Jesus Calls Levi and Eats With Sinners^(A)

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

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

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.”^(G)

Jesus Questioned About Fasting^(H)

³³ They said to him, “John’s disciples^(I) 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 bridegroom^(J) fast while he is with them? ³⁵ But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them;^(K) 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.’”