To Read Click Luke5:27-32
- Remember the story of the woman who pours a jar full of Perfume on Jesus
- This is a mirror of the story
- All Tax Collectors were considered as traitors to Judaism and treated as sinners because of their scrupulous and unethical ways to do their business.
- Here Jesus calls this tax Collector
- Giving him home and purpose
- He knows now his life is not useless
- So he rejoices and conveys this hope to all his other Tax Collectors like hopeless cases.
- He in fact is proclaiming the saving grace he has received
- At the hands of Jesus the Messiah
- This makes sense only
- In the insight that Levi knew what he was doing was wrong
- And he needed a remedy to help him be whole/clean again.
- The Pharisees and scribes are inserted here to help us see the opposing position to that of Levi and the other so-called sinners.
- The Pharisees and scribes saw themselves as righteous
- And not needing to make any changes in their lifestyle
- Hence when they approached God
- They sang their own virtues
- They had no need of God as saviour
- Only as Conqueror
- Mark is helping us see
- In humility when we recognise our condition
- And we call to God
- God can come and help us
- Else we are pushing him to the fringes of our life
