NOTES for Luk 5:27-32

The Pharisees who came to listen to the Nazarene Teacher and intellectually discuss "the divine" with Him are completely unable to bear the fact that He sits down to eat with tax collectors, whom they hardly even consider people. They grumble because they think that if He really is the Messiah (or even simply God's messenger), then He ought to reward righteousness. What they mean is that He should exalt them, the champions of righteousness. But the Word of God calls the Messiah the Savior and Redeemer of Israel. From what slavery is a righteous person to be redeemed, and from what is he to be saved?

The Lord replies that He came to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance. To acknowledge oneself as needing salvation - that is exactly what is necessary in order to become a participant in that salvation. A sinner needing repentance. A slave of sin needing redemption. A sick person needing a physician. This is exactly what the Pharisees will not accept, and so they begin to nitpick at Christ, asking why, then, His disciples, the supposedly called sinners, do not fast and do not make progress in other ascetic exercises.

To acknowledge oneself as poor, as needing Jesus, is the most important turning point not only for the Pharisees, but for any person. "Only acknowledge your guilt", the Lord says through Jeremiah the prophet (Jer 3:14).

The question asked by the Pharisees of Jesus and His disciples is often regarded as a manifestation of a kind of spiritual fastidiousness on the part of those asking, who considered it shameful to sit at the same table with sinners. At the same time it is supposed that they did not consider themselves sinful, being sure of their own impeccability. Yet the situation in this case turns out to be somewhat more complicated than it may appear at first glance.

Indeed, many really did consider tax collectors, for example, who collected taxes for the Roman authorities, to be collaborators and traitors, especially when it came to representatives of such extreme movements as, for instance, the "zealots" mentioned in the Gospel. But the issue here is not only religious and political sympathies. The issue is the understanding of sin that was characteristic, and not without reason, of the pre-Christian era. Of course, none of the Pharisees considered himself sinless; neither the Torah nor Jewish tradition shared such a view of the human person, even when speaking of someone deeply religious who strictly observed all the norms and rules of ritual purity.

Moreover, the Torah describes special purification rituals (washings and sacrifices) to which people resorted when they needed to be cleansed from the consequences of a sin committed. And, of course, such cleansing required repentance, usually public repentance, since the person offering a purification sacrifice had to name his sin publicly.

But one could be cleansed only from a sin committed involuntarily, out of weakness or ignorance. It was impossible to be definitively delivered from a sin committed consciously and voluntarily. Of course, God could forgive a person even such a sin if the sinner repented deeply and sincerely, but from the point of view of traditional ideas it was impossible to be delivered from the consequences of a sin committed voluntarily and consciously.

That is why purification was impossible, for example, for tax collectors, who did what they did consciously and voluntarily, since no one forced them into it. The issue here is not some special harshness of the Torah or of Judaism, but the objective laws of the fallen world, where before the coming of Christ it was almost impossible to be delivered from evil and from the consequences of a sin committed by a person. Only His coming into the world radically changes the situation. He comes to free from the power of sin everyone who wants to be freed from it, regardless of how the person came under that power. He comes to call "not the righteous, but sinners to conversion."

The evangelists repeatedly mention the tax collectors, or publicans as the Russian Synodal translation calls them in a Slavonic manner, who follow Jesus. One of such collectors was Levi, mentioned in the Gospel according to Luke. Why did they, these people rejected by religious society, have such an interest in the Savior? And not only they, but also, for example, city prostitutes and in general those who had nothing to count on in respectable Jewish religious society? What did they expect from Jesus? Forgiveness of sins? But what prevented them from turning to God themselves, without waiting for the appearance of this unusual Man? Today this is not easy for us to understand.

Meanwhile, pre-Christian ideas about evil and sin, even in the Jewish environment, were such that these people had nothing to count on. In antiquity there was a widespread conviction that evil in the world was almost all-powerful. Once a person had committed an evil deed, he could never be rid of its consequences; they remained with him not only until the end of his earthly life, but until the end of the world. There was no way out: a person was unable to undo the evil he had done. He could repent and regret as much as he liked; this changed nothing. What was done was done. What has been done cannot be taken back.

Evil once committed, a sin once done, will never disappear, will never pass into nonbeing. In Yahwism, and accordingly in Judaism, the situation was not quite so only because God's presence, which accompanied the people, sometimes made it possible to be cleansed from the consequences of a committed sin, from what in the language of the Levitical priesthood was called impurity. But cleansing was possible only when the sin had been committed involuntarily, for example through ignorance or weakness.

