Levi the tax collector speaks….

Do you know what it is to be despised? To be greeted each day with a look of disdain (If, that is, they bother to greet you at all)?   It hurts, you know!  Even if you build a hard shell around to protect yourself, it hurts.  

Life around here has been hell ever since I took the job and went to work for Herod Antipas.

My office is a tiny toll booth on the main road through Capernaum on Sea.  The village itself is unimportant; but it’s position right on the furthest edge of Herod’s kingdom is what gave rise to the job.  Customs and excise, that’s me.  I was employed to sit there all day and take the taxes. 

In reality I took a lot more than that.  No, I don’t mean backhanders or anything like that, (Contrary to popular opinion I am not corrupt) but ever since I took the job, I have had to take insults and abuse of many kinds.  I’ve even been frozen out of the synagogue (yes, even here where a Roman build it for them!!)  They’ve made it quite clear that I can have no part.  The social exclusion is, as I said, like a slow burning and sulphurous hell.

From the way they treat me, you’d think I was the one who set the taxes and did well out of collecting them.  But that is absolute balderdash!  I don’t – on either count.   Truth is, I am just a very small cog in a big wheel; a low grade and low paid civil servant, doing my job like everyone else.    I have to eat, don’t I?  And don’t you think that if there was anything better I would have taken it?  This is a fool’s errand; I don’t need you to tell me that.  But, ‘needs must’, they say.  Unlike some around here, I don’t own boats or have a share in the family fishing business.  

Now, don’t get me wrong; I am not ‘Billy-no-mates’ and there are parts of my job I just love. You get to meet so many different people working on this road.  There are travellers from the East, from Philip’s land in the Golan Heights, from the Greek cities in the Decapolis, from Persia and lands afar.  It’s a very cosmopolitan place, Capernaum, you know.  The Inns are usually full of all sorts of travellers.  And I, of course, get to meet them all.

I am not the only one, by the way.  With Capernaum being a border town, there’s quite a community of civil servants here.  The locals of course want as little to do with us as possible, so we have to get on well by ourselves.  We often eat in each other’s homes, throwing parties to invite our friends to meet some interesting traveller or guest.  We don’t cause trouble and we don’t look for any bother with the locals either.  

So why do they despise us so much?  Well, I guess part of it is that Herod and the government are so far away in Tiberius.  The holders of power seem so distant, and we are the local face of authority and probably the nearest they will ever get to it.  So, I may well only be doing my job (and maybe I don’t like the rules any more than they do) but when I sit in that booth it’s not me that they see, but the face of officialdom.  And they have got to vent somewhere, or so they think.  So, I become the butt of their every moan, complaint and more.   They resent me, not for who I am, but for who and what I represent.  Really, I am no-one to them; but what I represent, they hate with a vengeance.  That’s a dangerous combination.  They would never dare vent their anger on Herod himself, but ‘mister nobody’ here will do just fine.  I am a sitting target, aren’t I?   

Oh, and there’s one more thing about this particular station that makes things worse.  I said Capernaum is a border town, and that it is.  But it hasn’t always been.  This border only appeared when Herod the Great died and divided his kingdom between his three sons.  Here, Antipas and his brother Philip’s lands meet.  And the pair of them are as eager as the other to milk helpless travellers for as much as they can get!  Many around here can remember a time before my toll booth was built.  They could travel freely then, without border crossings and controls.  And, OK, so they say the road tax helps to build good roads, but who really cares about that?   Faster roads simply mean faster troop deployment and greater oppression by our rulers.   And even if you’re not angered by all that politics, who would be happy to have to pay a toll to visit their own land and relatives just down the road?  Elsewhere, I believe, there have been riots when toll booths like this have opened.

