Jesus Calls Levi and Eats With Sinners

5:27–32pp—Mt 9:9–13; Mk 2:14–17

27 After 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, 28 and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.q

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

31 Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. 32 I 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

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

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

36 He 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. 37 And 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. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. 39 And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for they say, ‘The old is better.’ ”