Gospel Meditation

Luke 5:27–39

Find a quiet place, alone and apart from distractions. Be comfortably alert, still, and at peace. Say the Lord’s Prayer. Sing or cant the Jesus Prayer. Pray for family, friends, neighbors, and yourself. Slowly and carefully read the passage of Scripture.

1.         Jesus observed a tax collector named Levi (later to be known as Matthew) sitting at his station.  Jesus said to him, “follow me” and he did, abruptly leaving everything behind.

2.         Levi threw a big dinner party at his home and other tax collectors joined in. Some Pharisees and scribes, observing this, wondered how it was that this Jesus would have anything to do with such sinners.

3.         Jesus, sensing this “righteous” attitude stated that only those who were sick needed a physician. Then He uttered the incredible fact that He had come to call “sinners to repentance.”

4.         Jesus’ detractors reminded Him that John’s (the Baptist) followers fasted but that His did not, which was not proper in their eyes.

5.         Jesus, using an analogy from Jewish weddings, in that while the bridegroom is there at the festivities, there is no fasting. But when the bridegroom is gone, and the party is over, then there will be fasting.

6.         Jesus then gives out two parables about practical things, one, not sewing new cloth to patch old garments and two, not putting new (unfermented)d wine into old wine skins. In both cases, the cloth and the new wine would be lost.

7.         Here now was being observed new cloth and new wine. Jesus would not adhere to the old, and useless ways of the Law keepers.