Levi’s Call

Luke 5:27-28

In a team of outsiders, Levi was the Misfit of Misfits. Jesus was collecting quite a mix of followers and his inside team of Twelve came to reflect this – zealots (politico-religious radicals) pushing for the overthrow of the Roman oppressors, Galileans looked down on in Jerusalem, fishermen who didn’t exactly rank high on the social totem pole, and so on. But at least they were all decent folks, the kind that would be allowed in your neighborhood synagogue, if not into your family through marriage to your daughter.

Levi, on the other hand, was a tax collector. In our day and age, people who work for the IRS get no respect. In Levi’s day, they were considered the worst of sinners, something in the category that homosexuals and sex offenders are classed these days. I suppose a tax collector with leprosy (if this were possible) would have been the most outcast of all.

In any case, the devout religious leaders were simply aghast that Jesus would associate with such rank sinners. Unlike most revenuers of our day, tax collectors back then were corrupt beyond measure. They really were all that their reputations claimed for them. There was no earthly reason for Jesus to associate with the likes of Levi.

But there was a heavenly one. For as Jesus said in answer to the Pharisees’ dismay, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” Jesus didn’t come for those who didn’t need his help. You want to see Jesus? You have to admit your need of him.

Of all the tax collectors, and there were plenty, something must have stood out about Levi (whom we also know as Matthew). For Luke writes that Jesus went out and found Levi at his tax booth. Whether Levi and Jesus had met before is not stated, but Jesus spoke to him and right there on the spot told Levi to “follow me.”

The cryptic nature of the text can make it sound like Levi just up and left his table. I don’t know there is any reason to think that. It seems just as plausible that Levi turned over his tax collecting business to others nearby, people he knew. But in that day and age, this would not have needed to be a lengthy process. “Here, Joseph, you take my records and receipts. I’ll give you some cash to cover expenses. John, would you pay these bills for me? I’ll reward you richly for your effort.”

Jesus didn’t necessarily condemn the practice of collecting taxes, he just did not like the way the tax collectors oppressed the poor and cheated everyone. So Levi didn’t need to flee his collection booth any more than Peter had to flee his boat. In both cases, they did leave their work, most likely turning it over to someone else in the process.

Apparently, Levi stayed in touch with his old tax collecting, rip-off artist buddies. He even held a banquet to which he invited all of them to attend. When we come to Jesus we certainly leave our old ways of doing things behind, though it takes time to figure out what needs to be discarded. We may even have to loosen our relational ties a bit with old friends long enough to establish healthier habits in our own lives.

But no where does Jesus command his followers to cut themselves off from their families, their old neighborhoods, even their old jobs. Okay, Jesus does say that unless we leave family, we cannot follow him, but there he is speaking of reversing priorities in our lives. Some of his followers, particularly the Twelve, did leave their old jobs to travel full time with Jesus. But the old jobs and friends were not necessarily the sinful past they were being called to leave behind.

Jesus didn’t come to pull the newly righteous out of the dark corners of this world. No, he came to invade the very darkest of corners and establish his Community of Faith in outposts long held captive by sin and oppression. He doesn’t save us from our world, he saves us to redeem our world.