We have come through a season which, for many of us (and I hope all of us in one way or another), included gathering around a table or tables with those whom we love and who love us.  How good and fitting and proper it is to begin the new year by gathering around the table of the one whom we love and who loves us!

We’re in the period of Ordinary Time in the church calendar that goes from Christmastide to the beginning of Lent.  Over the next six weeks, we are going to be looking at what it means to eat with Jesus.  We are going to look at stories of meals that Jesus attends or hosts and ask what they have to say to us about what it means to follow him.  What do they have to say about the meals that we share together?  I love the story of the call of Levi.  The invitation comes from Jesus – “Follow me.”  Part of Levi’s response is to throw a party; to host a banquet.  We’re invited to a banquet of our own this morning.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we hear God’s word for us this morning.  Let’s pray.

Over these six weeks, we’re going to be looking at a few stories about eating with Jesus in Luke’s Gospel.  As we do, I want us to keep in mind the way that Jesus described his own mission.  We said over Advent that our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to accept it.  This is to say, trust in Jesus as the foundation of our lives, and accept Jesus’ mission as foundational to our own lives.  Here is how Jesus described his mission when he read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah in his hometown of Nazareth.  I will keep on encouraging memorization of Bible verses, so I’ll add this one to the list:

“The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.  To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”  (Luke 4:18-19)  Jesus then begins this work.  Proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God.  Healing. Releasing.  Forgiving.  Calling.  Inviting.  There is an immediacy to Jesus’ work and an immediacy to Jesus’ love.  We said the day before Christmas that God’s love meets us at a specific time and a specific place.  We who follow him are called to meet others with the love of God at specific places and specific times – namely, here and now.  “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” said Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth.  When Jesus forgives and heals a man who was paralyzed, we read, “Amazement seized all of them, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen strange things today.’” (Luke 5:26)

Let us not lose our wonder, our amazement, and our thanks that God’s love meets us every day.  Let us never lose our wonder, our amazement, and our thanks that God calls us every day.  Let us hear those words directed at Levi directed at us.  “Follow me.”  There are no preconditions.  There is no demand that Levi get things right with God before he answers the call.  There is simply the call.  Thomas a Kempis was a German/Dutch writer of the 14^th century.  He wrote a book about following Jesus called “The Imitation of Christ.”  This is what he said about following Jesus.  He said, “It is a great art to know how to keep company with Jesus and great wisdom to know how to hold him.”  To this, I would add that any holding onto Jesus that we do is situated in the great truth that Jesus is holding onto us.  The Psalmist sang it like this, “My soul clings to you, your right hand holds me fast.” (get ref)  The call to follow is enabled and empowered by the one who calls us.  I would also say that the art of keeping company with Jesus is one that we are called to practice together.  We wouldn’t do it alone any more than we would eat alone all the time.

Before the call comes from Jesus, Jesus sees Levi.  “After this, he went out, and saw a tax collector named Levi…” (5:27a). Jesus sees Levi.  Like he really sees him.  One of the things we tend to do is make judgements and assumptions about people about people based on what we see.  We need to be aware of this and temper it as much as we can.  Jesus looks beyond Levi’s type.  Jesus looks beyond the stereotype.  Tax collectors.  Not simply civil servants working for the CRA or Ontario Finance Ministry, or the City of Toronto Finance Department.  Collaborators with Rome!  In league with the occupying power.  Poll tax.  Road and bridge tax.  Tax on merchandise.  Property tax.  Tax collection powers for any given district were usually given to a well-to-do outsider, who would have locals working for them.  A system rife with corruption.  Tax collectors were well known for enriching themselves at the expense of those being taxed.  Out to this, the fact that contact with Gentiles made local tax collectors “unclean” – excluded from synagogue life.  In other words, excluded from connections that made life meaningful and good.

Jesus looks beyond Levi’s type.  Jesus looks.  Jesus notices.  We sang before Christmas, “My soul magnifies the Lord, for he has noticed me.”  He’s noticed me.  This is no casual glance.  The word translated saw here has the sense of gaze, a steady look filled with purpose and intent.  Jesus looks beyond Levi’s type, and he looks beyond what might be judged or assumed by appearance alone.  Jesus sees someone who is in need of grace.

