(Audio)
It has been observed that most of the history of religion could be summarized as man's search for God. But the history of Judaism and Christianity is a record of God's search for man. Man was alienated from God by his fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. After the fall God sought Adam in order to give him an opportunity to confess and to repent. But Adam had abandoned his trust in God and could not bear to be found, afraid to come into God's presence. As a consequence he attempted to hide from God. We would call this foolish, as of course it is, if we weren't aware of that we share this same tendency. Adam is the prototypical example of how we fare on our own apart from grace. We not only can't find the way back to God on our own but we even become suspicious of his attempts to find us. We misjudge his outstretched arm of healing as a potential threat. Thus, many of us, like Levi, have found no place for ourselves, spiritually speaking, but to sit at our customs post day after day.
As he passed by, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus,
sitting at the customs post.
The customs post of the tax collector is a metaphor for the unsatisfactory nature of trying to achieve ultimate happiness by any temporal worldly means. We know that no matter how much we accumulate it will never make up for the sense of alienation we feel at a deeper level of our being. And yet, we return, day after day, because, we think, what else is there for us? There is probably a sense within our hearts that, in the end, this is all we really deserve, and that we are facing the just punishment of a hostile deity. But it is precisely into this self-isolated sense of hopeless despair that Jesus enters with his shocking and sudden invitation.
Jesus said to him, “Follow me.”
And he got up and followed Jesus.
How suddenly grace can change our lives! All at once, with a single sentence, Jesus turned Levi's world upside down. Every point of data that Levi thought he knew about himself and the world was proven immediately and irrefutably wrong. There was hope for him. His identity was not defined by the words 'sinner' and 'tax collector'. That which he could never have escaped or overcome on his own had in an instant lost all power over him. In meeting Jesus he came to understand that there was more to himself than he had ever dared to guess.
The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light (see Gaudium et Spes 22).
We sometimes celebrate the conversion of Levi from a safe distance. We think, 'how nice for him' while wondering what it has to do with us. And this implicitly means that we have a bit more in common with the scribes and Pharisees than we would prefer. It is a sign that we have begun to see ourselves as already completely healed and whole within ourselves without the need for Jesus to call us higher or invite us to share his life more deeply. We prefer not to recognize that we are still the sick in need of a physician, still sinners in need of mercy. And this is not to say that Jesus has not already made an immense difference in our lives. But it is an acknowledgment that he always has more in store for us until the day we see him face to face in heaven. The Adam in us continues to doubt that this is a good thing. But let's give more weight to the testimony of Levi. After Jesus interrupts our normal patterns of existence what awaits us is not condemnation, but rather, a banquet.
While he was at table in his house,
many tax collectors and sinners sat with Jesus and his disciples;
for there were many who followed him.
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