“Follow Me!”

“Follow Me!”
A new normal in the land of our births is to tag some people as traitors. Once you have been tagged a traitor the next thing is you are kidnapped and at best a huge ransom is demanded or at the worst you are gruesomely murdered.
During the time of Jesus tax collectors were regarded as traitors by their fellow Jews. Their crime was that they were Jews but worked for the Romans. The Jews did not like paying taxes to the foreigners who ruled them. The worst consideration of tax collectors was that they were regarded as sinners.
Levi (Matthew) was one such tax collector. He was sitting at his tax booth where Jesus saw him and said, “Follow me.” As soon as Jesus called “Levi got up, left everything and followed him”(Lk.5:27-28). At the tax booth Levi did not have much to consider as private cherished possession, but whatever there was he left them there. As a tax collector he was wealthy to the extent that he “held a great banquet for Jesus at his house” with enough to eat and drink by “a large crowd of tax collectors and others…”(Lk.5:29).
Levi became one of the twelve closest “Aide-de-camp” – Apostles of Jesus.
Levi abandoned wealth and spent some for a great banquet for Jesus. Tax collectors may have been tagged sinners for working for the Romans but they also made themselves so. They were cheaters and were corrupt. When Zacchaeus a chief tax collector received Jesus in his home he declared, “Look, Lord!…If I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount”(Lk.19:8). Of course, Jesus agreed that tax collectors were sinners. When the Pharisees and the teachers of the law accused him for eating with sinners, he did not refute it. He told them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance”(Lk.30-31).
Levi was not ashamed to let the people know that he had chosen to follow Jesus. He held a banquet for Jesus to which many were in attendance. This was in contrast to people like Joseph of Arimathea who was “a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews”(Jn.19:38).
My friend, our take home message is that wealth, possessions and sin should not be a hindrance as you follow the Lord Jesus Christ. Spend for the Lord when you are capable. Do not be ashamed to identify yourself as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Above all, Jesus knows that you are a sinner, but when you come to him he tells you, “Go now and leave your life of sin”(Jn.8:11).
Prayer: Thank you Lord Jesus Christ for calling me as I am. Make me what you want me to be. Amen!
Have a blessed day! Peace be with you!