Mark 2:13-22 - Levi, Mercy at the Table, Fasting, and New Wine

The paralytic has just risen at Christ’s word and carried his bed through the crowd. Now Jesus passes another seated man and says, “Follow Me.” The first man was visibly unable to rise; Levi sits inside an occupation that has made him publicly compromised or despised. Christ’s authority reaches both forms of bondage. He forgives, calls, and raises.

The call then widens into a table crowded with tax collectors and sinners. At that table Jesus names Himself through two images that govern the whole passage: Physician and Bridegroom. The Physician comes near because the sick need Him. The Bridegroom’s presence turns discipleship into a feast, while His coming removal gives fasting its sorrow and hope. The cloth and wineskins complete the teaching. Christ has not come to add a religious patch to an unchanged life. He gives a life so new that the person receiving it must also be renewed.

Levi rises and follows (Mark 2:13-14)

¹³ Then He went out again by the sea; and all the multitude came to Him, and He taught them. ¹⁴ As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he arose and followed Him.

Mark moves from “all the multitude” to one man. Jesus teaches the crowd by the Sea of Galilee, then sees Levi sitting at the toll or tax office. Capernaum was a small fishing and agricultural community on the northwest shore, within the territory of Herod Antipas. Toll collectors handled charges connected with produce and transported goods, and their work carried deep social suspicion. Mark, however, does not tell us which levy Levi collected, who employed him, or whether he personally cheated anyone. The Gospel gives enough for the scandal without turning inference into biography: Christ calls a man whose occupation makes him publicly compromised in the eyes of his neighbors.¹²

The Greek telōnion names the toll office itself.³ Jesus does not wait for Levi to leave the place and present a cleaner version of himself. He sees him there. Grace reaches the actual person in the actual place of bondage, shame, calculation, and habit. This does not make the tax office holy or excuse injustice. It means that repentance begins because Christ has drawn near, not because the sinner first escaped by his own strength.

“Follow Me” asks for more than admiration. Mark places the command beside Levi’s bodily answer: he was sitting; he arose; he followed. The Gospel does not preserve a speech, bargain, or period of delay. Levi entrusts his future to the One who called him. The same Christ who told the paralytic to arise now raises a man into discipleship. One left carrying his bed; the other leaves the seat from which he had ordered his life.

Saint John Chrysostom, preaching on Matthew’s parallel account, says that Christ called him from his occupation and “from the midst of the evils He drew him up.”⁴ The wording is severe, but the action is full of hope. Christ is neither ashamed of the sinner nor indifferent to the sin. His call separates Levi from the life that held him and joins him to the Lord who can heal him.

For the Church, this keeps evangelism and repentance together. We do not ask people to heal themselves before approaching Christ, and we do not tell them that remaining seated is the same as following. Mercy speaks a name and opens a road. The first obedient step may be confession, restitution, the end of a dishonest practice, reconciliation, or accepting help that pride has resisted. Whatever the form, grace calls the whole person to rise.

The Physician at Levi’s table (Mark 2:15-17)

¹⁵ Now it happened, as He was dining in Levi’s house, that many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many, and they followed Him. ¹⁶ And when the scribes and Pharisees saw Him eating with the tax collectors and sinners, they said to His disciples, “How is it that He eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?” ¹⁷ When Jesus heard it, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”

Levi’s response does not remain private. The man who rose now opens a table where others from the same discredited world can meet Jesus. Mark’s phrase “in his house” can be grammatically less explicit than the English makes it sound, but Luke’s parallel directly says that Levi gave a great feast in his own house. Calling it Levi’s house therefore follows the Synoptic evidence while acknowledging Mark’s concise wording.⁵

The most easily missed words in verse 15 come at the end: “they followed Him.” The guests are more than a collection of tolerated outsiders. Mark connects the table to discipleship. Critical Greek texts read an imperfect form that can be rendered “they were following Him,” while Byzantine and Greek Orthodox forms use an aorist, “they followed Him.” The aspect differs, but both forms prevent us from separating fellowship from response.⁶ Christ’s mercy creates access to Him; that access becomes a call to walk with Him.

The scribes and Pharisees do not address Jesus directly. They ask His disciples why He eats and drinks with such people. Their concern should not be dismissed as uniquely Jewish fearfulness. The whole biblical tradition takes holiness and sin seriously, and Christians can reproduce the same posture whenever concern for purity becomes a reason to remain untouched by another person’s need. The question exposes a recurring temptation in religious life: to treat distance from wounded people as proof of nearness to God.

