Lenten Reflection – Day 15 of the Great Lent
New Wine – St. Mark 2:13-22
“I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (2:17)
Yesterday was Mshariyo Sunday. We watched four men tear open a roof to bring their paralyzed friend to Jesus. Christ forgave the man’s sins before healing his legs. The order told us everything. The soul matters more than the body. Forgiveness comes before restoration.
Today Mark continues the story. Jesus walks out of the house in Capernaum and heads to the lakeshore. He passes the tax booth. A man named Levi is sitting there, doing his job. Collecting money for the Roman occupation from his own people. Despised by everyone. And Jesus looks at him and says two words.
“Follow Me.”
No interview. No background check. No probation period. No requirement to clean up first. Just: follow Me. And Levi gets up and follows.
Then something even more scandalous happens. Jesus goes to Levi’s house and sits down to eat with a room full of tax collectors and sinners. The religious leaders are appalled. The question about fasting comes up. And Jesus answers with an image that has echoed through the centuries.
New wine needs new wineskins.
We are fifteen days into the Great Lent. This is exactly the passage we need. Because some of us are sitting at our own version of the tax booth, wondering if Christ would ever call someone like us. Some of us are wondering why the fast does not look the way we expected. And some of us are trying to pour new wine into old skins and wondering why everything is splitting at the seams.
Follow Me (vv. 13-14)
“Then He went out again by the sea; and all the multitude came to Him, and He taught them. As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ So he arose and followed Him.” (2:13–14)
Tax collectors in first-century Palestine were not civil servants. They were collaborators. They worked for Rome. They collected money from their own neighbours, their own relatives, their own people, and handed it to the occupying empire. They were allowed to add their own commission on top. Most of them added generously. They were rich. And they were hated.
Levi was one of these men. Mark does not soften it. He does not tell us that Levi was a good tax collector or an honest one. He simply says: Levi was sitting at the tax office. That is the whole portrait. A man in the middle of his sin. At his post. Doing the thing everyone despised him for.
And Jesus called him.
Not after Levi repented. Not after Levi showed signs of change. Not after Levi came to the synagogue and expressed interest in spiritual matters. While he was sitting at the booth. In the act. Mid-career. Jesus looked at him and said: follow Me.
St. Ephrem the Syrian, in his Commentary on the Diatessaron, notes the deliberateness of Christ’s route. Jesus did not accidentally pass the tax booth. He chose to walk that way. He chose to look at Levi. He chose to call a man everyone else had written off. Ephrem teaches that Christ’s calling is always an interruption. It does not wait for the right moment. It creates the right moment. Levi’s booth was the wrong place. His profession was the wrong profession. His reputation was the wrong reputation. And none of that stopped Christ from saying: you. Now. Follow Me.1
“So he arose and followed Him.”
Six words. An entire life changed. Levi stood up from the booth and left everything behind. Mark does not describe the internal process. No lengthy deliberation. No wrestling in prayer. No consultation with a spiritual director. He heard. He rose. He followed. Whatever happened inside Levi between hearing the call and standing up is hidden from us. Mark shows us only the action. And the action was total.
On Day 7, the leper came to Christ on his own. On Day 14, the paralytic was carried by friends. Today, Levi is called while sitting still. Three different people. Three different starting positions. Three different paths to the same Person. The leper came with his disease. The paralytic came with his helplessness. Levi came with his sin. Christ received all three.
Eating with Sinners (vv. 15–17)
“Now it happened, as He was dining in Levi’s house, that many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many, and they followed Him. And when the scribes and Pharisees saw Him eating with tax collectors and sinners, they said to His disciples, ‘How is it that He eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?’ When Jesus heard it, He said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.'” (2:15–17)
Levi throws a party. He fills his house with his friends. And his friends are tax collectors and sinners. People the respectable community would not eat with. People the synagogue would not welcome. People the Pharisees crossed the street to avoid.
And Jesus sits down and eats with them.
In the ancient Middle East, sharing a meal was not casual. It was a declaration of fellowship. You ate with people you accepted. People you considered equals. People you were willing to be associated with in public. To eat with someone was to say: I am with you. I belong at your table. You belong at mine.
The scribes and Pharisees are scandalized. Not because they misunderstand what Jesus is doing. Because they understand it perfectly. He is declaring fellowship with the unclean. He is saying: these people belong at my table. And that is intolerable to men who have spent their entire lives drawing lines between the clean and the unclean, the righteous and the sinners, the worthy and the unworthy.
Jesus answers with a sentence so simple it needs no commentary. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”
He does not argue theology. He states a fact. Doctors go where the sick are. That is what doctors do. If you want to find a physician, go to the hospital, not the gymnasium. If you want to find Christ, go where the sinners are. That is where He works.
