Slices
Prepare
‘God is not a secret to be kept’ (Matthew 5:14, The Message). Is your faith a well-kept secret or a secret widely shared?
Bible passage
Jesus calls Levi and eats with sinners
27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. ‘Follow me,’ Jesus said to him, 28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’
31 Jesus answered them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but those who are ill. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’
Jesus questioned about fasting
33 They said to him, ‘John’s disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.’
34 Jesus answered, ‘Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? 35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast.’
36 He told them this parable: ‘No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, “The old is better.”’
Explore
‘Evangelism is witness. It is one beggar telling another beggar where to get food.’* As a tax-collector, Levi was probably well off, financially. Socially, however, he was considered an outcast, despised as a traitor who collaborated with Rome. Spiritually, he was a ‘beggar’, a sinner in desperate need of God’s mercy. When Levi encountered Jesus – ‘the bread of life’ (John 6:35) – he left behind his tax booth to follow him (vs 27,28). This beggar had discovered the life-giving bread that would satisfy his deepest hunger.
But when Levi abandoned that tax booth, he didn’t cut ties with his buddies. His first action as a Jesus-follower was to host an open house for other ‘beggars’ like himself so that they, too, could meet the bread of life (v 29). Levi didn’t argue or impose his views on his friends; he simply invited them to dinner and introduced them to Jesus.
The thought of ‘witnessing’ scares some of us witless! We may find it more comfortable and convenient to view evangelism as a task for missionaries or preachers rather than for us ‘ordinary’ Christians. But every Christian’s testimony is both as simple and as urgent as one beggar pointing another beggar to the source of life-giving bread.
*DT Niles, That They May Have Life, Harper & Brothers, 1951.
Respond
‘Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God’ (Matthew 5:16, The Message). In what ways are you doing this?
Deeper Bible study
‘We are so inclined to cover up our poverty and ignore it that we often miss the opportunity to discover God, who dwells in it.’1
Jesus adds another disciple to his inner circle: Levi, also called Matthew. Levi leaves a lucrative tax-collecting business to follow Jesus; he has more to lose than most of the other disciples and leaves behind a material fortune to gain a spiritual one. What is more, he is quick to hold a banquet at his house, which many ‘tax collectors and sinners’ (v 30) attend. Levi wants his associates to meet this person who has transformed his life. This provides a helpful example of evangelistic hospitality for Luke’s readers.
In this context, Jesus has a telling exchange with the Pharisees and experts in the Jewish Law, who ask his disciples why he is eating with such sinners. Hospitality and table fellowship were cultural norms with much bigger implications than we might recognise today. The word ‘sinners’ implies a social stigma of communicable ritual uncleanness, denoting unsavoury individuals living beyond the boundaries of acceptable society. The Pharisees are scandalised by Jesus’ readiness to associate with people of such questionable reputation.
Jesus’ response highlights his attention to people who recognise and admit their need. The Pharisees wrapped themselves in respectability, making themselves appear holy by publicly doing good deeds and pointing out the sins of others. Jesus chooses to spend time not with such self-righteous, proud people, but with people who know they are not good enough for God on their own. Jesus is not condoning sin – he insists that sinners must repent – but his ministry of restoration is for the sick, not for those who fail to realise their need for a physician.
It is hard to admit weakness in a culture prioritising strength. Yet recognising need is the gateway to receiving God’s grace. Acknowledge that apart from him you can do nothing.
1 Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey, HarperSanFrancisco, 1997
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Job 1,2; Psalm 80
Pray for Scripture Union
Please pray for those more experienced mission and holiday leaders like Jonny as they train up the next generation of volunteers. (This week's prayers all relate to this story.)