So, can you see what I have got myself mixed up in, simply by taking this job?  I am an object of derision; hated and despised, sometimes with venom.  And yes, I have grown to be thick skinned about it.  I have got used to the looks, the jibes and the stares.  And for every friend I have lost I have found others to replace them.  There’s quite a community of us ‘sinners’, as they call us.  But, don’t you think, it is too easy to pour scorn and to exclude those who don’t fit your expectations?  It’s simpler to draw lines and cast out, than to blur those lines and struggle with the untidy (although, I believe, more colourful) mix left behind.  People hate me because they like to think they are not like me. It makes them feel good and it makes them feel more a part of something if they can look down on me and rule me out.  If it was not me, they would find some other scapegoat, I am certain.  But, shall I tell you something? Underneath this toughened exterior, I am human too.  And their self righteous derision cuts sharp as if they had stabbed me with a knife.  Their banter, I can take (cruel though it is).  It is the persistent undermining of my humanity that hurts so much.  

So can you imagine what it felt like yesterday when this preacher and his gang approached me from the lake side?   The preacher was new to me, but his followers I knew well.  They were locals; fishermen, known to be hot-headed, too.  Andrew; he was alright.  But his brother Peter was dangerously impetuous, and the ‘Sons of Thunder’ didn’t earn their nick-name for nothing!

I saw them coming, and so I was ready for it.  What would it be this time?  A lecture from the preacher; a cursing from his pals; a barrage of insults, or more?  (The stones on the beach here, I tell you, can look very menacing when you are on your own facing a hostile crowd!)

But I have to tell you, I don’t know whose jaw dropped the furthest (mine or his disciples’) when the preacher came right up to me, looked me straight in the eye and said: “Follow me!”

At first I thought he must be joking, and I waited for the sneer to follow.   But no, he was absolutely serious.  I laughed out loud myself, but my laughter soon stopped short when I found myself asking: ‘Why not?’  This guy clearly meant it!  His offer was genuine and up front.  When was the last time a preacher, or any one come to it, had ever shown such interest in me?

Suddenly something gave within me.  I realised that, more than anything, this was what I really wanted, needed and longed for; to be accepted, invited, welcomed;  genuinely, truly, honestly.

In that moment, he called out to the very depth of my being: “Levi, son of Alphaeus, come and follow me!”  I tell you; I didn’t have to be asked twice. I left my desk immediately and went with him!

And last night, of course, I had to throw a party!  I wanted my friends to meet this Jesus, and he was more than happy to meet with them.  Openly and publically, he showed that he was not afraid to be seen in my company, and he was so relaxed and at ease with my crowd it was as though he had always belonged!

But he hadn’t and he didn’t; that’s what the moral watch dogs around were saying.  Yes, of course they were there; cowering in the shadows, but more than ready to have their say behind our backs!  As one who had lived with it forever, I could sense their mood and my ears tuned into their mutterings about this man they said was too ready to associate with ‘tax collectors and sinners’.

So, the conflict continued.  But now it was different.  It was harsher, more threatening.  They fumed with indignation.   Can you believe it, they appeared to despise this preacher more than me, simply for choosing to be my friend?!   Why?  How could such openness and acceptance threaten them so much?

It was different for me, too.  The burden was no longer on my shoulders.  Having borne the brunt for someone else all this time, now I knew what it was like for someone else to bear the brunt for me.   The focus of derision had moved almost entirely onto him.  He took my burden; all the enmity, hatred and fear.  He chose to be despised and rejected, and yet to show me nothing but acceptance and love!

And why did they despise him so vehemently?  I think it is because his welcome served as a mirror which reflected back to them their own meanness and smallness of heart.  When they challenged him, he said that only the sick needed a doctor; and I for one knew that I had been healed.    But was I the only one to catch the irony in what he was saying?  I may have obviously been healed by his friendship, but what of them?   Did they think he meant they didn’t need healing?  From where I stood, it was abundantly clear that Jesus’ actions revealed them to be very sick indeed!

And now, in the clear light of day, Jesus, I recon you have opened a wound that is going to take an awful lot of healing.  It will fester, and probably become very dangerous for you.  No one likes to be stretched and exposed like you stretched and exposed them.  No one likes their own short comings brought out in to the open.  They think they don’t need a doctor…  well, when they can reach out and welcome outsiders like me with such an ease as you do, then they might be able to say they are healthy!  Until then, your presence is always going to challenge and convict. They’ll try and cast you out, just as they do the likes of me.  So take care, Jesus! 

And let it be known, you are always welcome in my home, Lord.  And there will always be plenty of room at my table for tax collectors and ‘sinners’ alike!