And who isn’t in need of God’s grace?  Who isn’t in need of God’s unmerited favour and goodness and love and mercy?  To follow Christ is to desire to grow in Christlikeness.  Who around us in need of a visible and tangible reminder of the grace of God?  I read an article this week about loneliness and social isolation.  Research from the National Institute on Ageing finds that 58% of Canadians over 50 have experienced loneliness, and 41% are at risk of social isolation.  Locally, “A recent meeting of the Toronto Board of Health heard that 400,000 city residents – about one in seven people – have no family or friends to call on for help.”  God calls on us to notice.  Who is God calling on us to notice?    

The call comes without condition.  “Follow me.”  It’s a radical call and a radical reaction on Levi’s part.  “And he got up, left everything, and followed him.” (5:28). Levi is a means of means, and the call to follow Jesus is for everyone, including people of means.  Someone has said, “Unlike many preachers who wait for the rich and powerful to experience a reversal of fortune before speaking to them of God’s reign, Jesus’ word to the rich and powerful creates the reversal of their lives.”  He got up, left everything, and followed him.  What is it that we need to leave behind in order to make room for God to create a reversal in our lives? Levi’s actions demonstrate the reversal that Jesus has brought to his life.  Levi goes from his tax booth where he collects money for himself, his bosses, and their Roman bosses, to opening up his house and providing a celebratory feast.  “We had to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life, he was lost and has been found.” (15:32)  Let us not miss the celebratory aspect of our own gathering around Jesus’ banquet table this morning.  A new allegiance, or a new found allegiance.  A new way of living and loving.  Transformed lives together.  These things call for a celebration!

“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.” (5:29)  This is the thing about eating with Jesus in the Gospel of Luke.  Everyone is welcome.  Tax collectors and others as they are described in our story this morning.  Tax collectors.  Pharisees.  Those who have been forgiven and come in gratitude.  Those who are in need of forgiveness and wholeness.  These meals are not always peaceful.  They’re sometimes marked by debate and even rebuke.  The thing is, though, no one is ever rejected or ejected by Jesus.  Not even Judas.  Jesus extends a welcome that abolishes concepts of an in-group and an out-group or an us vs. them.  The Great Physician is making a house call so that all may be loved into the Kingdom of God, so that repentance (a turning toward him) and transformation may happen. The Pharisees and their scribes are looking on.  Banquets in those days had a bit of a public aspect to them.  It was just the way houses were constructed.  More open.  The Pharisees and their scribes are seeing what’s happening and they don’t look behind types.  Rather than seeing people in need of the grace of God, they see an in group and an out group, and they’re most decidedly part of the in group.  They don’t voice their complaint directly to Jesus but to his disciples. Peter, James, John and Levi, presumably at least, at this point.  “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

At which point Jesus says “Hold my cup.”  “I’ll field this one,” says Jesus.  He is about to speak a fundamental truth about the reign of God.  The doctor is indeed in!  “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.”  (5:31-32) 

The Pharisees and their scribes were seeing the people around Jesus as types – as tax collectors and sinners.  The “them” to their “us.”  What Jesus is inviting them (and all of us) to do is a new way of seeing others and ourselves.  We are all of us people who are in need of God’s grace.  “Those who are well have no need of a physician,” Jesus says in a mini-parable here, “But those who are sick.”  If you think you’re alright, in other words, Jesus’ call to follow him is not going to mean very much.  My only question at that point would be, “Are you really alright?”  Or perhaps we’re like people who avoid the doctor because we don’t want to hear any bad news.

Of course, it’s all good news from this doctor.  “I’m not alright,” we say.  “I need you Lord,” we say.  Every day.  Every hour.  To this, Jesus says, “Come to me and I will give you rest.”  To this, Jesus says, “I am with you always.”  To this, Jesus welcomes us to his table and says, “This is my body given for you, and this is my blood shed for you.”  “Follow me,” says Jesus.  May our coming to the table this January 7^th, 2024, be a sign of our acceptance of this call, whether it’s ongoing acceptance or acceptance for the first time. 

Finally, may our welcome at this table spur us on to extending welcomes at other tables.  If you’re like me, meals that were shared around the holidays were with people very much like you, and maybe related to you.  How can we (both as individuals and churches) extend invitations to fellowship around tables with people we don’t know or who aren’t in many ways like us, knowing that we share our need for God’s grace?  How might God call us to extend that grace in gathering around tables in 2024?  Jesus will be at those tables.  The physician is in and he will see us now.  Healing and wholeness are at hand.  Repentance – a turn toward a new way of life and love- and transformation are the prognosis.  May the invitation to follow and sit and share with him be one we all accept.

Amen