Jesus answers with the image of a physician. A doctor enters the presence of sickness for the sake of healing. Christ’s holiness is active and life-giving; He is not contaminated by drawing near. Chrysostom says that such nearness is “not only blameless, but excellent, and necessary,” because the Physician who refuses the sick abandons the work of medicine.⁴ The table is therefore neither compromise nor spectacle. It is the place where the sick have come within reach of the One who heals.

The metaphor concerns the sickness of sin. It must never be turned into a claim that bodily illness, mental illness, disability, or trauma proves personal guilt. Nor should Christ’s table mercy be used to pressure a victim into unsafe contact with an abuser. The Physician heals truthfully. His mercy does not conceal exploitation, deny danger, or remove wise boundaries.

The NKJV closes Jesus’ saying with “sinners, to repentance.” That wording follows the longer Greek form found in Byzantine, Greek Orthodox, and Textus Receptus editions; several critical editions display the shorter ending, “but sinners.”⁷ The textual qualification matters, but repentance does not disappear from the passage. Levi has already risen and followed, and the many at the table are described as following Jesus. Repentance here is not an entrance fee paid before the Physician will receive us. It is the new direction His mercy makes possible.

The word “righteous” also searches the heart. Jesus is not teaching that some people have no need of grace. He answers people who see sickness clearly in others while remaining confident of their own health. The most dangerous condition in the room is the one that does not seek the Physician. A person may sit near Scripture, fasting, and moral seriousness while guarding an accusation that prevents honest confession. Christ’s answer gives the critics an opening as well: admit the need, and the Physician is already near.

The Church lives from this same mercy. She is not a club for those who can hide their wounds convincingly. She is the community gathered around Christ, where sin is named, forgiveness is received, and lives are restored through repentance, prayer, sacramental confession, the Eucharist, wise pastoral care, and concrete repair. At Christ’s table, welcome and transformation are not enemies. Both come from the Physician.

The Bridegroom and the days of fasting (Mark 2:18-20)

¹⁸ The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were fasting. Then they came and said to Him, “Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?” ¹⁹ And Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. ²⁰ But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.

The question about fasting grows naturally from the meal. Other disciples are abstaining; Jesus’ disciples are feasting. The comparison makes religious practice into a visible measure of seriousness: they fast, but Your disciples do not. Jesus does not answer by belittling fasting or by claiming that spiritual discipline no longer matters. He asks what time it is and who stands among them.

The phrase translated “friends of the bridegroom” is literally “sons of the bridal chamber,” the bridegroom’s wedding companions.⁸ Their conduct is governed by the presence of the bridegroom. At a wedding, fasting would contradict the gift of the hour. Jesus therefore places Himself at the center of both feast and fast. The decisive question is not which group appears more disciplined. It is how life answers the presence, Passion, and promise of Christ.

“Bridegroom” carries more than warmth. In Israel’s Scriptures, God speaks as the husband who loves and restores His people (Isaiah 54:5; Hosea 2:19-20). Jesus receives that nuptial image around Himself. Saint Cyril of Alexandria, commenting on Luke’s parallel, describes the manifestation of the Savior as a festival in which He united human nature to Himself “to be as it were His bride.”⁹ Salvation is communion: the Son of God comes near, joins His people to Himself, and makes His presence their joy.

Then the sentence turns: “the bridegroom will be taken away from them.” The verb aparthē can mean lifted away, removed, or taken away.⁸ Mark does not yet narrate the Passion, but the shadow of the Cross has entered the feast. Jesus’ death will not be an accident at the end of a successful ministry. The Bridegroom knows that the days of visible companionship will give way to His removal, and “then they will fast.”

Christian fasting is born inside this mystery. It remembers the Bridegroom’s voluntary suffering, grieves over the sin for which He died, disciplines desires that compete with love, and longs for fuller communion with Him. It is Paschal because the One taken away is also the risen Lord. Fasting holds sorrow and hope together. Hunger becomes prayer when it says with the whole person, “You are the life I cannot give myself.”

This protects fasting from opposite distortions. It is not a badge used to rank families, parishes, or Christians, and it is not optional decoration for unusually devout people. Jesus says His disciples “will fast.” Early Christian practice confirms that the Church heard Him this way: the Didache gives the Christian community regular fast days, distinguishing its pattern without abolishing the discipline.¹⁰ The calendar, food rule, and pastoral economy matter, but they serve communion with Christ. A precise fast with an accusing heart has missed the Bridegroom; a sincere longing that refuses obedience has also misunderstood love.

