sniffles, you’re sick of the death. You’ve got a disease, sin, rebellion. It’s going to kill you. That’s what I’m here to fix.”

And if you understand that, then of course Jesus is going to be going to the tax collectors of the sinners. They’re the people he needs to save. They are the people who are in darkness. They’re the people who are in slavery. That’s in. That’s who he’s here to save. And so what he wants from the Pharisees is not “Go away and leave me alone”. And it’s definitely not, “Oh, you guys are righteous already. You don’t need me. I’m just here for these people.” It’s “You need to realize you’re sick because realizing you’re sick is step one to me, then healing you.” That’s what he’s getting out of here.

“Then they said to Him”, now notice, see, we’ve got this break, we’ve got this little subheading in our Bibles. We read this as a separate incident. This is their response. Their response to Him telling them “I’m here to bring serious repentance” is: 

†Then they said to Him,†ìWhy†do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers, and likewise those of the Pharisees, but Yours eat and drink?î

So Jesus’s answer went, whoosh, right over their heads, cleared it completely, didn’t even touch it, didn’t even feel the breeze. So, what’s the point they’re trying to make? They’re trying to make the point that Jesus isn’t righteous. They’re trying to say, “You’re just like these. That’s why you’re eating with sinners. You’re eating and drinking with them because, well, look, John’s disciples, they all fast and pray. Us Pharisees, our disciples, we all fast and pray. Your disciples forget who they’re doing it with. They just go around eating and drinking like it’s a big party, just ignoring all the rules. How are you guys righteous?”

And He said to them,†ìCan you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the†bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast in those days.î

Now, this passage, what Jesus is actually referring to is a little obscure because he’s actually referring to a tradition that’s reflected in several writings that properly speaking aren’t in the Old Testament. I say properly speaking because one of them is Fourth Ezra, which you notice we didn’t read when we were going through the Old Testament, but which is in Slavonic Bibles. So take from that what you will.

But in that there is a story, it’s sort of a parable. And you find this other places too, so this is a common folk story in the first century about the destruction of the temple of the Old Testament in mourning, the destruction of God’s temple and the people going into exile, the parable is sort of an analogy where they talk about this bride and this bridegroom and they’re referring to God in his temple, God and his people, that metaphor that God uses through the prophets where he talks about Israel as his spouse, that’s been unfaithful. And they say that in the story, the bridegroom comes, and the wedding happens, so the covenant happens. But then as they’re about to go into the bridal chamber and consummate the marriage, the bridegroom drops dead.

The idea being that God forms his covenant like a marriage with the people of Israel. And there are these promises that the Pharisees interpret are about the resurrection, about the world to come, about God coming to his people and them having peace. But something happens and that all falls apart, the temple is destroyed. So now we mourn, we fast, we weep.

And the day that the temple was destroyed, the 9th of Av, was and still is a day when Jews keep strict fast and mourn the destruction of the temple. So, Jesus is taking that folktale talking about the temple and applying it to himself and his disciples. So, if the analogy before was God and His people, then Jesus is taking that analogy over talk about Himself, meaning once again as we’ve seen in Luke here, who is He? God, right? And who are his people, his followers, his disciples right now who are going to become the basis of the Church? And so the allusion he makes here to the bridegroom departing is talking about his death, he’s talking about his own death. So that’s how he’s using this story. If you don’t know the sort of folk story when it applied to, then you won’t get it. But the Pharisees, as we’ll see, knew what he was doing.

So what he’s saying is right now is when we’re celebrating, we’re celebrating what? Well, Jeremiah in Jeremiah 31, and in Ezekiel also, we saw this prophecy there was going to be a new covenant. God was going to renew His covenant; He was going to return to His people. It’s going to be a new people of God going forward who he was going to save from their sins. So we’re celebrating now this marriage, this new covenant. And so now, yeah, we’re not fasting, we’re celebrating, but the time is going to come here, shortly, when that celebration will come to an end, and then my followers will fast.

And so it’s not coincidental what happens in the very early Church, and I say very early Church because this is reflected in the Didache, the teaching of the twelve Apostles, which was written around 110 AD. So already by 110 this had happened. The Pharisees fasted on Tuesdays and Thursdays, that was their practice, and that’s referred to, we’ll see a little later in St. Luke. They’re going to refer to them fasting twice a week. It was on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That gets moved by the early Church before 110, it was already common practice in 110 to Wednesdays and Fridays. Why Wednesday and Friday? Wednesday is the day Jesus was betrayed. Friday is the day Jesus died on the cross. So the early Christians fasted precisely when the bridegroom was taken away from them.

So this isn’t just a general statement of, “Yeah, my followers will fast later on.” The Church took this very literally in terms of their practice and how they saw it as being fulfilled.

