Luke 5:27–39

Jesus Calls Levi and Eats With Sinners

5:27–32pp—Mt 9:9–13; Mk 2:14–17

²⁷After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,”^p Jesus said to him, ²⁸and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.^q

²⁹Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors^r and others were eating with them. ³⁰But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect^s complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”^t

³¹Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. ³²I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”^u

Jesus Questioned About Fasting

5:33–39pp—Mt 9:14–17; Mk 2:18–22

³³They said to him, “John’s disciples^v often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking.”

³⁴Jesus answered, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom^w fast while he is with them? ³⁵But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them;^x in those days they will fast.”

³⁶He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. ³⁷And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. ³⁸No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. ³⁹And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’ ”