Gospel of 16 January 2021
Saturday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
Mark 2:13-17
Your light must shine in the sight of men
Jesus went out to the shore of the lake; and all the people came to him, and he taught them. As he was walking on he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus, sitting by the customs house, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.
When Jesus was at dinner in his house, a number of tax collectors and sinners were also sitting at the table with Jesus and his disciples; for there were many of them among his followers. When the scribes of the Pharisee party saw him eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ When Jesus heard this he said to them, ‘It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick. I did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners.’
Reflexion
The words of the letter to the Hebrew invoke such powerful images to both hearer and reader: “The word of God is something alive and active: it cuts like any double-edged sword but more finely: it can slip through the place where the soul is divided from the spirit, or joints from the marrow; it can judge the secret emotions and thoughts.”
What is closer than soul and spirit, joint and marrow? Yet, God’s living Word with its power to transform penetrates to that depth in our being, and nothing can be hidden from it, including every secret emotion or thought. Just like a surgeon’s scalpel, under a skilful hand, the blade can open us up and reveal what’s going on inside us.
This is what happened to Levi in the gospel. Being a tax collector, Levi or Matthew was viewed as a traitor to his own people, a collaborator with the hated colonial forces, a member of the establishment that exacted this demeaning and debilitating tax from the people, a reminder of their subjugation. Levi must have certainly hardened his heart to remain in this hated profession. Nothing could penetrate that stoic armour of his heart, nothing until he met our Lord.
Our Lord issues a simple order, the same order that He issued to the other pair of fishermen brothers: “Follow me.” No sophisticated argument, no pleading, no appeal to reason or to the heart but just the simple, powerful and unadulterated word of God - “follow me.” And like a double-edged sword, it hit home and stirred the heart of Levi.
While Levi had opened his heart to the scalpel of the divine Physician, the scribes of the Pharisee party refused to do so. Our Lord’s call to follow Him would have fallen on deaf ears. The Pharisees expected to be followed. It was simply below their status to follow another. Their pride had blinded them to their own dire condition. When someone is unable to admit that he is sick, he will never see any need for a doctor. Only the sick acknowledge their need for the doctor and would thus avail themselves of the cure.
Just as our Lord had indicated at the beginning of His public ministry, the twin keys to open the doors to the Kingdom of God are simply repentance and faith, “Repent and believe in the gospel.” To do so would require humility and honesty. Honesty to admit that we are sinners, and humility to seek God’s mercy and pardon.
Sometimes, in our pride and shame, we try to hide and cover up the sins in our life. But nothing is hidden from God. And God’s Word reveals things in us and to us, that we might think could be hidden. It shows us the truth about ourselves. If we wish to be set free, if we wish to be healed, let us not harden our hearts to Him. By the power of His Spirit, God convicts us of the truth through His Word and leads us to live by the way of love, sharing His goodness and His good news with others.