Hi everyone, welcome back to the Logical Bible Study Podcast,
where we're providing an exegesis of the gospel from
today's Mass. So we want to have a look at
what was the original author trying to convey to his audience
and then go from there. So we're continuing our
exploration of the gospel of Mark.
And today we're looking at chapter 2, verses 13 to 17.
Jesus went out to the shore of the lake and all the people came
to him and he taught them. As he was walking, he saw Levi,
the son of Alpheus, sitting by the customs house, and he said
to him, follow me, and he got up and followed him.
When Jesus was at dinner in his house, a number of tax
collectors and sinners were also sitting at the table with Jesus
and his disciples, for there were many of them among his
followers. When the scribes of the Pharisee
party saw him eating with sinners and tax collectors, they
said to his disciples, Why does he eat with tax collectors and
sinners? When Jesus heard this, he said
to them it is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the
sick. I did not come to call the
virtuous but sinners. So the sitting here in verse 13,
he's still in Capernaum, which is his hometown.
So at this point his ministry is basically all just operating out
of Capernaum, his little town on the on the lakeside, the Sea of
Galilee and the surrounding towns.
He hasn't gone to Judea or Jerusalem yet so he walks out
onto the lake and it's if you go to Capernaum today, it's
literally right on the lake. So he doesn't have to walk far
and but it is a wide open space. It's kind of like a little beach
shore area there and he could have taught the crowds from that
beach as he's walking along. So he probably did some teaching
for a while and then walked a little bit further along the
lake. He sees Levi son of Alpheus.
So Levi's also called Matthew, but not in the Gospel of Mark.
It's only in the Gospel of Matthew that we work out that
Levi is also called Matthew, and that is the same guy as the one
who wrote the Gospel of Matthew, and he's identified as the son
of Alpheus. Whenever you see the son of
someone in the gospel, that's usually just a way of, well, in
that culture, that's how they're designated exactly which person
you were talking about. They didn't have surnames, so
they would either just say, you know, John, son of Joseph, or
John from Nazareth. That's how they identified the
person. So Jesus didn't have a surname,
but you could identify Jesus. If you're a person.
That time you wanted to ask about Jesus, you would ask about
either Jesus, son of Joseph or Jesus of Nazareth.
That's how you would identify the person.
So Levi here is the son of Alphaeus, and he's sitting by
the customs house, so you can imagine him sort of sitting in a
little stall kind of thing. Another translation of customs
house is tax office, so he's a tax collector and he's sitting
by a little stall. And it appears that this store
was located in Capernaum because it's a strategic spot to put it.
It's on a major highway, a major trade route that a lot of people
would have gone through. So the Romans have put a tax
booth there to maximize the number of people who have to go
through and pay taxes. So tax collectors, Tax
collectors were Jews, but they're appointed by the Romans.
So it's people who are willing to cooperate with the Romans.
And their job is to collect taxes from the Jews to give to
the Romans, because the Romans in control of this part of the
world. So the Jews legally have to pay
taxes to the Romans. So the Jews did not like tax
collectors, even though the tax collectors themselves were
Jewish. The rest of the Jews didn't like
them for three reasons. Number one, they work for the
Romans. That already puts them in the
bad books, #2 The tax collectors take people's money.
If you have a tax collector at the door, it's they're going to
take your money. And #3, a lot of tax collectors
were corrupt and they kept money for themselves, so they actually
took more tax than they should have from the Jews.
So since they're working for the Romans, most Jews automatically
assume that if you're a tax collector, you're a Sinner.
Anyone who cooperates with the Romans is not doing God's will
in their eyes, so they are sinners.
But Jesus sees him. He, probably being the Son of
God, knows that this guy is going to be one of his
disciples. He looks at him sitting in the
tax booth, and he says follow me.
That's all he says, follow me. And Levi gets up and follows
him. So it's not clear whether Levi
knew who Jesus was, though he probably did, and he probably
heard him teaching as he went along the lakeside.
But something about Jesus made Levi leave his livelihood, just
as the fishermen did. Remember, they dropped their
Nets straight away. They left their job behind and
went after Jesus. Same thing here with Levi.
Now the scene changes. We're sort of looking later at
the day or probably late, a few days later at dinner time, verse
15, when Jesus was at dinner in his house.
And that can be a bit confusing in terms of working out whose
house they're having dinner at. But of course, Luke's account
makes it clear that this is occurring in Levi's house, and
it says that many of Jesus followers are there, But there's
a distinction here made between disciples and followers.
So he's got his inner circle of disciples, although he hasn't
named the 12 apostles yet, but he has disciples and then he has
people who've been following him for a while and they're called
followers. So followers are probably people
who are sort of trailing along, but they're following him most
of the time or full time. They're following him, but
they're not part of his inner circle.
So we learned that by this point, this followers, this
group of followers has some tax collectors and sinners in it.
There's some sinners who are following Jesus around.