Orthodox fasting therefore belongs with prayer, almsgiving, repentance, and the Eucharistic life of the Church. Food is not evil, and the body is not an enemy. We abstain from good gifts so desire can be healed and redirected toward the Giver. The fast exposes how quickly irritation, comparison, appetite, or control rises when comfort is removed. That exposure is mercy if it leads us to confession and makes us gentler toward another person’s weakness.

New cloth, fresh wine, and renewed vessels (Mark 2:21-22)

²¹ No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; or else the new piece pulls away from the old, and the tear is made worse. ²² And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins.”

Jesus closes with two ordinary images of failed joining. Unshrunk cloth contracts and pulls against an old garment, enlarging the tear. Fresh wine continues to ferment and expand; a worn, brittle skin cannot yield with it. In both sayings the gift is lost when it is treated as an addition that requires no renewal of the vessel.

The images interpret everything that came before. Levi cannot remain seated at the tax office and wear discipleship as a patch. The scribes cannot add Jesus to a religious life protected from sinners. The disciples cannot copy fasting as an outward badge while missing the Bridegroom who gives it meaning. Christ’s mercy, joy, repentance, and ascetic life belong together because all arise from communion with Him.

Mark uses neos for the wine and kainos for the wineskins. The words have overlapping ranges, so they should not be forced into a rigid technical contrast. Still, the pairing allows a fitting emphasis: fresh wine requires skins fresh enough, or renewed enough, to receive its living pressure.¹¹ Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty reads the wineskins as lives renewed by the Holy Spirit, able to receive the ascetic and communal life Christ gives.¹² This is formation, not fascination with whatever is recent.

The “old” in these sayings must not be identified with Jewish people, the Old Testament, or Israel’s Scriptures as something worthless. Jesus speaks within Israel’s story, fulfills the law and prophets, and answers a question about the right practice of fasting. The warning falls on every heart that wants Christ without surrender, including the baptized Christian who has spent years near the Church. An old wineskin can be a settled resentment, concealed dishonesty, attachment to praise, habitual contempt, or a religious identity used to resist repentance.

Neither parable teaches that human beings renew themselves before grace can enter. The same Lord who commands Levi to rise supplies the call that makes rising possible. The Holy Spirit renews the vessel through the life Christ gives: baptismal dying and rising, daily repentance, prayer, sacramental confession, Communion received with preparation, obedience, mercy, and endurance. Ascetic practice then becomes cooperation with grace rather than repair by willpower.

The wine also warns against spiritual possession. Grace is living, active, and ordered toward communion. We cannot store it inside an unchanged life as one more religious accomplishment. If prayer leaves our speech cruel, fasting leaves us proud, service leaves us demanding recognition, or theological knowledge leaves us unable to repent, the problem is not weakness in Christ’s gift. The vessel is resisting what the gift is meant to do.

Yet the final word is hopeful: Christ does make new wineskins. He does not discard sinners as ruined material. He calls, seats them with Himself, heals them, and forms them for the life of the Kingdom. Renewal may be costly because old habits have shaped the heart for years. It may involve restitution, a changed friendship, disciplined silence, forgiving an enemy, accepting pastoral guidance, or returning after failure. The pressure of the new wine is the pressure of divine life making room within us.

The Church’s Voice in Worship ⛪

The Coptic lectionary receives the two halves of this passage in distinct settings. Mark 2:13-17 is appointed at Matins for Baba 12, alongside Synoptic readings of the tax collector’s call during that day’s services. Mark 2:18-22 is appointed at Matins for Tout 1. The verified placements establish the Church’s public reading of these texts; they do not, by themselves, prove a particular reason for each selection.

Together they keep repentance, feast, fasting, and renewal within worship. At Matins the Church does not study the Physician and Bridegroom from a distance. She begins the day by standing among the sick who need mercy and among the wedding companions whose life is ordered toward Christ. The new year can sharpen the wineskin image as a pastoral application, but the deeper beginning is always Christ’s: He calls, He gives the wine, and He renews the person who receives it.

Spiritual Fruit 🍇

1. Rise from the place where compromise has become normal. Levi is called while sitting at the toll office. Name the place where you have learned to remain seated: concealed dishonesty, a profitable injustice, resentment you keep rehearsing, a relationship maintained through manipulation, or a habit that dulls prayer. Bring it to confession and take one verifiable step of obedience. Christ’s mercy reaches you there, and His call gives you a road out.

