The Blessed Injeel, in Luke 5:27-32, tells us the time about Hazrat Isa ( ع ) meet a tax official and what happened.
As Hazrat Isa ( ع ) left the town, he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax collector’s booth (Office).
“Follow me and be my disciple,” Hazrat Isa ( ع ) said to him.
So Levi got up, left everything, and followed him.
Later, Levi held a banquet in his home with Hazrat Isa ( ع ) as the guest of honor. Many of Levi’s fellow tax collectors and other guests also ate with them.
But the Pharisees and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to the disciples of Hazrat Isa ( ع ), “Why do you eat and drink with such scum?”
Hazrat Isa ( ع ) answered them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor. Sick people do.
“I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.”
What do you think about the story?
- Is there something you like in the story?
- Or something in it that doesn’t seem right?
- Does this story remind you of the way people sometimes behave?
- Maybe it starts you thinking about God.
- What does this story seem to suggest you do? (I think you know that God will bless you read the teaching of Hazrat Isa ( ع ) and obey and copy him.)
Hazrat Isa ( ع ) was comfortable with tax officials who other people called “sinners”. He was approachable.