In that case one could repent of the committed sin, and then the appropriate cleansing rituals had to be performed. They included a special purification sacrifice, when a person approached the altar, the place of God's presence, so that God would cleanse him from the consequences of what he had done. But if the sin was committed consciously, not apart from the person's will but in full agreement with it, it was impossible to be cleansed from the consequences of a sin committed in this way.

Even repentance and an appeal to God for forgiveness did not change the situation: God could forgive the person, but it was impossible to deliver him from the consequences. For such deliverance to become possible, God would have had to create the world anew. To restart all the causal chains existing in it so that everything would begin with a clean slate. And the coming of Christ and the manifestation of the Kingdom in the world are precisely what give everyone such a possibility.

That is why Levi runs after Jesus: if this Teacher has called him, then by some miracle his, Levi's, sin, committed completely consciously and voluntarily, can also be forgiven. For people like Levi this was truly good news. But for each of us it is good news too, though we do not always understand this. For in the Kingdom there is no place for any sin, even accidental and involuntary sin. That means all of us, if we want the Kingdom, will have to begin with a clean slate. And make use of the possibility the Savior gives us.

Have you really ever met a man without illness? It is not to say that we all have something paining us, but each of us has something wrong somewhere; it can be a physical defect, quite as it can be a spiritual infirmity … So, we don't divide people between the sick ones and the healthy, but we divide them between those who feel sick and those who feel healthy. That is why everyone indeed needs the doctor, even if there are some who think that they don't need him, and consequently do not go to the doctor. But we also meet various categories of people among those who feel sick; some people don't believe the normal medicine, don't trust the doctors and so they visit sorcerers, wizards, charlatans and other "specialists" of the same category and finally become slaves of their own health, to be more precise slaves of their disease and this without knowing it.

The analogy between both verses read today is clear. There are not sinless people, and Jesus came for each of us. But some people don't consider themselves as sinners, and others don't believe that Jesus can deliver them of sin and his corollaries, and they look for something else. The Healing is stretched out at us, but we have to visit the doctor in order to receive it. To be conscious of being spiritually sick and call out to God for a spiritual cure is what we call repentance.

Have you really ever met a man without illness? It is not to say that we all have something paining us, but each of us has something wrong somewhere; it can be a physical defect, quite as it can be a spiritual infirmity … So, we don't divide people between the sick ones and the healthy, but we divide them between those who feel sick and those who feel healthy. That is why everyone indeed needs the doctor, even if there are some who think that they don't need him, and consequently do not go to the doctor. But we also meet various categories of people among those who feel sick; some people don't believe the normal medicine, don't trust the doctors and so they visit sorcerers, wizards, charlatans and other "specialists" of the same category and finally become slaves of their own health, to be more precise slaves of their disease and this without knowing it.

The analogy between both verses read today is clear. There are not sinless people, and Jesus came for each of us. But some people don't consider themselves as sinners, and others don't believe that Jesus can deliver them of sin and his corollaries, and they look for something else. The Healing is stretched out at us, but we have to visit the doctor in order to receive it. To be conscious of being spiritually sick and call out to God for a spiritual cure is what we call repentance.

Jesus came to call the sinners. But why do we answer to this call? Where does the will to answer in us come from? It would be easier and more rational to first of all recognize the almighty action of the Holy Spirit that produces in us such a will. But our own participation, our consent to answer to this call are also necessary. Where does this come from? It is difficult to guess the possibility of such appetencies by looking oneself from outside. The one who in his pettinesses, takes care only of himself, who is thirsty of peace and a big granary full with all the necessities till the end of time, who don’t trust any creature will not make out even the hundredth of the indispensable will to answer to this call of Jesus. Besides, such a person by seeing others who are similar to him finds that they have in them strange and horrifying things, and he sees nothing more, no qualities that can compel to say “yes” to God. Nevertheless, when people suffering of sin encounter face to face with the impeccable, the innocent, sinless Jesus Christ, they agree to follow Him. It is not very probable that we can completely define the reasons, but one is well known. Speaking about Jesus as being a Man in all, except sin, we just don’t mean that He ate and drank, spoke and was quiet, laughed and cried, but also that He has never committed evil. When we meet with Him, we recognize for the first time a Person that will never think badly about us; will never condemn us; will never say malignant gossip about us in our absence. It is this everlasting "never" that generate in us the vital necessity to never part from him.  

