The Gospel of Mark tells how Jesus was walking and saw Levi sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said. Later that day, he was having dinner at Levi’s house with “many tax collectors and sinners.” Jewish religious leaders asked the disciples, “Why does Jesus eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
If you are unfamiliar with the name “Levi,” it was a second name for Matthew, Levi being his tribal name. As a tax collector for Rome, he could collect any amount as long as Rome got its share. And some assumed that Levi got his share and more. What is revolutionary about the Gospel is that it is not those who eat with sinners who are reprimanded, but those who do not!
Think about Levi for a moment. Perhaps he wasn’t a cheat. He may have been a righteous Jew, although he was employed by an occupying nation. Some people get a bad rap just because of their occupations. He could have been a tax collector for Israel and still would have been disrespected and ostracized because his job, lumped him in with “sinners.”
Here he was sitting at his tax booth, and along comes this real nice fellow, Jesus, who says, “Levi, let’s take a walk.” They get to Levi’s house, and propose to share a large meal with other tax collectors, non-Jews, and followers of Jesus, with the Pharisees peeking in the window.
Levi is pleased that he has been known, called, accepted. He’s feeling honored, happy, blessed; and so he is. Then he overhears a conversation near the door—a whisper, but whispered intentionally loudly, “Why does your Master eat with sinners?” And Matthew Levi knew that all his friends, and especially this new friend, this guest, had also heard the snide remark. How do you think Matthew Levi felt in that long moment?
It can happen at the kitchen table. It can happen in the school cafeteria or at the diner. In the office coffee room, at the water cooler or in the teacher’s lounge. In the factory break area. It can happen at church fellowship dinners. Ostracism happens when our hearts become narrow, small and blind; we no longer recognize that she is my sister, that he is my brother.
It is encouraging that the history of the church provides testimonies of the power of the Gospel to break down walls of separation between different races and cultures. One such testimony emerges from the bloody conf lict in Rwanda where, in 1994, members of the Hutu tribe carried out mass murders of the Tutsi tribe.
At the town of Ruhanga, a group of 13,500 Hutu and Tutsi Christians had gathered for refuge. They were from various Christian denominations: Anglican, Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, Methodist, Baptist and others. According to a w itness at the scene, when the militias came, they ordered the Hutu and Tutsi to separate themselves by tribe. The people refused and declared that they were all one in Christ, and for that they were killed, gunned down en masse and dumped into mass graves.
It is a disturbing yet compelling witness to the unifying power of the love to which Jesus bids us. These Christians, “crucified with Christ,” preferred to die rather than to deny the grace of God that had made them one in Christ.
Will we ever be challenged to such a degree of martyrdom? Probably not. Are we challenged to live out God’s will for human relationships in the hereand- now? Every minute. Again, it is not those who eat with sinners who are reprimanded by Jesus, but those who do not.
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