He went out again beside the sea; and all the crowd gathered about him, and he taught them. and as he passed on, he saw Levi the son of Alpheus sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, ‘Follow me’. And he rose and followed him.
Jesus continues to court opposition, this time by inviting a tax-collector to become a personal disciple. It is common to caricature tax-collectors (at least when they appear in the Gospel accounts) as arch-swindlers – grubby men who cheat their own kin in order to line their pockets. This may well be accurate. But the greater sin, as far as a zealous Jew was concerned, was collaboration with an occupying force, in this case the Romans. Taxes were a key means of support for an occupying power. Those Jews hoping to overthrow such a power (and there was precedent for revolt, the first Jewish-Roman war being only a few generations back) would have viewed as a traitor any man exacting money from Jewish people on behalf of Rome. Thus, it wasn’t just that Levi was not a zealous Jew; rather, he actively colluded with God’s enemies.
We should also notice that Levi’s tax office was beside the sea. It’s likely, then, that he would have been collecting taxes on fish, which would have put him in direct opposition with the business interests of the likes of Andrew and Peter, the first disciples.
On this basis, the parallels Mark draws between the calling of Levi here and the earlier calling of Andrew and Peter in chapter 1 are telling. Both episodes show men engrossed in their work. Andrew and Peter were probably up to their knees in sea water when Jesus approached, and we can imagine Levi, who is sat at his desk, working methodically to clear a long line of local taxpayers. Furthermore, in both cases, the response to Jesus’ call is immediate. The fishermen simply drop their nets; the tax-collector pushes back his chair and gives up his duties, leaving a queue of astonished locals wondering how they ought now to stump up their taxes.
The result is a glimpse into the way Jesus gathers and unites followers. Distinctions between occupation (and therefore between a certain kind of social class) are secondary: the desk-workers, the labourers and the businessmen are equally called. Even more importantly, it seems that deeply held religious grievances are wilfully put aside for the common cause of following Jesus. We can just imagine Peter thinking, If Levi will step in line with Jesus just as we did – giving up everything to follow the master – then even he must be counted as one of us.