76 Ancient Ideals
humane generosity. Jesus has unparalleled ability to read people. He
can look into their faces, observe their postures, note their gaits, and
know them with an uncanny accuracy. Walking down the road one
day, he sees a tax collector named Levi. Who is more detested than
a tax collector, who grinds the people to serve the authorities in the
temples and to enrich the imperial power of Rome? Yet Jesus passes
by Levi and sees something in his face. (From what we can tell, the
two exchange no words.) “Follow me,” Jesus says to him, and Levi
drops what he is doing and he follows (Mark 2.14). “Follow me,” is
Jesus’ great expostulation. It doesn’t simply mean drop what you’re
doing right now— stop working your account books or going to
market— though it does mean that. It means follow me for life. Live
as I do, out in the open air; believe as I do, in the promise of human
beings to break loose from what confi nes them; be kind and gentle
to those who need it and stand up to the vari ous intellectual bullies
and oppressors who dot the path.
Follow me. Levi takes Jesus to his home and holds a banquet in
his honor. The guests are Levi’s friends, not the most pious or re-
spectable crowd. When detractors criticize Jesus for consorting with
the likes of Levi, he replies that physicians consort with the sick and
not the well, and that he is here to save the sinners and not the pious.
(The conventionally pious are often beyond hope. They think too
well of themselves to change.) Jesus reads Levi accurately—as he
reads so many others— and Levi has the chance to live as a better
man (Mark 2.13–17).
Jesus apparently reads the paralytic rightly, too. Perhaps what
he sees is that this man is—as many of us have been and will be—
paralyzed, not so much by some physical malady as by guilt, fear,
or anxiety. He is frozen by his sense of unworthiness. Stand up, says
Jesus, start again: your sins are forgiven. You and those who brought
you here, and who clearly love you, have faith that you can overcome
the forces impeding you— all you need is a brisk shove. Jesus is