Sermon on the Call of Levi in Mark 2

this sermon was preached last Friday in the Trinity Chapel. I am always nervous about posting my sermons on the blog, but I got a lot of positive responses to this one, so I figured I would put it up.

He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.
And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”

(Mark 2:13-22 ESV)

By tradition, Levi the tax collector is the same person as the Evangelist Matthew, one of the twelve. But Levi was a tax collector, and as you all know tax collectors were not popular people. Pharisees didn't like them, because they associated with Gentiles and were ritually unclean; common people didn't like them because they were collaborators with an occupying government, and they were usually extortionists. So when Jesus, rather publicly called Levi to come follow him, he was doing something that would have shocked everyone watching. Jesus was not acting like a respectable Rabbi, and he was associating with someone who should have been shunned.

But he doesn't just call Levi, he calls him to a meal. Now just so you know that I have actually done some exegesis of this passage, the Greek is quite ambiguous about where this meal happened. It says "as he reclined at table in his house" and probably this means Levi's house, but, in fact, it might be Jesus house. Whoever owned the house, whoever provided the food, its clear enough that it's Jesus who is at the center of this meal. Wherever Jesus goes, he is the host - or the bridegroom as he puts it - and it is his banquet that Levi, and all the other tax collectors and sinners who are tagging along have been invited to.

And of course, in Jewish culture, eating a meal with people was a very big deal. You couldn't eat with unclean people without risking becoming unclean yourself. The Pharisees were naturally concerned to see a popular teacher like Jesus associating with this class of person, but Jesus doesn't seem to have been particularly worried. These are the people he came to call. It's interesting, in the parallel to this passage in Luke's gospel, Jesus says he came to call sinners to repentance. But here he just says "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."

When Jesus called Levi, as far as I can tell from the text, Jesus does not call him first of all to repent - at least not in any obvious sense. He doesn't say, quit being a lousy tax collector, he just says, "follow me." He doesn't wait for Levi, or the other sinners to clean up their act, or get better, he just calls them to come have a meal with him. He offers them his friendship. Not because of who they are, or because they are particularly good people - they aren't - but because of who Jesus is. He is the bridegroom, and he's come to celebrate his marriage feast, and he has invited everyone.

The Pharisees got frustrated with Jesus disciples for fast, but that's because Pharisees don't understand who Jesus is, or what the kingdom of heaven is like, and they don't understand what it is like be a Levi, a sinner who knows he is a sinner, and is called anyway, to come be friends with the Lord himself.

Now most of us are doing some kind of fast during lent, so I guess the Pharisees should be happy. But I think there are two ways of fasting. The Pharisees fasted, because they wanted to be good people, to be the right sort of people, the people who kept the rules. Jesus disciples could only start fasting when the bridegroom left, and the banquet was over. We fast, not because we are trying to keep rules or because we want to be the right sort of people, but because we are living in what at Trinity we like to call the already and the not yet. The bridegroom is absent, from us, so we live in the not yet. Lent, especially, is a time when are called to remember that we are like Levi, and like all the sinners that Jesus called; that we have been called, although we are not good people, or clever people, not because of anything special about us, not because of who we are, not even because we were looking for Jesus, but because, as one of my favorite hymns puts it, "Jesus sought me when a stranger." We fast to remind ourselves that we have nothing to offer of ourselves, and that all our hope is in Jesus. Jesus didn't wait till Levi repented to be his friend, but Levi became both an Apostle and Evangelist. Levi was changed and transformed, by that invitation of Christ's "follow me."

The only reason that any of us have anything to offer the world is because we have heard that same invitation, and like Levi we have responded. Speaking only for myself, that's the only reason I have the nerve to stand up here and preach - because I'm not going to go into the laundry list of my sins, I know how sinful I am. Every time I see my name on the chapel schedule to preach, I find myself thinking "I can't preach a sermon to these people. I know that I have nothing to offer them, nothing to say to them." But I can say, "Jesus sought me when a stranger."

That is what our fast reminds us of. There's another way though, that our fast is different from the Pharisees: it is, paradoxically, a joyful fast. Because even though we live in the not yet, waiting for the wedding feast of the Lamb, we still have a foretaste of that feast. We live in the already as well as the not yet. Even in lent, we keep a sense of the Easter joy.

Christ is absent, in some sense yes, but he also promised that he is with us till the end of the age, in his Holy Spirit. And in that same Spirit, he invites us again and again, every time we celebrate the Holy Eucharist, to a share in that wedding feast which is to come. He doesn't ask us to be perfect, or to clean up our act first. He just asks us to come follow, to come taste and see that the Lord is good. St. John Chrysostom, summed up much better than I can, what I am trying to get at, in his Easter sermon. He said:

You that have fasted and you that have disregarded the fast, rejoice today!

The table is rich-laden: feast royally, all of you!

Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness.

Let no one lament their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one mourn their transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave.

Let no one fear death, for the Savior’s death has set us free.

So as we go through Lent, let us be fed by that feast, and look forward to that Easter Joy. Let's remember that Jesus sought us when we were strangers, and seeks us still. Then we will have something to offer to the other sinners and tax collectors like ourselves that we meet.

+In the name of the Father...