Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance

 

After these things He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax office.  And he said to him, "Follow Me."  So he left all, rose up, and followed Him.  Then Levi gave Him a great feast in his own house.  And there were a great number of tax collectors and others  who sat down with them.  And their scribes and the Pharisees complained against His disciples, saying, "Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?"  Jesus answered and said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."  

Then they said to Him, "Why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers, and likewise those of the Pharisees, but Yours eat and drink?"  And He said to them, "Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them?  But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast in those days."  Then He spoke a parable to them:  "No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one; otherwise the new makes a tear, and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old.  And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined.  But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved.  And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, 'The old is better.'"

 

- Luke 5:27–39 

 

Yesterdays we read that it happened when Jesus was in a certain city, that behold, a man who was full of leprosy saw Jesus; and he fell on his face and implored Him, saying, "Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean."  Then He put out His hand and touched him, saying, "I am willing; be cleansed."  Immediately the leprosy left him.  And He charged him to tell no one, "But go and show yourself to the priest, and make an offering for your cleansing, as a testimony to them, just as Moses commanded."  However, the report went around concerning Him all the more; and great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by Him of their infirmities.  So He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed.  Now it happened on a certain day, as He was teaching, that there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting by, who had come out of every town of Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem.  And the power of the Lord was present to heal them.  Then behold, men brought on a bed a man who was paralyzed, whom they sought to bring in and lay before Him.  And when they could mot find how they might bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the housetop and let him down with his bed through the tiling into the midst before Jesus.  When He saw their faith, He said to him, "Man, your sins are forgiven you."  And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, "Who is this who speaks blasphemies?  Who can forgive sins but God alone?"  But when Jesus perceived their thoughts, He answered and said to them, "Why are you reasoning in your hearts?  Which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven you,' or to say, 'Rise up and walk'?  But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins" -- He said to the man who was paralyzed, "I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house."  Immediately he rose up before them, took up what he had been lying on, and departed to his own house, glorifying God.  And they were all amazed, and they glorified God and were filled with fear, saying, "We have seen strange things today!"

 

 After these things He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax office.  And he said to him, "Follow Me."  So he left all, rose up, and followed Him.  Here Levi (Matthew) answer's Christ's call to him, "Follow Me."  He leaves his occupation to become a disciple, as did Peter together with James and John Zebedee, in Monday's reading.  My study Bible comments that from the beginning of His ministry, Christ has been a friend of tax collectors and sinners, which is one of the Pharisees' complaints against Him in today's reading.  Levi may also have been one of the tax collectors prepared for Christ by John the Baptist (Luke 3:12) in the same way that Peter, James, and John were first followers of John the Baptist (John 1:35-51).  

  Then Levi gave Him a great feast in his own house.  And there were a great number of tax collectors and others  who sat down with them.  And their scribes and the Pharisees complained against His disciples, saying, "Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?"  Jesus answered and said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."    My study Bible comments that this feast expresses Matthew's joy and gratitude.  It says that the guest register is a stirring demonstration of the fruit of Jesus' love and forgiveness.  

Then they said to Him, "Why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers, and likewise those of the Pharisees, but Yours eat and drink?"  And He said to them, "Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them?  But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast in those days."  Then He spoke a parable to them:  "No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one; otherwise the new makes a tear, and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old.  And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined.  But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved."   My study Bible comments on these verses that Christ's earthly life is a time of joyous blessings.  But there will come a time when His followers will practice the fast.  In Jewish practice, fasting typically occurred twice a week (Luke 18:12), on Monday and Thursday.  Moreover, additional public fasts were regularly observed or occasionally proclaimed (2 Chronicles 20:3; 1 Ezekiel 8:49-50; Esther 4:16; Joel 2:15), especially on the  Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:31-34) and in times of mourning (Zechariah 7:5; 8:19).  But, my study Bible says, the Jews saw the day of the Messiah as a wedding feast -- a time of joy and gladness.  Christ here is proclaiming that day, and declaring Himself to be the Messiah/Bridegroom.  For Christians, my study Bible adds, fasting is not gloomy but desirable, a bright sadness, for by fasting we gain self-control and prepare ourselves for the Wedding Feast.