2. Let mercy become invitation without making safety negotiable. Levi opens his house so people from his world can meet Christ. Consider whom shame, reputation, poverty, addiction, or unfamiliarity keeps at the edge of parish life. Offer a meal, a ride, a patient conversation, or help finding pastoral care. Welcome does not mean hiding sin or removing wise boundaries. The Physician’s nearness is truthful, healing, and protective of the vulnerable.

3. Leave the judge’s chair and approach the Physician. It is possible to recognize another person’s sickness while remaining blind to pride, self-defense, or contempt in oneself. When your first response is “How can they?” pause before repeating the accusation. Pray the Jesus Prayer for the person, then name your own wound plainly before Christ. Correct doctrine bears fruit when it leads to worship, humility, and mercy.

4. Fast for the Bridegroom rather than for a spiritual score. Notice what appears when comfort is reduced: irritability with family, comparison with another person’s rule, pride in strictness, or excuses disguised as freedom. Join the food fast to a specific prayer, hidden almsgiving, and restraint of the tongue. If illness, age, pregnancy, work, or pastoral economy changes the food rule, preserve the fast’s center through guidance rather than shame. The goal is hunger for Christ and a heart made gentler by His Cross.

5. Ask where Christian practice has become a patch. Prayer, service, study, and fasting can sit on top of an unchanged hunger for praise, control, money, or vindication. Choose one practice and examine its fruit. Does it make confession easier, mercy quicker, speech cleaner, worship deeper, and hidden obedience more possible? Ask the Holy Spirit to renew the vessel, then accept the concrete change He brings to light. Christ does not merely decorate the old life. He makes His people capable of carrying new wine.

Teaching Notes

Begin with the three identities Jesus reveals across the unit: caller, Physician, and Bridegroom. Then show how the cloth and wineskins answer the practical question, “What kind of person can receive this life?” Keep the sequence visible. Christ calls Levi; the call opens a table; the table reveals healing; the Bridegroom orders feast and fast; the parables name the renewal discipleship requires.

Mark 2:13-14: called while sitting

• Observe the narrowing from the multitude to Levi. Jesus teaches all and sees one.
• Trace the verbs: Levi sits, Christ speaks, Levi rises, Levi follows.
• Clarify the history: telōnion is a toll or tax office, but Mark does not name Levi’s employer, levy, or personal acts of fraud.
• Discuss: What is the difference between Christ meeting someone in a compromised place and Christ approving that place?
• Connect to Mark 2:1-12: Christ’s authority to forgive now appears as authority to call and raise a publicly compromised person.

Mark 2:15-17: mercy that heals

• Keep the final words of verse 15 in view: “they followed Him.” The guests are being drawn into discipleship.
• Explain the physician image before applying it. Nearness to the sick belongs to medicine; Christ’s holiness heals rather than withdraws.
• Handle “to repentance” honestly. Preserve the NKJV wording, note the Greek textual variation if the class can use it, and ground repentance in the whole call-and-follow sequence.
• Guard against two errors: mercy as approval of exploitation, and repentance as a demand that the wounded make themselves acceptable before approaching Christ.
• State the pastoral boundary: this passage never requires unsafe contact with an abuser or the removal of prudent safeguarding.

Mark 2:18-20: fasting in relation to Christ

• Ask why Jesus answers a comparison of practices with a wedding image.
• Explain “friends of the bridegroom” as wedding companions whose conduct fits the bridegroom’s presence.
• Follow the turn in verse 20: the Bridegroom will be taken away, and then the disciples will fast. Feast, Cross, and future fasting belong to one Christological answer.
• Distinguish ascetic discipline from comparison. The fast is real, but its center is communion with Christ.
• Invite a practical examination: What does fasting reveal about the heart, and how should that discovery change prayer, almsgiving, speech, or confession?

Mark 2:21-22: renewal rather than patchwork

• Explain the physical logic first: shrinking cloth worsens the tear; fermenting wine bursts a brittle skin.
• Connect each image backward to the passage: Levi’s rising, table discipleship, healing mercy, and Bridegroom-centered fasting.
• Reject the anti-Jewish shortcut. “Old wineskins” does not mean Jewish people or a worthless Old Testament. The warning addresses every unrenewed heart.
• Use the Greek adjectives cautiously. Their ranges overlap; the insight is fresh wine and a fit, renewed vessel, not a rigid lexical formula.
• End with hope: Christ’s command calls for renewal, and His Spirit supplies the life by which renewal becomes possible.

