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He Chose ME!

A Contextual Reflection on the Calling of Levi

Jesus used imaginative story telling to not only reveal more about His Father, but to teach His disciples how to think, feel and act in the Kingdom of God. As best we can, shouldn't we be trying to do the same thing?

Jesus is both The Story and the Master Story Teller. His parables were consummate narratives, rich with imaginative treatments of everyday images, situations and occurrences. When contextually understood, His parables were often incredulous stories (the Prodigal Son) and outrageous situations of village life (the Friend at Midnight) that allowed His hearers to remember His teaching as well as its meaning.

Two millennia later in the West, we seem to have forgotten much about how Jesus taught. In Western Evangelicalism today, the use of imagination in retelling the Bible's stories to bring them alive for this generation is conspicuous by its absence. In fact, things have become so inverted in some circles that if you do use in a Sunday message or lesson that same kind of imagination that Jesus did, you run the risk of being labeled “totally inappropriate.” How did we drift so far from Jesus' effective pedagogy?

One Christmas day, I was shown a quote by Dr. Art Lindsley, a good friend and the author of The Case for Christ and True Truth. Art is Scholar-in-Residence with the C.S. Lewis Institute and his “gift” to me came from one of C. S. Lewis' selected essays. I knew a light had been turned on as soon as I heard:

Reason is the natural organ of truth;

Imagination is the organ of meaning.

Wow! There it was: both a sound diagnosis and a needed remedy. Western Evangelicalism, with its Greek oriented thought processes, primarily focuses on the first line of Lewis' quote. For too long we have been preoccupied with using reason to present truth to believers, yet seldom using appropriate imagination to underscore the meaning of that truth in memorable ways. We've been preaching and teaching on AM monaural to people designed by God to hear His Word in FM stereo.

In the Gospels, Jesus was certainly proficient presenting reason and truth to His listeners while at the same time very creative in using imagination to capture the meaning of that truth. From Jesus' example, we can see that reason and imagination need to travel together in our teaching and preaching if truth and meaning are to be fused together in an integrated way in the lives of our listeners. If that's what Jesus did, shouldn't we be doing that same thing? That's what being a disciple is all about – having a passion to emulate your rabbi.

There are certainly some issues and concerns when it comes to the appropriate use of imagination in bringing the meaning of God's truth alive for today. It is a given that there will always be differing yardsticks regarding what constitutes appropriate imagination and what does not. Unfortunately, the fear of being judged “totally inappropriate” has caused too many preachers and teachers to deliberately avoid the creative use of imagination in their teaching and preaching of the Scriptures. That has been to our collective detriment. But as Dr. Lindsley would often observe in his classes: the potential for abuse is never an argument for disuse.

Contextual restoration is a helpful safety net for the appropriate use of imagination in opening up the Scriptures. Contextually reconstructing a passage not only suggests appropriate ways to bring a passage alive, but paradoxically also sets limits on 1) where that imaginative treatment can be taken in the retelling of the biblical story and 2) where speculation beyond the context cannot.

To try and illustrate how imagination can be used to open up a passage, I will take a creative approach in contextually restoring Luke's brief account of the calling of Levi in 5:27 -28. But before we dig into these two sentences, we need to remember where Luke has already taken us in his deliberate narrative development:

Luke has been developing the character of Jesus' ministry: a) bringing God's mercy to those who have been systematically deprived of it by the religious culture, b) dismantling His disciples' worldview from everything that culture had taught them to be “right” and “true,” c) bringing “outsiders” into His new Kingdom, d) rescuing and restoring “prisoners” (Luke 4:18).
In the fifth chapter, Luke has introduced a new theme having to do with sin. Luke first introduced the reality of sin in 5:8 with Simon Peter's response to Jesus regarding the great catch of fish. He then extends that theme by way of analogy with the man covered with leprosy (as we are with sin). In the prior encounter with the paralytic, he links humanity's hopeless case of sinfulness ( separation from God) with God's gracious and merciful remedy of forgiveness.

Having just established Jesus' authority to forgive sin in the prior encounter with the paralytic, the next obvious questions are: How MUCH sin can He forgive? How big, how wide, how deep is God's forgiveness? How far will it stretch and how deep can it go? To answer those implied questions, Luke brings Levi, a despicable port tax collector, onto his narrative stage. Bring your imagination along, and leave your grammar and sentence structure rules behind as we take a closer contextual look at this extraordinary two-sentence encounter.

My name is Levi, I am a Jew. You might think that given my name I must have been part of the Levitical priesthood. Well nothing could be further from the truth.