“I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
St. John Chrysostom, in his Homily 30 on Matthew, says this sentence contains the entire Gospel in miniature. Christ did not come for the people who had it together. He came for the people who were falling apart. Not because the righteous do not need Him. But because the righteous, or those who think they are righteous, do not know they need Him. The sick person who knows he is sick will accept the doctor. The sick person who thinks he is healthy will refuse treatment. Chrysostom warns that the most dangerous spiritual condition is not sin. It is the delusion of righteousness. The tax collector who knows he is a sinner is closer to God than the Pharisee who thinks he is not.2
On Day 7, Christ touched the leper. The religious world recoiled. Today, Christ eats with sinners. The religious world recoils again. The pattern is the same. Christ crosses every boundary the religious establishment has built. Not because boundaries are bad. But because the boundaries were never meant to keep God out. They were meant to keep God’s people in. And when the boundary becomes a wall that prevents the sick from reaching the physician, Christ walks through it.
The Great Lent is a season of table fellowship with Christ. The Eucharist is the meal. The Church is the house. And the invitation is not to the righteous. It is to the sinners. If you have spent fifteen days of fasting and feel like you are failing, if you feel more aware of your sin now than you did on Day 1, if you are more conscious of your brokenness than of your progress, you are exactly the kind of person Christ sat down with in Levi’s house. You are the target audience. Not the Pharisees standing outside looking in with disgust. The tax collectors inside sharing bread with the physician.
The Question About Fasting (vv. 18–20)
“The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were fasting. Then they came and said to Him, ‘Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Can the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.’” (2:18-20)
This is the question the Great Lent has been waiting for. We are fifteen days into the fast. And someone finally asks: why do we fast?
The Pharisees fasted. John’s disciples fasted. Both groups looked at Jesus’s followers and noticed they were not fasting. They were at a party. In the house of a tax collector. Eating and drinking. Where is the discipline? Where is the self-denial? Where is the seriousness?
Jesus answers with an image that changes everything. A wedding. A bridegroom. And a feast.
“Can the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them?”
In Jewish culture, the friends of the bridegroom had specific duties during the wedding celebration. They were responsible for the joy. Their job was to celebrate. To feast. To ensure the week-long wedding party was filled with gladness. It would have been absurd, even offensive, for them to fast during the wedding. You do not mourn at a celebration. You do not grieve in the presence of joy.
Jesus is saying: I am the bridegroom. My presence is the wedding feast. While I am here, in the flesh, walking with My disciples, eating with sinners, healing the sick, forgiving the paralysed, calling tax collectors, my disciples cannot fast. The bridegroom is present. The feast is now.
“But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.”
Here is the turn. The bridegroom will be taken away. This is the first hint, early in Mark’s Gospel, of the Cross. The party will end. The groom will be removed. And when he is gone, fasting will begin.
We are in those days. The Great Lent is the season when the Church fasts because the bridegroom has been taken away. Not permanently. We know He is risen. We know He is coming back. But between the Ascension and the Second Coming, between the already and the not yet, the Church fasts. Not as punishment. Not as performance. As longing.
This is the meaning of the Lenten fast that no one talks about. Fasting is not primarily about discipline. It is not primarily about self-control. It is not even primarily about repentance, though it includes all of these things. Fasting is about desire. It is the body’s way of saying: I am hungry for something this world cannot give me. I am waiting for someone who is not yet here. My stomach is empty because my heart is longing for the bridegroom.
St. Isaac the Syrian teaches that true fasting is not the suppression of hunger. It is the redirection of hunger. The body hungers for food. The soul hungers for God. When we fast from food, we do not eliminate the hunger. We reveal it. We let the body’s emptiness become a window into the soul’s deeper emptiness. And through that window, we see what we have been hungry for all along. Not bread. The Bread of Life. Not wine. The cup of the New Covenant. Not the table of Levi’s house. The table of the Kingdom.3
New Cloth and New Wine (vv. 21–22)
“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; or else the new piece pulls away from the old, and the tear is made worse. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins.” (2:21–22)
Two images. Same point. What Christ is doing cannot be contained in the old structures.
An unshrunk patch on an old garment. When the patch gets wet, it shrinks. It pulls away from the old fabric. The tear becomes worse. The repair fails.
New wine in old wineskins. New wine is still fermenting. It expands. It produces gas. It pushes against the walls of its container. An old wineskin has already stretched to its limit. It has no flexibility left. The new wine pushes. The old skin cracks. The wine is lost. The skin is ruined.
Jesus is not talking about fabric and leather. He is talking about what happens when the kingdom of God meets the structures of human religion.
The Pharisees had a system. It worked. It kept the boundaries clear. It defined who was in and who was out. It told you what to eat, when to fast, who to associate with, and how to stay clean. The system was not evil. Much of it was based on Scripture. But the system had become old. Rigid. Inflexible. It could no longer stretch to accommodate what God was doing.
