Levi is sitting at his tax booth, in a job that made him hated by his own people, collecting Roman taxes and skimming his living from whatever he could add. Jesus says two words, 27"Follow me," and Luke tells us what happens in the phrase he used a story earlier for Simon, James, and John: 28"leaving everything, he rose and followed him." The fishermen left boats and nets they might in theory have returned to. Levi leaves a post that will be handed to the next man in line the moment he walks away. It may be the more decisive of the two.
Levi's first act as a follower is a party, 29"a great feast in his house," filled with 29"a large company of tax collectors and others." He is introducing his old world to his new Teacher, and Jesus goes. The religious leaders at the edges cannot get past it: 30"Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" By the standards of their world it is a fair question.
Jesus' answer reframes the scene with one image. 31"Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick." He is at Levi's table because that is where the sick are. A doctor's place is among the sick, and if his mission is to heal what sin has broken, a house full of tax collectors is where the work is. The line cuts two ways. It defends Levi's table, and it quietly indicts the men asking. Jesus never concedes they are righteous, only that they consider themselves so, a confidence that may be what keeps them outside the feast.
The conversation shifts to fasting. John's disciples fast, and the Pharisees' disciples fast, but Jesus' followers eat and drink. Jesus answers from a wedding: 34"Can you make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?" He does not dismiss fasting. 35"The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days." But a wedding feast is not the season for mourning, and Jesus is telling them that his presence is that kind of season. The bridegroom has arrived. Grief can wait for its own day.
Then two small parables say the same thing in different materials. No one patches an old garment with a piece from a new one, because the patch will not match and the tear will grow. No one pours new wine into old wineskins, because fermenting wine splits skins already stretched to their limit. 38"New wine must be put into fresh wineskins." What Jesus brings cannot simply be stitched onto the old forms as one addition among many. It needs a new container made for this kind of expansion.
The passage ends on a quiet note. 39"No one after drinking old wine desires new, for he says, 'The old is good.'" On the surface it is true to how people are, since the new tastes stranger before it tastes better. Set against what Jesus has just said, it has a second edge. The men complaining about his table companions and his disciples' feasting are the ones insisting the old wine is good enough, unwilling to taste what has just been poured for them. The bridegroom is at the table and the feast has begun. Whether anyone joins him is a matter of what they are still willing to drink.
Ask what old wine you have been defending, and whether you have room at Levi's table.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a physician who goes looking for the sick and does not wait for them to prove themselves well. Forgive us for preferring the old, familiar wine to whatever new thing you were pouring for us. Give us Levi's instinct to leave what has to be left and to open our table to the people who need you most. In Jesus' name, amen.