“Just pick one, sweetpea, any one.” That is one of my most well used lines. “Just pick one.” Usually to Maddie, she hates making decisions. But it is a family trait. Try getting this bunch to choose where to eat when we decide to go out. And sometimes we decide to go out because someone (who shall remain nameless) can’t decide what to fix for supper. She loves to cook, but hates to decide. Making the menu is the tedious part. The choosing, the deciding. That’s hard stuff.
Well, sometimes. Some decisions are easy. ... Um ... Can’t think of any at the moment. But surely there are some that are. Or maybe they are just easy for some people. There are the deciders in our midst, it has been said. There are those who know how to choose.
Like Levi. Wow, already we are getting to the text? Who made that decision? Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. But I can put it off for a while, if you aren’t quite ready. Don’t want to rush these things, gotta keep our options open. Don’t you think? Or do you? I don’t know for sure. Maybe. Sort of.
Not Levi, so equivocating. No weighing the options, analyzing the pros and cons, no sleeping on it. No the choosing moment comes and he leaps ... unlookingly. Unlookishly? He grabbed his chance, he carped his diem. It just seemed to fit him - no wonder they named those jeans after him - so he went with it. Go Levi, go.
Luke 5:27-39 After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, "Follow me." 28 And he got up, left everything, and followed him. 29 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. 30 The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" 31 Jesus answered, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; 32 I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance." 33 Then they said to him, "John's disciples, like the disciples of the Pharisees, frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink. 34 Jesus said to them, "You cannot make wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? 35 The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days." 36 He also told them a parable: "No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. 38 But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, 'The old is good.'"
Just like now, in Jesus’ day there were taxes and there were taxes. There were the taxes everyone paid, like a land tax or a poll tax - taxes for living and for owning. Those taxes were collected by polite visitors to your door, usually accompanied by large assistants with kneecapping experience. So you paid them. Then there was the temple tax, paid every time you visited the temple to worship or make sacrifice. And you paid those taxes with joy since it was part of your obligation to God, a way of expressing your faith, of being reminded that everything you have belongs to God. Those were collected at the temple.
But then there were the business taxes. Or the taxes for the privilege of doing business. Excise taxes, sales taxes, custom tax, transaction taxes. These were taxes you had to pay in order to buy and sell. These taxes were collected by a guy sitting in a booth in the middle of marketplace. You couldn’t get around him, you couldn’t set up your stall without proof that you have paid the right tax. You couldn’t take home your purchases without showing that you had paid the right tax. You had to have the mark, the right paperwork, the proof.
The tricky thing is that while the property and poll taxes were collected by Romans - the government; and the temple tax was collected by Jewish officials, priests and Levites; the business tax collector was a collaborator. It was a Jew who worked for the Romans. And to get this job you had to pay Rome ahead of time whatever they calculated the tax would be for that region, and then you could collect whatever you could squeeze out of folks as they went about their business. Naturally, these tax collectors were not often on the invites of the A-lister parties in town. Sure, they made a good living, but it was on the backs of their neighbors and not-likely-to-ever-be friends. It was a lonely job, well paying, but lonely. This was Zacchaeus - that wee little man. Remember him? This was Levi, who didn’t have to climb a tree.
Because one day, striding right up to his booth there in the marketplace, came a rabbi of sorts. Of sorts because he didn’t act like any rabbi anyone had ever met before. Rabbis tended to be standoffish sorts, behind closed doors, or in obscure corners. If you wanted to be a disciple of these rabbis it took persistence, knocking on their door, showing your earnestness, your willingness, your ability to sacrifice. They certainly didn’t come walking up to busy people in tax booths and look them right in the eye and say “Follow me.”
Surely there was more to it than that. Surely Jesus had brochures printed up about the benefits of on his team, a mission statement, core values, a fancy logo and a detailed listing of the benefits. He must have negotiated with Levi, asked him if he was happy in his job of making people unhappy, told him what he needed to bring on this filed trip, gave him a chance to call his associate in training and let him take over the booth, since there was a long line of grumpy people wanting to hand over fistfulls of cash so they could get on with their business.
But no. That isn’t how it happened. A two word question and a snap decision in hot dusty Mediterranean village in the middle of the day. “Follow me.” “And he got up, left everything, and followed him.” Just like that. I have decided to follow Jesus. Maybe he was primed, by a dead end job that made him the whipping boy of the whole community. Maybe he was considering making a break for it and Jesus showed up at just the right time, caught him on a good day, or a specially bad one and leaving behind the tax booth was what he had been dreaming of doing anyway. Jesus was an answer to prayer, perhaps, that is why he was so ready to go, why he threw a party and invited all of his other outcast friends to join him.
Maybe. Or maybe this has less to do with what he might have been leaving behind and everything to do with what he about to embrace. Jesus’ conversation with the Pharisees is about looking forward, not about looking back. It is about living in the joy that He brings. It is about getting drunk on the new wine of a different way to live and a deeper way to worship, rather than clinging to old patterns out of habit or preferences. Or fear. It is a scary thing to choose Christ, everything is different. Everything you thought you were living for suddenly becomes excess baggage, the stuff you leave behind in your booth when you stride off the follow Him.
There are some who think that we mainliners, we who grew up in the faith never really made a choice. That’s why our worship is somewhat dull, not like the party going on at Levi’s house. That when we joined the church is was a kind of more of the same sort of deal. We didn’t leave behind anything, we didn’t get up and walk, we didn’t hear the call and decide to follow. That explains a lack of commitment, a lack of passion. It is a good idea, we think, to follow, but it isn’t really a life and death kind of thing. We have decided to follow Jesus, yes, but we rarely go on and sing “no turning back, no turning back.” There are always options, other routes to take, other voices to follow, and if we choose something else for now, we’ll be back. Leave the light on for us, and don’t change anything.
I don’t know whether that is true, it seems unfair. It seems to not acknowledge a deep, sincere but quiet faith. We don’t all have to jump around, do we? Which reminds me, verse 28 says Levi got up and followed. That “got up” was just used two verses earlier, the same word in Greek, to describe the paralyzed man who was healed. Levi got up from his paralysis to follow. How about you, paralysis or following? Have you decided?
Shalom,
Derek
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