And what God was doing was calling tax collectors. Eating with sinners. Forgiving paralytics before healing them. Touching lepers instead of avoiding them. The new wine of the kingdom was pressing against the old skins of the existing religious order. And the old skins were cracking.
St. Cyril of Alexandria, in his Commentary on the Gospel of Luke (on the parallel passage in Luke 5:36–39), teaches that the “new wine” is not a new religion replacing an old one. It is the fulfilment of what the old was always pointing toward. The law was good. The prophets were true. The fasting of the Pharisees was not wrong. But all of it was preparation. A wineskin designed for a particular season. When the wine of the kingdom arrived, it needed a vessel large enough to hold it. The old vessel was too small. Not because it was bad. Because the new wine was too abundant.4
This is deeply relevant to the Great Lent.
Some of us are trying to pour new wine into old skins. We are having genuine encounters with God during this fast. Real repentance. Real tenderness. Real hunger for the bridegroom. But we are trying to fit these experiences into our old patterns. The old way of praying that has become routine. The old way of relating to God that keeps Him at a safe distance. The old self-image that says: I am not the kind of person God sits down to eat with.
Christ says: that skin will not hold this wine. The new thing God is doing in you during this fast requires a new vessel. A new openness. A new willingness to be stretched beyond your old capacity.
The Pharisees asked why Jesus was not fasting their way. Jesus answered: because something new has arrived. And the new does not fit in the old.
Fifteen days into the fast, the question is not whether you are fasting correctly. The question is whether you are allowing the fast to make you new. Whether the wine of God’s grace is finding in you a vessel flexible enough to hold it. Whether you are clinging to the old garment or allowing Christ to give you a new one.
For Our Journey Today
Hear the call where you are. Levi was called at the tax booth. Not after he repented. Not after he cleaned up. At the booth. In the middle of his ordinary, compromised, imperfect life. Today, hear the call where you are. Not where you wish you were. Not where you think you should be. Where you actually are. Christ does not wait for the ideal moment. He creates it.
Sit at the table. Christ is eating with sinners. That is His table. If you feel unworthy of it, you have understood the invitation correctly. The table is not for the righteous. It is for the sick who know they need a physician. Today, do not stand outside with the Pharisees looking in through the window. Go in. Sit down. Take the bread He offers.
Let the wineskin stretch. Is the fast doing something in you that does not fit your old patterns? Good. Let it. Do not force the new wine back into the old container. If your prayer life is changing, let it change. If your understanding of God is expanding, let it expand. If the fast is breaking open something you kept sealed for years, let it break. New wine needs new skins. And new skins hurt as they stretch. But they hold the wine. And the wine is worth it.
Lord Jesus Christ, who passed by the tax booth and saw not a traitor but a disciple, pass by us today. We are sitting at our own booths. Stuck in our own compromises. Defined by our own failures. And You look at us and say: follow Me. Give us the courage of Levi. To stand up. To leave the booth. To follow without calculating the cost. And when You sit at our table, surrounded by our broken friends and our unfinished repentance, do not leave. Stay. Eat with us. Heal us. Make us new. Not a patch on the old garment. Not old wine in comfortable skins. New. By the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos, the holy Evangelist Mark, St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist, and all the saints, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
References
- St. Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306–373). Commentary on the Diatessaron. Edition: Saint Ephrem’s Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron, translated by Carmel McCarthy, Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 2 (Oxford University Press, 1993). ↩︎
- St. John Chrysostom (c. 349–407). Homily 30 on Matthew, on Matthew 9:9–13 (the parallel account of the calling of Matthew/Levi and the meal with tax collectors and sinners). Edition: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (NPNF), Series I, Vol. 10: Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, translated by George Prevost and M.B. Riddle (available at newadvent.org and ccel.org). ↩︎
- St. Isaac the Syrian (7th century). Ascetical Homilies. Edition: The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, translated by the Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Holy Transfiguration Monastery Press, Boston, revised edition 2011). Selections also in Sebastian Brock, The Wisdom of Saint Isaac the Syrian (SLG Press, 1997). ↩︎
- 20. Edition: The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, translated by the Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Holy Transfiguration Monastery Press, Boston, revised edition 2011). Selections also in Sebastian Brock, The Wisdom of Saint Isaac the Syrian (SLG Press, 1997). ↩
St. Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376–444). Commentary on the Gospel of Luke, Homily 13, on Luke 5:33–39 (the parallel passage to Mark 2:18–22, including the parables of the new cloth and new wine). Edition: Commentary on the Gospel of Saint Luke, translated by R. Payne Smith (Studion Publishers, 1983; reprinted by Astir Publishing, 2009). Excerpts also in the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Luke, edited by Arthur A. Just Jr. (IVP Academic, 2003). ↩︎
