Luke 5:27–39

Jesus Calls Levi

²⁷After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” ²⁸And he got up, left everything, and followed him.^*

²⁹Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house, and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others reclining at the table with them.^{* 30}The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”^{* 31}Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick; ³²I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”^*

The Question about Fasting

³³Then they said to him, “John’s disciples, like the disciples of the Pharisees, frequently fast and pray, but your disciples eat and drink.”^{* 34}Jesus said to them, “You cannot make wedding attendants fast while the bridegroom is with them, can you? ³⁵The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.”^{* 36}He also told them a parable: “No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise, not only will one tear the new garment, but the piece from the new will not match the old garment. ³⁷Similarly, no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins and will spill out, and the skins will be ruined. ³⁸But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.^{o 39}And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine but says, ‘The old is good.’ ”^p