You see I was a Hellenistic Jew, not to be confused with those observant Jews up in the NW corner of the Sea of Galilee . We Hellenistic Jews liked to go to Synagogue on the Sabbath. But we also liked to go to the Greek theatres, gymnasiums and baths during the week. Because of that, observant Jews always looked down upon us with scorn as pleasure-seeking Jews who wanted to have it both ways. Well, who would ever want to live life with all the scrupulous behavioral constraints and requirements they submit themselves to? Not me!

If I were completely honest, I would have to describe myself early on as a VERY compromised Hellenistic Jew. You see, I was a port tax collector in Capernaum .

I never planned to be a tax collector. In our tradition, a young man almost invariably assumed the trade or profession of his father. But at an early age I knew that I had no desire to carry on the work of my father Alphaeus. My father and I talked about that for years. Finally one day he released me from having to carry on with the family profession. That was fine, but it did leave me with a new issue: what was I going to do now?

As I was struggling with that question, one day a Chief Publican came to town looking for new land tax collectors. Chief Publicans are Jews who have secured the tax collecting franchise from Rome for a specific area, in this case the Galilee District. One of the townspeople mentioned my name as someone needing a career, so he sought me out. When we first started talking, I said, “You have got to be kidding! Me become a land tax collector? No way!” You see I knew what that meant. Everyone despised tax collectors for they were Jews who decided to work for Rome to exploit and extort fellow Jews. Observant Jews, and even many Hellenistic Jews viewed Rome as the kingdom of evil. Therefore, becoming a tax collector was the equivalent of saying you wanted to be a foot soldier in Satan's Army. That is a kiss of death in our culture. As a traitor to Judaism, your family, friends and neighbors disown you as if you were the living dead.

Well, that Chief Publican certainly was persistent. Periodically he returned and kept seeking me out. And I kept saying “Not me!” Then one day he came and said, “Look Levi, this is my last visit. I am not coming back again.” Then he surprised me by “upping the ante.” He said that only if I would accept today, he would allow me to be a port tax collector in Capernaum, not just another land tax collector in the Galilee District. Unfortunately that suddenly enriched offer caught me off guard and caused me to pause to consider it.

Well, I immediately knew what that meant. That offer was an invitation to print money. You see, in our taxation system, a land tax collector was pretty much a “cut and dried” profession. The tolls and taxes for wheat, sheep, and olive oil were pretty standard. You could make a pretty good living as a land tax collector keeping the excess after giving Rome its portion, but not one worth selling your soul for. But a port tax collector, well that was different. You could really become rich with that position. You see, being a port tax collector in Capernaum meant that you were right in the center of all the commercial action. Capernaum sits astride the International Highway, that avenue of international commerce that runs from Damascus down to Egypt . Furthermore, there were a dozen cities and towns from around the Sea of Galilee that shipped their commercial goods by boat into the port of Capernaum to transact with the merchants working the International Highway . The range of that commerce was so varied that a tax collector had much more latitude to be ingenious and creative (I think you know what I mean!) in assessing tolls and taxes and therefore could actually accumulate significant wealth even after giving Rome its prescribed portion. Being a port tax collector in Capernaum was the crème de la crème of tax collecting positions, and that's what momentarily intrigued me.

Well, I don't know if it was a moment of weakness or what, but I said that I would be willing to sign up that day if I could have that Capernaum position. Let me tell you, that was the worst decision of my life!

Have you ever been at a cross roads in your life where you were faced with a decision that if you decided to go down one road you knew you would never be able to travel down the other road again? Well, that's where I found myself. If I chose to become a tax collector, I knew I would lose my family, my friends, my clan and community and be a social pariah for the rest of my days. I guess I reasoned that at least I would be a very wealthy pariah. And that's how I came to be the port tax collector in Capernaum . Like I said, it was the worst decision of my life.

I was mostly right in my initial assessment. I did indeed lose all my former friends and family and I certainly did acquire considerable wealth. My new and only friends were some fellow tax collectors and prostitutes. We comprised our own little community of outcasts. But the one thing I never thought about on the day of that offer was how lonely and hopeless I would feel as a port tax collector.

You see, we have rabbis in our world. They are the ones that our culture gave the right to authoritatively interpret God's Word. Well, those rabbis really hated tax collectors and they particularly singled out port tax collectors for the brunt of their derision. In fact some rabbis authoritatively taught that a port tax collector was the worst of the tax collector lot (they thought our creative tax assessments were an abomination) and therefore could never, ever be forgiven by God. NEVER! Not with 30 years of retribution and 30 years of contrition, they could NEVER EVER be forgiven. That interpretation was not only binding on their disciples, but many others in the Galilee District willingly embraced that view because we tax collectors were so hated and despised.

