Calling Matthew - Matt 9:09; Mark 2:13-14; Luke 5:27-28

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell of what happens after the man with palsy is healed with almost exactly the same account. From them we learn that “after these things he went forth, and saw a publican, named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he said unto him, follow me. And he left all, and followed him.” The IM explains what a publican is saying, “The term publicans refers to men who were responsible to the Roman government for overseeing the collection of taxes in Israel, as well as to those who worked for them and actually collected the revenue. Tax collectors were required to pay a fixed amount to the government each year, but they were free to collect as much from the public as they could. Thus, in Jesus’s day, publicans were one of the most corrupt and detested groups of people among the Jewish populace. Jews who became publicans were often excommunicated. This concept was first explained to me while reading the Kingdom and the Crown book series by Gerald M. Lund. That series gave me excellent insight into ancient Israel and its interaction with their Roman overlords. The way I understood it was that the publicans worked for the Romans to tax their own people. I get that that alone would be an insult because the Jews despised the Romans, and working for them against your own people would be the ultimate betrayal. But it’s a job and someone has to do it so really you can’t begrudge someone for doing something they are forced to do. Where it becomes abhorrent however is that they didn’t just collect the taxes owed to the Romans, they collected that and then some extra, prying whatever they could out of the hands of the people. This begs the question, why didn’t the people just refuse to pay anything extra? They probably didn’t know how much they were supposed to pay, and I would imagine that anyone refusing to pay the amount told to them would have Roman soldiers at their door instantly, and that is a more terrifying prospect. Whenever you watch these movies about one country taking over another, then you see the local people siding or working with the new government, there is a moment of fury where you feel like they are traitors. I’m specifically thinking about the movie Red Dawn, the new one, not the old one.

When Jesus calls this “traitor” to follow him, Luke tells us, “He left all, rose up, and followed him.” Like Simon, James, John, and Andrew, Levi (Matthew) was ready to walk away from everything to be with Jesus. I wonder how he even got involved in that life. There’s an excellent example that it’s never too late, that Jesus always wants us back, even if we are considered “traitors.” Matthew was obviously ready to follow the Savior when he called and he couldn’t have known beforehand that Jesus was going to come to him personally and ask for his loyalty. This means that Matthew had been preparing himself spiritual for some time prior to his call. Jesus surely didn’t call him when he was unprepared. That doesn’t mean that Matthew was perfect, surely not, but he was ready, he recognized that whatever this man Jesus was doing was more important than money or comfort or prestige or power. He left everything he had behind, all the money, all of the importance or fear that he was able to wield among the people.

I assume that Levi took his call as a great honor because he “made him a great feast in his own house; and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them.” He must have been relatively successful at his job because he had enough money to call for a feast at any given moment. While having dinner with someone can be an important event in our society, there was a much more significant meaning to dinners and feasts in ancient Israel. The IM tells us, “In the ancient Near East, sharing a meal together with others meant much more than simply eating and drinking together. It was a sign of fellowship; it indicated that a bond of friendship and peace existed or was at least being offered. The Savior often used the occasion of sharing a meal to extend the invitation to repent and obtain forgiveness.”