Invite

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

INVITE

Luke 5:27-35

27 After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him, 28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him. 29 Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. 30 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" 31 Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."  33 They said to him, "John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking." 34 Jesus answered, "Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? 35 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; in those days they will fast." 

NIV

Although we have so many truths within this narrative we simply cannot parcel it as each parcel would be incomplete without the whole. First we should deal with once again someone encountering Jesus by his telling them to follow him. Why Luke prefers to call him Levi when Matthew calls himself Matthew. But nevertheless it was the man we know as Matthew who in fact wrote another gospel. We know of the dislike for the tax collectors as they were working for Rome and it was customarily thought these men collected more than Rome demanded thus keeping the balance, their ill-gotten gain, for themselves becoming rather wealthy on the backs of their fellow Jews. Yet when Jesus speaks to him only to say, Follow me, he gets up and does so, leaving everything behind. We need to know that word Follow is not just follow, as we follow another car down the road, but it carries the meaning of accompany me, be a follower of me, be my disciple. This then is an offer to become a disciple of someone who heals people, teaches great truths about the kingdom of God and does all with incredible authority. Why would anyone refuse to accompany him? What magical attraction does the ‘everything’ hold over people, they would not leave it to follow Jesus? Levi, or Matthew was so excited about his encounter with Jesus he held a great feast in his honor, inviting all his friends, specifically the other tax collectors, as well as some others who are nameless for this narrative. What we are to garner out of this is when we encounter Jesus we should be so grateful, so overjoyed that Jesus has called us to follow  him to accompany him, to be his disciple, that we invite the people we so closely associate with to meet him and dine with him, to hear him speak truths about the kingdom of God, to touch their lives the way he has ours. We will get to the conversation between Jesus and the complainers later, but let us remain focused on this truth about inviting those who we know to meet him. It is unlikely as long as we only associate with other believers, we will not be having any banquets for those who need to meet Jesus. Sometimes it seems we have isolated ourselves from them, at least in our own self-righteousness. We call us saved and them unsaved. We call us saints them sinners. We call ourselves church goers, them the unchurched. We say we are Spirit-filled and they are controlled by the evil one, or at least by their own carnal nature. We find every way we can to divide ourselves from their way of life, rather than inviting them to a banquet with Jesus. Matthew was so excited he could not contain this wonderful thing that had happened to his life, he had to have his friends know about it. Maybe we have just run out of unsaved friends to invite, so all we can do it hang out with other believers. Maybe we should be making new friends, even other dreaded tax collectors, those not highly thought of by the righteous. Maybe it is time to invite. Maybe we get too focused on our own lives we forget to see the needs of others, or why the Lord has us where he does, so we can invite someone to the banquet.