Luke 5:27-29

Shaping the Renewed Community (2) – Non-Elitist

Luke 5:27-32 - Jesus Calls a Tax Collector - Levi

²⁷ After that he went off

and saw a tax-collector named Levi sitting in his office.

He said to him, “Follow me!”

²⁸ He stood up,

left everything, and followed him.

²⁹ Levi put on a great reception in his house.

There was a big crowd of tax-collectors

and others reclining there with them.

³⁰ The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples.

“Why do you eat and drink with tax-collectors and sinners?”

³¹ Jesus gave them an answer and said,

“People who are well have no need for a doctor

but those who are sick.

³² I have not come to call the just but sinners to repentance.”

Following the incident above, where Mark’s main interest had been with the scribes, this incident brought Jesus into conflict with another powerful elite, the Pharisees, for the first of a number of times.

The incident raised an important issue for Luke: Jesus’ special concern for sinners and his openness to them and to their company. In the culture of the time, table fellowship was a declaration of belonging. Pharisees were particularly selective about whom they ate with, because the company they kept was a statement also about themselves. In Luke’s Gospel, meals would also be significant for Jesus. Through them he would define new boundaries for belonging.

The appellation sinners was often applied to those who simply paid little attention to ritual “cleanness” or to other details of strict observance.

Honour as defined and allotted by the collective mind-set of the culture was not an issue for Jesus. He did not care what others thought of him. His concern was to be available to those in need, particularly those excluded precisely because of their need. Jesus’ inclusiveness showed God’s liberating action on behalf of the oppressed and marginalised.

A New Vision (1) – New Wine

Luke 5:33-39 - Jesus is Questioned about Fasting

³³ They said to him, “The disciples of John fast often and pray,

as do those of the Pharisees,

but yours are eating and drinking.”

³⁴ So he said to them,

“A bridegroom’s guests cannot go fasting

as long as the bridegroom is with them.

³⁵ However, the time comes

when the bridegroom is taken away from them.

That is the time when they fast.”

³⁶ He then told them a parable,

“No one rips a patch out of a new cloak

and puts it on an old one.

Otherwise, the new one is torn,

and the patch from the new one does not suit the old one.

³⁷ And no one puts new wine in old wineskins.

Otherwise, the new wine bursts the skins;

it spills out

and the skins are ruined.

³⁸ No, new wine is to be put into new wineskins.

³⁹ And no one wants new wine

after tasting a mature one,

but says, “The mature one is better.”

Mark had used the issue to highlight the escalating conflict with the Pharisees. Luke saw it as an instance of unnecessary restrictiveness that did not sit easily with Jesus’ message of freedom.

Jesus’ problem with fasting, along with other external gestures, was that they too easily (though not inevitably) lost their connection with what they originally expressed and became instead badges of honour.

Interestingly, the last statement that the mature one is better is Luke’s addition. Perhaps he was referring to the fact that people find change difficult and tend to prefer the familiar to the as yet unexplored.

It may perhaps be pushing the metaphor too far to say that even the good mature wine can be kept too long - to oxidise and become acidic. And new wine in its turn, while needing time to ferment, to mature and to reach its best, in turn grows old and needs again to be replaced. A living organism will always continue to outgrow its structural expression.

Unlike Mark’s situation, conflicts with actual Pharisees were foreign wars in far off places for Luke’s community of converted Gentiles. Luke’s concern focussed on the trends to extreme Pharisaism latent in every heart, including the hearts of disciples.

Next >> Luke 6:1-16