From the Daily Lectionary for Wednesday in the Seventeenth Week after Pentecost
Luke 5:27-39
After this he went out and saw a tax-collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up, left everything, and followed him.
Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax-collectors and others sitting at the table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax-collectors and sinners?” Jesus answered, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
Then they said to him, “John’s disciples, like the disciples of the Pharisees, frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink.” Jesus said to them, “You cannot make wedding-guests fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’”
Here is Jesus at his most audacious. Tax collectors were Jews in the employ of the Roman overlords to collect tribute, tax from the occupied people. Such is the way of empire: to drain the resources of their occupied colonies. For the people of Israel it was demeaning enough to be under foreign rule, but to be taxed into poverty was insult to injury. Tax collectors were considered “sellouts.” Often they would not only collect the Roman tax, but they would extort from their neighbors, even family. They were the untouchables, and for good reason, of first century Israel.
Jesus accepts an invitation to attend a meal at a tax collector’s home. Astounding. We are told that other tax collectors were there as well. A den of thieves. The Pharisees, the Jewish elite, complain about such a breach of decorum, their hypocrisy so very evident, as they are in cahoots with the Romans as well. Their collusion is just behind the scenes.
When we consider the complicated question of, “what do we do about the broken, the disparaged lives, of our world? Bryan Stevenson’s answer comes to mind: We are to be “proximate” to them. Jesus does not merely orate about the dysfunction of his world. He doesn’t make a speech about the ills of tax collecting. Instead he goes and breaks bread with these, the most reviled of the culture.
There are several things about a meal: It is an act of hospitality, of welcome in which all present are equals. It is also a moment of transformation… mundane elements of earth transformed into nurture. It is a consummate act of solidarity. A meal joins its participants as friends, enabling each to each common nurture for the way ahead. A meal, I would venture to say, is the most intimate means of proximity.
For Luke, the socioeconomic system is sinful, favoring the rich at the expense of the poor, and the tax collector is just one outward and visible case in point, but here Jesus doesn’t judge. He allows the grace of the meal to speak for itself. He allows the mystery of the meal to work its healing grace. No coercion, just the ardor of fellowship.
Healing doesn’t come through the burden of the law, getting it right, good behavior. Healing comes through love’s generosity and freedom. Jesus is honoring the generosity of these outcasts, affirming their humanity. We are not defined by our faults, our bad choices, our sins. We are defined by our humanity, that which we have in common.
We would do well to take to heart this teaching. If you have the courage to be proximate to the world’s broken, the untouchables among us, perhaps the time to start is suppertime.
A Prayer for Grace at Meals (BCP p. 834)
Blessed are you, O God, King of the universe, for you give us food to sustain our lives and make our hearts glad; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
