Reading Luke Together #20 – He Got Up
Our stained glass windows here at Myers Park United Methodist Church depict Jesus’ 12 disciples – although we know it was a fluid group, sometimes fewer, often more, and women were clearly counted as disciples (Luke 8:1-3!). In colorful windows, they strike us as similar to one another, if a bit remote and not very earthy. In reality, they were far from the expected clump of a dozen guys. Several were fishermen, friends and kin before Jesus showed up.
But the shocking inclusion? There’s Matthew, the ex-tax collector. Most fishermen would spit on the ground at the very idea of associating with a tax collector; most tax collectors would scoff and question his sanity for hanging around with them! Jesus was always creating such social situations – raising, of course, questions about our social situations and with whom we hang around.
Caravaggio gifted us with a remarkable painting of the call of St. Matthew. Jesus raises his arm, extending his index finger – a deliberate echo of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” in the Sistine Chapel. Jesus wasn’t hiring workers for his startup business. He was creating new people, a new community. In the painting, nobody looks more surprised than Matthew! Who, me?
In Luke 5:27-32, he is called Levi. Many Jews in those days had a Hebrew name, given their family of origin and relatives, and then a Greek name, for functioning in the increasing Greek culture. Matthew/Levi was making the most of that culture – or really, from the people. Tax collectors, toadies of the Roman oppressors / occupiers, weren’t like IRS employees. They were independent contractors, swindlers really, authorized by Rome to exact contributions people couldn’t afford, and more to line their own pockets. It was an I’ll break your knees if you don’t pay up by Tuesday kind of scenario. Levi was born a Jews – so he’d turned traitor. A tax collector wasn’t qualified to be a disciple; he was disqualified because of his morals, vocation and lifestyle.
And yet Jesus (Luke tells us) has been “observing him” for some time – and then Jesus actually entered the customs house, the tax office. By calling such a scuzzbag, Jesus was making a point – or rather, he was doing his Jesus thing, salvation and calling and God’s work being for everybody. In a day when the good people practiced careful segregation from sinners, Jesus is all about salvation by association.
Levi / Matthew must have been startled that Jesus even spoke with him, and downright flabbergasted when Jesus called him to follow. Why did he say Yes? There had to be something compelling, something beautiful, about Jesus – or maybe Matthew’s life of profit and luxury rang hollow. Jesus somehow penetrated the veneer and spoke to and call out his “better angels.”
So he left it all behind – as the fishermen had left their jobs and families behind. How do we parse that for ourselves today? We’d rather Jesus pray with the fishermen and tax collectors, and let them be about their business until returning the next Sabbath. But the Christian spiritual life is a disengagement from our attachments, a loosened grip on what we think is security. It’s a going somewhere we’d never go if Jesus didn’t exist, and it’s associating and befriending and working with people we’d never even meet if Jesus didn’t exist. Re-read that last sentence and reflect on it later today, and tomorrow, and next week.
Called by this Jesus, Levi “got up.” The Greek is a theological teaser: anastas can mean stand up, like rising from your chair; but it also is used more often for standing up after you’ve died, like rising from the dead. Resurrection of the lost, the one dead to God is happening before everyone’s very eyes. Jesus, Luke 5 tells us, doesn’t come for the righteous (hint, hint – he means if you think you are, you’re so confused…) but sinners – and not to condemn, but to raise them up, to give them a new life, and a new family, profoundly meaningful work to do for and with him, and resurrection after their eventual deaths.
They left the tax office and went home – to Levi’s home, that is, where he’d invited his friends, as detestable and disreputable as Levi had been 5 minutes earlier. You’d love to peek in the windows and watch what unfolded. Did others get a glimpse of the compelling beauty and follow also? Surely some shook their heads thinking their friend, probably their ex-friend now, had lost his mind. Did Levi miss them once he was gone? I’d bet he loved and prayed for them, and listened to them and shared with them. That’s what Jesus’ followers do with those who aren’t following – at least not yet.