Sources

Scripture is from NKJV.

• Mark A. Chancey, “Capernaum,” Bible Odyssey, Society of Biblical Literature, 2017: https://www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/capernaum/.

• Greg Carey, “Tax Collectors and Sinners,” Bible Odyssey, Society of Biblical Literature, 2017: https://www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/tax-collectors-and-sinners/.

• Saint John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, Homily XXX on Matthew 9:9-17, used as explicitly labeled Synoptic-parallel commentary: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf110.iii.XXX.html.

• Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke, on Luke 5:34-36, pp. 88-90 in the public-domain R. Payne Smith translation, used as Synoptic-parallel commentary: https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/cyril_on_luke_02_sermons_12_25.htm.

• Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty, The Gospel According to Saint Mark, treatment of Mark 2:13-22, paraphrased because quotation permissions for the modern English translation were not verified: https://ml.coptic-treasures.com/book/48-mark-fr-tadros-malaty/.

• Didache 8, “Concerning Fasting and Prayer,” as early evidence for regular Christian fasting: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm.

• Greek textual and lexical anchors: Mark 2:14, Mark 2:15, Mark 2:17, Mark 2:19, Mark 2:20, and Mark 2:22.

• Coptic lectionary cycle evidence for Mark 2:13-17 at Matins on Baba 12 and Mark 2:18-22 at Matins on Tout 1; the placements were confirmed against the date-resolved 2026 calendar.

Footnotes

1. Mark A. Chancey, “Capernaum,” Bible Odyssey, Society of Biblical Literature, 2017, https://www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/capernaum/. ↩

2. Greg Carey, “Tax Collectors and Sinners,” Bible Odyssey, Society of Biblical Literature, 2017, https://www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/tax-collectors-and-sinners/. ↩

3. BibleHub interlinear and lexical entries for Mark 2:14 and telōnion, https://biblehub.com/interlinear/mark/2-14.htm and https://biblehub.com/greek/5058.htm. ↩

4. Saint John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, Homily XXX on Matthew 9:9-17, public-domain NPNF translation, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf110.iii.XXX.html. Chrysostom comments on Matthew’s Synoptic parallel rather than Mark’s exact wording. ↩ ↩²

5. Comparative Greek texts for Mark 2:15 and Luke 5:29, https://biblehub.com/text/mark/2-15.htm and https://biblehub.com/text/luke/5-29.htm. ↩

6. Comparative Greek texts and interlinear for Mark 2:15, including critical-text ēkolouthoun and Byzantine/Greek Orthodox ēkolouthēsan, https://biblehub.com/text/mark/2-15.htm and https://biblehub.com/interlinear/mark/2-15.htm. ↩

7. Comparative Greek texts for Mark 2:17, showing the shorter critical form and the longer Byzantine, Greek Orthodox, and Textus Receptus form, https://biblehub.com/text/mark/2-17.htm. Exact manuscript support and current editorial weighting require verification in a critical apparatus. ↩

8. Comparative Greek texts for Mark 2:19-20 and the lexical entry for apairō, https://biblehub.com/text/mark/2-19.htm, https://biblehub.com/text/mark/2-20.htm, and https://biblehub.com/greek/522.htm. A specific lexical echo of Isaiah 53:8 LXX is possible but not established by the sources used here. ↩ ↩²

9. Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke, on Luke 5:34-36, especially printed pp. 88-90, public-domain R. Payne Smith translation, https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/cyril_on_luke_02_sermons_12_25.htm. The online text includes material transmitted through Syriac and fragments; the quotation is used from the verified English page. ↩

10. Didache 8, “Concerning Fasting and Prayer,” https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0714.htm. This is evidence of early Christian reception, not a reconstruction of the exact practice in Mark’s scene. ↩

11. Comparative Greek text and lexical entries for Mark 2:22, neos, and kainos, https://biblehub.com/text/mark/2-22.htm, https://biblehub.com/greek/3501.htm, and https://biblehub.com/greek/2537.htm. The semantic ranges overlap and should not be treated as a rigid technical distinction. ↩

12. Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty, The Gospel According to Saint Mark, treatment of Mark 2:13-22, Coptic Treasures resource page, https://ml.coptic-treasures.com/book/48-mark-fr-tadros-malaty/. The guide paraphrases the commentary because exact page citation and quotation permissions for the modern English translation were not established. ↩