Jesus came to call the sinners. But why do we answer to this call? Where does the will to answer in us come from? It would be easier and more rational to first of all recognize the almighty action of the Holy Spirit that produces in us such a will. But our own participation, our consent to answer to this call are also necessary. Where does this come from? It is difficult to guess the possibility of such appetencies by looking oneself from outside. The one who in his pettinesses, takes care only of himself, who is thirsty of peace and a big granary full with all the necessities till the end of time, who don’t trust any creature will not make out even the hundredth of the indispensable will to answer to this call of Jesus. Besides, such a person by seeing others who are similar to him finds that they have in them strange and horrifying things, and he sees nothing more, no qualities that can compel to say “yes” to God. Nevertheless, when people suffering of sin encounter face to face with the impeccable, the innocent, sinless Jesus Christ, they agree to follow Him. It is not very probable that we can completely define the reasons, but one is well known. Speaking about Jesus as being a Man in all, except sin, we just don’t mean that He ate and drank, spoke and was quiet, laughed and cried, but also that He has never committed evil. When we meet with Him, we recognize for the first time a Person that will never think badly about us; will never condemn us; will never say malignant gossip about us in our absence. It is this everlasting "never" that generate in us the vital necessity to never part from him.  

What distinguishes Jesus' disciples from His opponents? With Jesus there are sinful, sick, weakened people, in every sense of the word. By contrast, the scribes and Pharisees "fast often and say prayers," and in general turn out to be the most respectable people of their time. Jesus, moreover, never condemns their path of piety: "Whatever they tell you to observe, observe and do..." But the disciples have only one hope: that their Teacher will not fail them and will not leave them.

And we, here in front of a monitor or over the pages of the Gospel, are constantly faced with a choice: how to position ourselves in relation to Christ. In the end, there are only two options: with Him or without Him.

One of the Gospel's constant qualities is newness. In every age, regardless of the degree to which it has been "Christianized," the Gospel has always turned out to be "new wine in old wineskins," tearing apart people's settled ideas about the world and about God. People always have ideas about justice, about the rules of religious life, about what is permissible and what is not. Therefore, when Christ comes to them, for whom the only rules are God's love, He inevitably comes into conflict with those whose religious ideas have obscured God, those who do not want to believe in the forgiveness of sinners and cannot understand that the sick are closer to the physician than the healthy, or those who consider themselves healthy.

And it is important to remember that this newness of the Gospel must without fail be revealed and recognized by us as well, and not only by Jesus' contemporaries, so that the paradox of His Message can also blow open our little world, opening it toward God.

Today's reading offers us two accounts linked by a single theme: religion and Revelation. The first describes Jesus healing a man whom Luke calls a “paralytic” (vv. 17-26). Jesus heals him by saying, “Thy sins are forgiven thee,” thereby displeasing the Pharisees present, who are absolutely certain that only God can forgive sins. In their view Jesus' words were therefore tantamount to blasphemy: by saying what He did, He placed Himself in God's position in their eyes (v. 21). In response Jesus reminded them of a generally accepted belief of the time: the Messiah, the “Son of Man,” has authority from God to forgive sins, for the messianic Kingdom comes into the world with the Messiah and the day of Judgment arrives. He immediately proved by His action that His words were not mere theory and that He truly had authority from God to forgive sins. The man He healed really did rise and walk, and Jesus had connected this healing precisely with the forgiveness of sins (vv. 22-25).

It is no wonder that everything that happened made such a strong impression on those around Him. They understood that before them stood no ordinary teacher, of whom there were many at the time, nor even a prophet, but perhaps the Messiah Himself, although He did not speak directly of His messiahship (v. 26). But such a Messiah did not fit the Pharisees' theological theories. They saw in Him only a man who did not heal by revealing the fullness of the Kingdom but cured the sick as others cured them, sometimes likewise resorting to the power of prayer or possessing a special gift of healing from God. A cure, even a supernatural or miraculous one, did not go beyond the boundaries of religion; those boundaries had no room for the Kingdom.

We see the same thing in the account of the events that took place in Levi's house (vv. 27-39). For a religious person, fellowship with a sinner is not merely unpleasant but dangerous: sin defiles, while religion presupposes the mandatory observance of the norms and rules of ritual purity. But Jesus had no intention of creating a new religion. He brought the Kingdom into the world in order to give everyone a chance at a new life in that Kingdom. So He asks an entirely natural question: who needs a physician, the healthy or the sick (vv. 31-32)?

The question is rhetorical, but within the framework of religion it has no solution. Even a religious person can essentially do nothing to help a sinner beyond calling him to repentance and conversion. Religion has no power to heal or renew a person by changing his sinful nature. The most it can give him is the possibility of temporary cleansing from the consequences of a particular sin, and even that is not always possible. A religious person really has nothing to do among sinners; he cannot help them in any way. But Jesus is not the founder of a new religion. He is the Messiah who brought the Kingdom into the world. He can heal and cleanse. And in His disciples He sees servants of the Kingdom who can help everyone who wants to enter it.