Scripture Reference: Mark 2:1-3:6
What Does He Think He Is Doing? – Continued
Please read Mark 2:13-22 for the background to this section.
In the next instance, Jesus is having dinner at Levi’s house. It seems likely that he has thrown a party for his colleagues and associates to come and meet this amazing man who has broken through the triple barrier of religious prejudice, politics and morality and has asked for his company. However, we must not, there are spies at the party, Pharisees. If anyone is going to object to Jesus’ consorting with undesirables, it will be the Pharisees, who now make their first appearance in Mark’s Gospel. They represent the party who are the most passionate about following the Jewish law and all the extra regulations that tradition has added to it. Within that Pharisee group, their legal professionals, “the teachers of the law,” are the ones who actually make the rules. “Sinners” is what they call anyone who does not take the rules as seriously as they do. They are watching Jesus closely and, frankly, they don’t like what they see. No true Jew, still less anyone who claims to be a teacher, a rabbi, should have anything to do with these common people, these “people of the land” (in Hebrew, the am ha’aretz), as they dismissively title them, let alone these tax collectors, who are corrupt, unclean and serving the enemy.
But now Jesus lays His cards on the table; “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” Clearly, Jesus is not saying that there is nothing wrong with the Pharisees. In other places (such as Mark 7:6-13) he makes it abundantly clear that the Pharisees’ religion is very sick. Jesus is adopting their own language, which divides people into “righteous” and “sinners,” those “OK” and “not OK.” In other words, “If you think you are fine, if you think you are so healthy, all right . . . but kindly let Me get on with looking after the sick.” Jesus has come for those who know they need Him. Most of the people at the party may not feel that, but Levi certainly does. He knows he is a sinner, and Jesus has come and found him. The Pharisees have missed the point. They think they are simply dealing with someone who is breaking their rules. In fact, Jesus is doing far more than that. This meal with Levi points to something much greater.
Look closely at verse 15, and you will see that it is Jesus, not Levi, who is the focus, even the host, of the party, and here are the ordinary people of the land, the undesirables, the rejects, gathered together to celebrate His coming. There is a strong hint here of something the Old Testament prophets look forward to: in the future time when God breaks into history and establishes His Kingdom on earth, one way in which it is described is as a banquet, a party which God will throw for His people, the “messianic banquet,” as it was known. You find this theme in various places in the prophecy of Isaiah, especially in Isaiah 25:6-8. This is one of many occasions when Mark’s narrative alludes to Old Testament themes without saying so explicitly. In this he is unlike Matthew, who usually points out to us the ways in which Jesus is fulfilling the prophecies.
So here is the Messiah, hosting a party not for the elite, but for all comers, the sign that God is breaking in, that His Kingdom is coming to earth, and we have just a foretaste of the golden age which is still to come.
To Be Continued
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 