Dining with the Despised

Luke 5:27-32. It’s easy to look down at the Pharisees in the Bible; they’re shown in a pretty poor light, after all. But what if they were the only ones acting rationally, according to their way of living, and Jesus was some strangely popular rebel who needed to be dealt with before things got out of control? Take Levi, for instance. He claimed the parts of being a Jew that benefitted him, but besides that he was a walking betrayal of God’s chosen people! Ritually unclean, hasn’t been to Synagogue in years, morally disgusting—this guy was as far up the organized crime ladder that Roman authorities would let a Jew get, and he had done whatever it’d taken to get there. But Jesus doesn’t seem to mind. He doesn’t do anything like how upstanding citizens should act towards people like that—he invites him to dinner. More than that, he invites him to be one of his disciples and tells him to get as many of his mobster friends together for a party to celebrate it! The Pharisees are angry, to put it politely. Who wouldn’t be?