†

Then He spoke a parable to them:†ìNo one†puts a piece from a new garment on an old one; otherwise the new makes a tear, and also the piece that was†taken†out of the new does not match the old. †And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined.††But new wine must be put into new wineskins,†and both are preserved.† And no one, having drunk old†wine,†immediately desires new; for he says, ëThe old is†better.íî

Well, that’s kind of cryptic, right? Is Jesus just telling the Pharisees a riddle? This is really a summary of what’s going on in their whole conversation so far. So the two images he uses, first image is, you don’t put a new piece of cloth into an old garment. Why? Well, if you think about it, if I tear a hole in the knee and my pants so my wife goes and she sews a piece of brand new fabric, cuts out a piece of brand new fabric, sews it in there, what’s going to happen? The first time she throws my pants in the wash, the new piece of fabric is going to shrink, right? It’s going to tear right out of the pants.

And then the second he uses is if you take an old wineskin, an old used, dried up… wineskins are made out of leather, old leather bottle, you pour brand newly fermented wine into it, what’s going to happen? It’s going to crack. The old leather wine is going to go everywhere, right? So, if you’ve got new wine, you got to put it in a new, fresh leather that’s still moist and pliable for it to work.

Now, what was the metaphor we were just talking about in terms of the bridegroom? We’re talking about a new covenant, celebrating a new covenant. So the new and the old here is Jesus referring to the New Covenant and the Old Covenant, right? Because what are the Pharisees still trying to enforce on it? They’re bringing up the Torah, they’re bringing up the law, the old way of doing things in the Old Covenant, they’re saying to Jesus, why aren’t you following this? Why aren’t you obeying this? What has Jesus been trying to communicate? There’s something new happening here, right, that’s being fulfilled, right. Not done away with but fulfilled. We’re going beyond that. We’re going beyond that, now, this is a new thing, okay?

Interlocutor: Is the New Covenant nullifying the Old Covenant?

Fr. Stephen: No, it fulfills it. And the word “fulfill”, I mean, that’s easy to say, right? But the word “fulfill”, the Greek word, actually means fill up, to overflowing. It means “fill full”. So the idea is it takes what was in the Old Covenant and now fills it up till it’s bubbling over. And we’ll see here when we get into Jesus preaching already in the next chapter, how he starts doing this with specific parts of the Old Covenant, showing how they’re fulfilled. Not done away with, but now they come to new understanding and new importance.

He’s saying they’re like the old garment or the old, dried-up wineskin, right? I’m coming to you with the new thing. It’s not compatible with your old way of thinking. You can’t just sort of slot this in. “Keep doing what you’re doing. But now also add Jesus.” He’s saying you need to become a new wineskin or a new garment. Going back to the beginning of this discussion, “You need to acknowledge that you’re sick, and then you need to be healed. Then once you’re healed, once you’re made new, you’ll be able to receive the new.” You can’t now.

Who are the Pharisees now? Well, that’s the last verse. They’ve been drinking the old wine and they spent so long drinking the old wine that they don’t even want the new. They say the old is better.

And this is going to be something that St. Paul struggles with, especially in Galatians, when he talks about the law, it’s often misinterpreted, and we’ll get into it more when we get there. But that’s part of what he’s saying about the law. If you try and enforce these food laws and stuff from the Old Covenant again, you’re going backwards. You’re going backwards. Jesus came. The Messiah is here, right? Salvation Is here. And you want to go back to how do I clean the mildew out of my cabinets? Right? Are we missing something here? The Old Testament, we saw shadows and images of who Christ was going to be. Now we’ve got the reality. And you want to go back to the shadows and the image? It doesn’t make sense. But that’s what Jesus is trying to get across here

And notice, again, it’s always important. When we see Jesus talking to people, we remember the fact that he’s talking to them means he’s trying to communicate to them. These Pharisees don’t show up and ask their annoying questions. And Jesus doesn’t say, “Who are you to question me?” Or, “Figure it out for yourself or buzz off”. He goes back and forth. He dialogues with them because he’s trying to explain these things to them. He’s trying to explain these things. What he wants is for them to repent. What he wants is for the Pharisees to acknowledge that they’re sick, to acknowledge that, to use the imagery Jeremiah uses, they have a heart of stone and they need Jesus to give them a heart of flesh. And then that heart of flesh can pump blood, which the stone one can’t. That’s what he’s looking for. That’s why he’s talking to him.

Even though it’s kind of cryptic to us now in our modern culture, he’s not using these analogies to make it cryptic and hard to understand. Quite the opposite. He’s trying to use these analogies to try to explain to them, right, so that hopefully they’ll understand, “You know that folktale about the bridegroom dying on the threshold of… It’s like that. That’s why we don’t fast. The reason you can’t understand what I’m saying to you is like, you’re like this old garment, and I’ve got this new thing, right? But if you want, you can be made new. And then you’ll be able to receive.”

So, he’s speaking to them because he wants the Pharisees to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth just as much as he wants the tax collectors to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Because as much as the Pharisees think they’re better or different, and as the tax collectors have probably been forced to think and shamed into thinking they’re worse and different, really, they’re the same. Every one of them is a sinner, and every one of them needs the salvation that Christ is bringing. So, timewise, this is a good place to stop. And we hit a chapter break, so my OCD is satisfied.