When it says sinners, we don't really know what sin they
committed. But that's a generic Jewish term
that describes all those who the rest of the Jews think are not
doing God's will. So it could be a prostitute, it
could be a robber or a tax collector.
They're all called sinners. Verse 16, the scribes of the
Pharisee party are there in the house.
So the Pharisees are sort of the leaders of the common people.
They had all sorts. As you know, probably they had
all sorts of rules about who counted as holy and who counted
as a Sinner, and most people listened to them.
They had a lot of influence. The top ranking Pharisees are
called scribes. And so here we have the scribes
of the Pharisees. And by the way, scribes just
sort of a reference to the fact they could read and write about
the Old Testament. So they're experts in the Old
Testament. So these scribes say to his
disciples, and it seems like they're asking a genuine
question. Not sure why they didn't ask
Jesus directly. Maybe Jesus is busy.
Maybe they haven't got the courage to ask Jesus, but they
ask his disciples. So they ask his inner circle who
are also there in the house. Why does he eat with tax
collectors and with sinners? And so their line of thinking
here is if Jesus is indeed sent by God, why does he associate
with sinners? And they probably they actually
want an answer. They want to know.
It's not a trap question. Why does he associate with
sinners when he and the original reading here is wired?
Does he eat with sinners? So if you're eating with someone
in that culture, it's a mark of acceptance.
If you invite someone into their house, into your house, and you
eat with them, that's considered to be accepting.
And so Jesus here, by eating with sinners and tax collectors,
is essentially saying that he accepts them, which is fairly
radical if he's supposed to be God's messenger.
The fact that Jesus accepts sinners, we can tell here, as
Christians doing theology, that this is an indication that Jesus
calls people to repentance and that his power to call people to
repentance is working. Many of the sinners want to
repent, and so they're coming to him.
Now Jesus overhears the question and he answers the question in
verse 17. He says it is not the healthy
who need the doctor, but the sick.
Now, if that's all he said, we'd have to unpack that statement a
bit. But the second sentence explains
the first. So whenever you're looking
particularly at parables, but whenever Jesus says something,
if he says something a little cryptic or a little
metaphorical, just read afterwards to see if he explains
it a bit later on. Because if if he explains it,
that's the explanation you want to go with.
And here he does the very next thing.
He tells us what he means by healthy and sick.
He says, I did not come to call the virtuous or righteous, but
sinners. So Jesus here tells us that it's
a metaphor. Just as the healthy don't need a
doctor, the sick do well, the righteous don't need God's
forgiveness. Sinners need God's forgiveness.
That's Jesus whole mission. Jesus whole mission is to get
those who have wandered far from God to come back to Him.
Now often when I used to be a part of a Protestant background,
you'd pastors and teachers would tend to make statements that
implied that at the time of Jesus, no one was right in God's
sight, no one was righteous. I don't think that's the case.
And I think that this teaching here, added together with others
such as the prodigal son, tells us that there are at least some
people at the time of Jesus who are righteous, who don't need to
be called to repentance because they're already doing the right
thing. And I think that's the best way
to understand this text, is that just as the parable of the
prodigal son says, remember the older brother, the father says
of the older brother all that you have, sorry, all that I have
is yours because he's already in the Father's favour.
I think some people at the time of Jesus were already in God's
favour and the Messiah has not come primarily for them.
He's come for those who need to repent, so it's not like
everyone in Jesus time was a Sinner.
No one was in God's favour, but a lot of people needed to come
to repentance. That's not the only way of
understanding that. Some other scholars would say
that actually everyone is a Sinner, no one is righteous.
And what he means here is that he's only calling those who
accept that they are sinners, whereas the Pharisees don't
accept that they are sinners, so he's not calling them.
That's another interpretation. Pick whichever one you like.
Both of them could be legitimate.
So that's our passage. And there's a few catechism
references to this passage today, and they're actually
quite similar to yesterday. So just as the healing of the
paralytic which we heard about in yesterday's podcast tells us
about Jesus power to heal, we hear from similar paragraphs
today from the Catechism. Because Jesus here tells us that
he has the power to heal sinners and to call sinners.
So one of them is paragraph 545 which is about the Kingdom of
God. It says Jesus invites sinners to
the tale of the Kingdom I came not to call the righteous but
sinners. He invites them to that
conversion without which one cannot enter the Kingdom, but
shows them in Word and deed. His Father's boundless mercy for
them and the vast join heaven over 1 Sinner who repents.
So in that paragraph you hear this text in Mark Two being
paired with the prodigal son in Luke.
There's a reference here in paragraph 1484 which is about
the sacrament of penance. It says Christ is at work in
each of the sacraments. He personally addresses each
Sinner. My son, your sins are forgiven.
He is the physician attending each one of the sick who need
him to cure him, to cure them. And so you'll hear.
You'll hear there the connection to Mark Chapter 2, where Jesus
is the one who has come to heal the sick.
There's a couple of other references, and I'll put all
those in the show notes, OK. Hopefully you'll learn something
new from this podcast today, and please tune in again tomorrow.