Good morning, Friends! I hope you’re all doing OK today. It’s been kind of a raw, chilly week, and I’m afraid we’re in for some more of it. So, I appreciate the effort you all made to come here today.
We’re on a little bit of a roll this month, reading through some of the high points in the gospel of Luke.
Luke is always interesting. His background was that he was a doctor. So he spends a lot of time on stories about healing.
Luke also cares a lot about the underdog – the parables about the lost sheep, the woman who lost her money, and the story of the prodigal son are only found in Luke.
Today’s story, though, is one which three of the gospels all tell – Luke, Mark and Matthew. That makes it pretty important. It’s about why some people loved Jesus, and why some people hated Jesus.
Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them.
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?”
Luke 5:27-30
Almost nobody likes the IRS. Somebody asked once, what do the different colors on the U.S. flag stand for?
The answer is, taxes. We turn red when we think about them. We turn white as a sheet when we find out how much we owe. And we turn blue when we write the check and pay up.
Back in Jesus’ time, tax collectors were even worse. When the Romans came in, first thing they did, was to count all the people, count all the fields, survey every kind of industry, and then tax everything in sight. .
They taxed population, they taxed land, they taxed the movement of people from one province to another. They taxed crops of all kinds. They taxed mines and merchandise. They taxed salt, which everybody needed to cook with, every day. They taxed fish as it was landed at every fishing port in the country, which is where this morning’s story takes place.
Part of the evil genius of the Romans, was that they hired local people to administer the whole tax system. The Romans wouldn’t remove a king or all the local officials, unless they were rebellious. They would say, “You can stay in charge here. But here’s your quota of tax money that we expect you to collect from everyone.
We’ll come and collect it from you on such-and-such a date. If you don’t cough up the money, you’re out of office, and we’ll kill you and your family, or we’ll put you to work as slaves.”
Tax collectors didn’t get a salary. But they were allowed to collect extra money, over and above the taxes, and keep it for themselves. This made them really unpopular. It was a toss-up whether ordinary people hated the Romans more, or their fellow countrymen who were tax collectors.
So that was Levi’s situation, when Jesus came along. Levi sat in his tax booth all day, probably with a servant or two to check the boats and count the day’s catch as it came in.
Everyone had to pay before they could land the fish they’d worked so hard for. Levi probably had a few soldiers standing nearby, just in case an argument broke out.
And along comes Jesus, and takes in the whole scene, which he probably saw every day.
Jesus didn’t challenge Levi, or call him names. People probably did that every day. They called him traitor under their breath and behind his back. His kids probably weren’t very popular in the neighborhood, and people didn’t invite Levi to parties very much.
Jesus didn’t join in the community chorus of hatred and spite. Instead, he looked at Levi, and he said, “Follow me. . .”
The thing is, by calling Levi, Jesus was also saying, “I forgive you. You’re not an outcast any more. You’re my friend. Follow me!”
And if Jesus could call a low-life, bottom-feeding, scum-sucking tax collector to be his friend, if Jesus could forgive him, then Jesus could forgive anyone.
There is no sin that’s unforgivable. There is no one who can’t come in from the cold. This is good news to anyone who thinks they can’t ever come close to Jesus.
There are so many people, who think that because of one thing they did in life, that God can never love them again. Their career choice, their background, a personal failure or a big mistake they made.
Levi, the tax collector, is the shining example of a guy who everybody hated. But thanks to Jesus, he was the lost sheep who Jesus brought home.
Of course, there was one thing that Levi had to do. And Jesus didn’t say it, in as many words. Levi had to leave his job. He had to give up his way of life. All Jesus really said was, “Come, follow me.” But Levi knew what he needed to do.
He got up, left his keys on the table, left his tax records laying there, and walked away from that job. He never went back.
This story is a lot more powerful than we realize. than we realize. Jesus walked up to a traitor, an oppressor, right in his office. It was dangerous for Jesus – if Levi felt like it, Levi could had Jesus arrested on the spot. People were arrested and executed every day for much less back then.
This story also illustrates one of Jesus’ central teachings, about forgiveness. If we want to be forgiven, we must forgive. Not just our friends, but our enemies. If we can’t forgive people like Levi, we haven’t really grasped what Jesus was talking about.
There’s something else about this story, something which would have been totally obvious to everybody who was there, but which we don’t understand today.
Anyone named Levi was a member of the hereditary tribe of priests – the Levites. These were people who God had set aside to be an extra-holy group within the chosen people of Israel.
The Levites had been God’s ultra-loyal followers with Moses in the desert. They had kept the faith when Israel was in exile. They were in charge of the Temple in Jerusalem. Spiritually, there was something terrible about a Levite who became a tax collector. It was a kind of ultimate betrayal, not just of his neighbors, but of God.
But there’s also something wonderful about this story, about Jesus calling such a person back. Jesus was redeeming one of God’s holy people from a life that was given over to the Dark Side.
Jesus saw something in Levi that everyone else had given up on. Maybe Jesus saw Levi, standing on the edge of the crowd and listening while Jesus preached. Maybe Jesus looked into Levi’s heart, and felt something there.
It probably took Levi almost as much courage to come and follow Jesus, as it took Jesus to ask him. Most of the other disciples had lives they could go back to. Levi was making a total break with his past, and he knew it.
It says in this morning’s story that after Jesus called Levi, that they went and had dinner at Levi’s house, and Levi invited everyone he knew.
I don’t think Levi was trying to impress Jesus, or show off. He was celebrating! From being a total outcast, he had changed, and now Christ was coming to dinner with him, at his own house.
The good people, the holy people, were passing by and saw everybody out partying on the patio, and they spat on the doorstep and said, “Why does this Jesus eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
Jesus heard them and said, “People who are well don’t need a doctor, but people who are sick. I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners. . .”
That’s such an important lesson. Jesus didn’t equate sin with being outcast. He compared it with illness. He said that his reason for coming was to heal, to teach, to restore people, to feed them.
And if we’re going to be Jesus’ friends, that’s our job, too. That’s our life. Our life is Jesus’ life. If we follow him, we need to be like him. And that means reaching out to people like Levi, and welcoming them.
The story of Levi says that no one is beyond Jesus’ reach. Nobody can draw a line and keep people out from Jesus’ love.
That’s not our job. We don’t draw that line.
If you think about it, Jesus set Levi free. He was trapped in his horrible job. Everybody hated him. But he didn’t think he could ever leave.
For the rest of his life, Levi would have told people, “Jesus forgave me. Jesus called me his friend!”
And that’s something we all have to figure out. Jesus had some pretty weird friends. But if we want to be friends of Jesus ourselves, then we need to welcome and accept all the other friends of Jesus.
There’s one last detail I want to point out.
Levi became one of Jesus’ followers. In one of the other versions of this story in gospels, he’s called Matthew. There’s a good chance that Levi, the tax collector, is the same person as Matthew, the gospel writer.
Maybe Levi (or Matthew) spent the rest of his life, telling the story of Jesus, with joy, even the terrible part about Jesus’ execution, because he knew what it was to be forgiven, to turn around, to be given his life back.
Maybe a lot of what we know about Jesus, came to us from the mouth of Levi (or Matthew), the tax collector.