"And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, 'The old is better.'"   My study Bible explains that this saying only occurs in Luke's account.  It notes that it illustrates several things.  First, there is the difficulty with which the Jews would accept the new covenant.  Then there is the inner resistance a person faces in turning away from a sinful way of life.  Finally, it teaches the general stubbornness of the human heart.  

Perhaps nowhere else do we read Christ stating so clearly that His mission is to heal than in today's reading, and His statement in which He compares Himself to a physician:  "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."  If we may close attention to what He's saying, He's telling us something that isn't all that popular today in our common culture.  Christ is, in fact, describing repentance as the ultimate medicine for what ails people.  We don't often think of repentance as something healing, that takes us out of some form of illness -- whether that be a mental or emotional ailment, a spiritual or soul ailment, or even a physical ailment.  This is because our common conceptions of repentance are overlaid with a terrible burden of guilt or extreme shame, with the shadow of a punitive and accusative finger pointing at us.  But the word translated as repentance is μετάνοια/metanoia.  It means "change of mind" but in a deeper sense that if we were to simply think of it in intellectual terms.  This word for "mind" indicates a change in the inner person such that our way of thinking is transformed, including how we perceive things.  So repentance is a kind of transformation that changes who we are, our orientation to things, a recognition that we need to do something differently because it changes how we look at our reality.  If we perceive that we are hurting ourselves or others, a repentance can take place through a healthy sense of shame (not one that defines us), one that applies correction justly and reasonably.  Repentance in this sense is reorienting ourselves to Christ, to God, so that we are in better communion than we were before.  It is for this reason that it is the ultimate act of healing.  That's why it applies to all problems.  Even a physical ailment or hardship one cannot change is "healed" for the self through personal change and reorientation to how we will approach our lives and our relationship to God.   Twelve Step programs, if looked at closely, are a methodical approach to a plan for repentance, transformation.  All of our lives in the Church are directed toward this because we seek a deeper and growing dependency and communion with God through worship, through the Eucharist, through confession and repentance, through all the acts with which we dedicate ourselves to our Lord, including prayer and fasting.  A deepening faith isn't possible without this sense of repentance as transformation.  There will always be ways in which we need to change our minds to come to a deeper communion with God and the whole great cloud of saints.   As God is infinite, so then is our capacity to come to know God better, and this happens through this process of change, a willingness to be led like a child in the Lord's embrace, to reconsider and change one's mind.  It's also important to understand that we're not absolute like God is; we are creatures subject to change.  Therefore if we're not on the path toward God, we're headed the other way.  We don't stand still, we're not fixed points.  So these sinners become saved in ways that the Pharisees and their scribes cannot, will not -- because they don't necessarily think they have anything to learn from Christ, or see the ways in which repentance is for them, too.  They can't open their minds to that; as a result, throughout the story of Christ's ministry, they dig in deeper against Jesus.  Of course, there are great exceptions, like Nicodemus (see John 3), who comes to learn from Christ and eventually becomes a part of the Church.  Possibly our most known example is St. Paul, who describes himself as "a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee" (Acts 23:6), and was the most feared persecutor of Christians.   Philippians 3 is perhaps a very great statement on repentance, for in it St. Paul describes himself as one who has the greatest reason to have confidence in the flesh, in his spiritual inheritance and pedigree as a Jew.  "But," he writes, "what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead" (Philippians 3:7-11).  This great giving up of what was his by flesh, so to speak, for the inheritance and gain in Christ is indeed a tremendous statement of transformation, repentance, and if we read closely, he describes it also as an ongoing process toward perfection, and one meant for each one of us to undertake, "for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:14).  The most vivid and succinct illustration Christ gives us of the principle illustrated in today's reading is the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14).  This parable is found in Luke's Gospel, and is addressed "to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others."  Perhaps St. Luke, called the "beloved physician" by St. Paul (Colossians 4:14) had a powerful insight into the effectiveness and necessary means of this medicine.  He is the one who uniquely reports the difficulty of taking it, and what it repairs:  "And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, 'The old is better.'"  But nonetheless it's the new that we need, and that need is ongoing.