Elizabeth Wood
Dear friends,
In my last job before retirement I worked for Levi Strauss and Co., the original jeans company, where fabric technologists constantly looked at shrinkage.
Critical to selecting quality denim is the extent to which it will or won’t shrink when washed. If you are of a certain age like me, you probably remember buying a new pair of jeans and wearing them in the bath so they shrank to fit you perfectly!
Today’s gospel is set against the growing firestorm around Jesus’ ministry.
He has just healed a leper, an untouchable outcast. Now he is dining with tax collectors—hated agents of the Roman Empire.
Looking on are the Pharisees, who believe that they are more pious, keeping themselves separate, fasting and living according to a strict set of rules. For them, tax collectors are the lowest of the low.
Here is Jesus not just acknowledging them but socializing, not fasting but feasting! One of their number, Levi, has even answered the call to follow Jesus and walked away from everything in his prior life. Imagine how unsettling this all must have been.
When questioned, Jesus says: “no one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth onto an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made.”
Jesus knew that you can’t graft new fabric onto old because the new material will shrink and tear away. (So, if you need to patch your jeans, make sure to wash the patch first).
Jesus calls for completely new ways of thinking and acting, telling those around him that they can’t just superimpose the ways of Christ onto their current culture and power structures.
The ways of Christ do not depend on rigid rules, on keeping separate, on fasting, and other displays of piety. And if lepers can be healed and tax collectors can be included, then no sinner is beyond forgiveness. Two thoughts that completely upend the ways the Pharisees see the world.
Like the Pharisees, we cannot follow Christ by making incremental changes in our lives—holding onto what we have always had and done and thought, somehow patching some “Jesus stuff” on top. Those stitches will not hold.
If we are to follow Jesus, we must walk away from our old lives, as Levi did, and follow this radically different and inclusive path.
What is holding us back?
—Elizabeth