Do you have any idea what a debilitating thought that is? To walk around everyday being convinced that you can never ever be forgiven. That makes you a person with absolutely NO HOPE ; a person living with perpetual despair. Some of you may have had a similar hopeless feeling for a day, a week, or perhaps for some short period of time in your life. But do you have any idea what it is like to carry that “truth” around month after month, year after year. So the sad reality of my life was that I had plenty of money, very few friends and absolutely NO HOPE. Day after day, that was my port tax collecting reality. Whoever said that having wealth could solve a myriad of problems was never a port tax collector in Capernaum !

Well, one day I was standing by my toll booth on the Capernaum shore of the Sea of Galilee waiting for a boat from Hippos to come in. I could tell by the wind direction and from the boat's tacking that it was at least 30 minutes from making port. As I glanced around, I saw a crowd growing down on the shore listening to the new miracle-working rabbi in town. I had overheard some of the town's people remark that he taught with an authority like no other rabbi. Furthermore, it was said that he was choosing his own disciples. That was unheard of in our culture. It was always the other way around – disciples-to-be always asked a rabbi if they could become one of his disciples. I wondered what all that meant.

So in the time I had left, I decided to amble down the shoreline as inconspicuously as I could so as not to be noticed by the crowd, but still be in a position to hear what this rabbi was saying. Fortunately the winds were coming from the SE, so it carried this rabbi's voice toward me. Among other things, this rabbi said that God was his Father. I was obviously not a religious person at that time, but even from my Hellenistic Jewish upbringing, I knew that was an extraordinary claim.

As I was listening to this rabbi teach, he said at one point that people could indeed be forgiven by God if they would simply come to him, repent, and ask to be forgiven. And he said those that did ask would be forgiven for anything and everything they ever did ! I never heard such forgiveness thoughts. The rabbis certainly never taught that. Could that possibly be true! If it were true, that would really be “good news!”

As I walked home late that afternoon, I couldn't get that thought out of my mind. What if I could truly be forgiven? What if I could get right with God? I thought about it all that evening. Then in the middle of the night I heard a voice say to me, “Forget it Levi, you can never be forgiven. Never! Get that thought out of your mind. Your situation is hopeless. It's impossible for a port tax collector to ever be forgiven.” Much later I realized that was the Adversary trying to talk me out of being drawn towards God's incredible forgiveness.

A couple of days later, I had a chance to overhear this Rabbi Yeshua (his Hebrew name) teach again. He repeated what he had said before. He went on to say that his “yoke was easy to bear and my load is not hard to carry” (NET) and that the yoke of the rabbis and the Pharisees was heavy. To us Jews, that reference to yoke meant the total weight of all that the Torah taught as well as all the additional interpretations that the rabbis had piled on top of the Torah over the centuries. Well, if part of their yoke is that some people could never ever be forgiven, that is indeed a heavy yoke and an impossible burden! And if the converse is true, that a person really can be forgiven for anything and everything they have ever done, that really is a light yoke and an easy burden! I was so taken with that thought that much later I recorded what Jesus said about that in my Gospel (Matt. 11:30). Needless to say, I went home with these thoughts and didn't sleep that night either. What is going on?

Well, a couple of days later, I was standing in front of my toll booth on the sea shore when Jesus came walking toward me. He had just left the Capernaum Synagogue and was walking past Simon Peter's house when he first fixed his eyes on me. As he continued to walk my way, his compassionate eyes never left mine. I found myself just drawn to him. When he got within several feet of me, Jesus (his Greek name) stopped and affectionately said to me, “ Follow me.” I couldn't believe my ears! He's asking me to follow him? Do you know what that Jewish idiom “follow me” means in our culture? It means, “come and be with me and be my disciple and submit to my authoritative teaching.” Well, who wouldn't want to submit to a teaching that says you can be forgiven! It was then that I made the best decision of my life. I left my toll booth and started to follow Jesus and never turned back. What a day that was! A despicable port tax collector became a disciple of Jesus the Son of God. Can you believe that! You should have seen the shock on the faces of his other disciples! They could not believe what Jesus had just done. I'm sure if it were up to them, they would have annulled his invitation. But they couldn't and as a result my life changed forever. What a day that was!

