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.