In Luke's gospel, the theme of food is significant in its meaning and widespread in its scope. It appears as if every time a chapter in the Gospel of Luke is opened, the aroma of food emerges. In chapter two, the C is put in the very place where the animals will go to have their lives sustained, for they laid him in a manger.

In chapter ten, Jesus is fed by Martha in Bethany while Mary is sitting at his feet, drinking from the fountain of his wisdom. In chapter , Jesus is having the last meal with his disciples, and there he holds up the bread and symbolically says to them, "This bread is my body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. For I'm not going to eat of this bread and drink of this cup until I do it in the eschatological marriage supper of the lamb."

In chapter , those two disciples are on their way to Emmaus. They have left Jerusalem, and they have been walking with a stranger (they thought), when in fact he is the risen Christ. But they do not recognize him until they get into their home. There, in the breaking of bread, they recognize Jesus Christ.

Jesus in this text, Luke 5, is invited to a home to eat. Levi, an collector, invites Jesus to come for a meal along with his disciples. While he is there, the Pharisees observe that he is eating with publicans and sinners, and they begin to criticize Jesus.

Mark is right. Jesus always had trouble with religious Pharisees and Sadducees, scribes and elders, chief priests and the common people heard him gladly. Common people like Zaccheus, who climbed up the sycamore tree in order to get a bird' view of Jesus. Common people like the woman who went to the well at high noon to get a bucket of water; when she left, she had a fountain filled with water running over in her heart.

Luke tells us about this in Luke 7:39. Jesus is invited to Simon the Pharisee's house, who gives Jesus the gift of life, food. But he doesn't understand the giver of life. While he is there, Simon the Pharisee is thinking, If this person is really a prophet, he would know that this woman is from the red light district. He wouldn't allow her to use her tears to wash his feet and her hair to dry his feet and to perfume his feet and to kiss his feet. He must not be a prophet.

In Luke 14, Jesus is surrounded by Pharisees, but there is a man with palsy. It's the wrong day for healing, but the hour is right as far as God's kairos is concerned. Jesus heals the man with the palsy while the Pharisees are chagrined and upset.

Jesus gives a parable to get people's attention and hopefully to change them.

Here he is in Luke 5. He's invited by Levi to have a meal. The Pharisees notice that Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners.

Jesus proceeds to give a parable, a rhetorical device to get their attention and, hopefully, change them. One dimension is a picture in which he puts the details for them to see. Then the longer they look at the picture, hopefully, it would turn into a mirror so that they would see themselves.

That's what happened to David. David looked at a picture. He saw details. He saw a little ewe. He saw a rich man and a poor man. He saw blatant injustice; but the longer he looked at it, that picture became more like a mirror. So much so that he would no longer see the details without seeing himself. "Thou art the man."

Jesus says, "I want to relate a proverbial saying." Jesus says there is an incompatibility between taking new, unfermented wine and putting it in wineskins made from goat skins that are brittle and cracked and inflexible and rigid. Because if you put new unfermented wine in them, eventually the wine will emit a gas which will cause the wineskins to expand; and since they have no more expansion capability, they will burst. Not only will the wine be spilled, but the wineskins will be ruined. You put new wine in new wineskins.

You don't take a piece of new cloth and put it on a torn old garment because the new cloth will shrink. The old garment has exhausted its shrinking capacity, so that when you wash it, the new cloth will shrink and pull away from the old garment. No, you make a brand new garment.

Jesus is telling them, "If you look at this picture long enough you'll see yourself. You'll see that my Gospel, the new wine of my gospel is too radical for the old wineskins of your religious orthodoxy. You'll see that the new wine of my kingdom is too subversive for the religious rigidity of your system. I've got to do a radical thing. We have to change it and make it brand new."

Grace is too powerful for the old wineskin of merit.

Brothers and sisters, the new wine and the new cloth is a substance of grace. Grace is too powerful for the old wineskins of merit. Don't you see Jesus going by the Internal Revenue office in Capernum and there sitting Levi?

Pharisees and other committed Jews prayed every day, "God, I thank you that I'm not a Gentile, a Samaritan or a woman." I'm sure tax collectors were not far down the list in their minds.

The Romans farmed out taxes, and they assessed the district a certain amount of tax. They employed Jews to be the collectors. Many of the common people would not know what their amount to be paid was. Tax collectors, traitors, those who took advantage of the people, were hated by the Jews because they not only collected what was due, they collected more and pocketed the difference. We're even told that because of this abuse they were not permitted to go to the temple for worship. They were outcasts.