Well, I was so overjoyed that I had been asked by Jesus to join his traveling band of disciples that I invited all my tax collector colleagues and our prostitute friends to a big dinner at my place to meet Jesus. I told my friends and colleagues,” You won't believe what happened to me today. You need to come and meet this Rabbi Yeshua/Jesus and hear it for yourself. Do you realize that you too can be forgiven for anything and everything you ever did! You too can be loved by God.” Well, many of them did come and they too were overwhelmed by what Jesus had to say. As I was later to record in my Gospel (Matthew is my Greek name), some of the first people in the Kingdom of God were tax collectors and prostitutes (Matthew 21:31 -32). Well, from that day forward, one question continued to haunt me. “Why me? Jesus, why did you ask me to follow you? What motivated you to do that? That was such an over-the-top thing to do. And it sure did shock all your disciples! I'm not sure they still have gotten over it.”

Months later I had the chance to briefly go one-on-one with Jesus and ask him that question: why me? He never answered that question. He just smiled compassionately again. But I think I know why he did. You see, ten of the twelve disciples were observant Jews. They came out of a system that made them righteous solely based on their behavior. So for observant Jews, if they 1) exercised scrupulous behavior, 2) went to the ritual purification baths when ceremonially unclean, and 3) participated in Temple offerings and sacrifices, the system by definition makes them “right with God” and God would bless them.

Well, my theory is that Jesus wanted someone in the band that would never ever get over the fact that he had been forgiven. Someone who would be the leaven in the other disciples' loaf always reminding them of God's amazing grace and never to take their forgiveness for granted. Someone around who would keep them from slipping back into that mechanical way of thinking that the old behavioral righteousness “system” still somehow made them acceptable to God. Well, I want to tell you, I wake up every morning thrilled that I have been rescued by God's mercy and grace, still overwhelmed that I have been forgiven and restored in my relationship with God.

How do you wake up in the morning ?

Now you know some of my story. Now you can appreciate just a little bit more why I felt compelled to write down for the record some of what Jesus said and did and the “case histories”(in context of course!) of some of the “prisoners” like me whom He rescued. So the next time you read the Gospel of Matthew that the Holy Sprit inspired me to write, you'll have a little better context for the one who wrote it.

From this imaginative woven-back-together contextual restoration of this two-sentence story, we can observe that:

With regard to Who God is and how He does things:

God can forgive anything and everything we have ever done, no matter how despicable, and He wants us to know that!
God seeks out the “no hope” people to give them a hope and a future. As C. S. Lewis once observed, “the hound of heaven still stalks the human soul.”
He really does “set the prisoners free.”
He expects his disciples not just to be with Him, but also to willingly submit their will and ways to His Will and Ways.
God expects us to extend mercy and compassion to those who don't seem to deserve it.

With regard to the Adversary:

He tries to convince us that we can never be forgiven.
He will even work through religious systems to try and convince of us that.

With regard to the Mutiny:

Isn't it amazing how easily we can marginalize and despise others?
We don't always want to be compassionate, forgiving people, do we?

With regard to the Human Condition:

Oh my, do we ever mess up with the bad decisions and poor choices we make in life!
The consequences of our choices can certainly seem as if they have put us in impossible, hopeless situations.

With regard to God's Eternal Plan of Rescue and Restoration :

It is centered in the Person, Power and authoritative life giving, inviting Word of Jesus to “Follow Me.”
Forgiveness is the very first step and anyone can be forgiven.
We need to share our joy of being forgiven by His amazing grace (might John Newton have identified with Levi?) and accepted into a new community by inviting others to hear about it.
Rescue and restoration always come with the aromas of joy, gratitude, praise and thanksgiving.

Some Closing Observations

Have you lost the joy of your salvation, of being forgiven? Is His grace no longer amazing to you? Pray for the desire to have it return if it is missing or anemic in your life.
How far does your mercy and compassion extend to others? Are you withholding compassion from someone who desperately needs it, someone who Jesus would extend it to?
Is Jesus calling you to “follow Me” in the full weight of the meaning of that phrase? Calling you not just to be a cognitive believer in a creed, but a submitted disciple? Not just to be “with him,” the most appealing part of that first-century Jewish idiomatic phrase, but to also willingly and totally submit to His Will and Ways?
Remember: “Belief” is a verb to a first-century Jew.
Are you encouraged by this passage as you think of others you care about who are seemingly hopelessly stuck and seem to be miles away from Jesus? As Levi's case history teaches us, and C.S. Lewis reminds us, “the hound of heaven still does stalk the human soul.”

Ponder: As you ponder this remarkable two-sentence scene in the days and weeks ahead, let the Holy Spirit speak to you, touch you and transform you to renew your joy that you too have been rescued by the Savior.

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