Jesus goes by the tax collector's office, and says to Levi, "Follow me." That's extraordinary because Levi is a Hebrew name that means join. He had already ruptured the relationship he would have had with the temple by being a tax collector. But according to his own account, Matthew 9:913, Levi is called Matthew, which means a gift of god. In Luke 6:15, when the twelve disciples are catalogued, Luke says his name is Matthew. We don't know whether this is a double name or whether Jesus gives Matthew an additional name. But either way, Levi goes from being the one who had been excommunicated because he was a tax collector to being a recipient of the grace gift of God. He became one of Jesus's disciples.

That's just like the Lord. He's always taking an ordinary person, a fisherman like Simon Peter, and booking him to preach the first revival of the church on the day of Pentecost.

He's always asking a women like Mary Magdalene, who had seven devils in her, and making her the first announcer of the Resurrection.

He's always taking a Samaritan woman and a woman who had five husbands and was shacking up with one and making her the WMU directress and telling her, "You can be my witness now." She tells the men, "Come see a man who told me everything I've ever done."

Brothers and sisters, I'm looking at about two hundred persons who are recipients of grace. And you ought to see what God has done for me. He has taken me from here to there. And I give him praise. It took a miracle to put the stars in space. It took a miracle to hang the world in place. But when he saved my soul, cleansed and made me whole, that was a miracle of love and grace divine.

The new wine of grace, the new cloth of grace stretches the old wineskins and the old garments of merit to its breaking point. The new wine of humility stretches the old wineskins to the breaking points.

The old wineskins and the old garment are made of . A group of Pharisees see Jesus eating in the house of Levi, now Matthew, with tax collectors and sinners; and they begin to criticize him.

John Wesley said that "no one can go to heaven alone. You either make friends and take them, or you find friends and take them."

Levi's banquet is an "evangelistic campaign for Jesus."

Levi is using a banquet to launch an evangelistic campaign for Jesus. He feels, If this is that good to meet the Savior, I'd better have some of my other friends, tax collectors, and sinners, join me. That's the first instinct.

When Jesus gets there, he's comfortable with sinners; and, obviously, they feel attracted to him. Some of us feel that "the holier you become the more repulsive you become to sinners." I've got problems with Christians who are so holy they can't attract sinners. Churches ought to attract sinners. As long as we're judgmental and look down our noses at people, we won't attract sinners; but when we have love and when we have compassion, we will attract sinners.

They criticize him saying, "Now, why is it that your master eats with publicans and sinners?"

Jesus, in a way says, "I didn't come here for folks who think they are healthy. I came for folks who know they're sick. And I didn't come for folks who think they are righteous. I came for folks who know they are sinners and need to repent."

One of my points of desperation is when I come to a church and hardly find any sinners. We are all right. Everyone has made it. We're on the top of the world when it comes to our spirituality. I don't see much conviction of sin. I see people who have already arrived.

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk said, "We have two selves. We have the public self, which is the false self that we project and want people to see." We put our best foot forward, and we want to impress individuals about our public self. Merton says, "God sees that as a foreign self. God doesn't even know that self, and God can't have a relationship with that self because that self is too pretentious and too feign."

God invites sinners to bring their problems to him.

But the private self, the self that's covered up with layers of embarrassment and shame and anger and frustration and failure and misery, that's the self God says, "Come on. Bring it to me. That's what I want. You don't have to suppress it any longer. You don't have to impress anyone. Bring it to me.

"Come to me. If you labor and you're heavy laden, I'll give you rest. Come, now, let us reason together," sayeth the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be cleaned. If you're thirsty, come to the water, then drink. Come on.

In the church, we need to come before God with our private selves because all of us have been Humpty Dumpties. We have sat on a wall, and we've had a great fall. And all the king's horses and men could not put our Humpty Dumpties together again. And some of us have fallen off of , , walls; but though the king's horses and the king's men couldn't put us together again, nothing was said about the King. I know a King that can put you back together again no matter how many pieces you may be broken into.

Your degrees, your positions, your are not enough to keep you together. We need to come to the Lord just as we are. The new wine and the new cloth of joy stretches to the breaking point. The old wineskins and the old garments are of false piety.

"Master, why is it that your disciples don't pray and fast like John the Baptist's disciples and our disciples?" They did it legalistically. On Monday and Thursday from sunrise to sunset they fasted. Every day at noon, three p.m. and six p.m. they went to the temple and prayed. Everyone knew they fasted and prayed because they did it on street corners and made a fuss about it.

Jesus said, "How can my disciples fast and pray when I'm the bridegroom and they're guests of the bridegroom (in those days, the reception went for a whole week). How can they fast and pray? But there's a moment coming, the scandal of the cross, when I'll be taken away; and then they will fast, but until that time forget about the funeral. Come on, wedding!"

Every funeral that Jesus intersected or every situation that took the shape of a funeral, he disrupted. A little girl, who was the daughter of Jairus, was dead. He said to her, "Talitha kum. I say unto you rise." She got up with a brand new life.

The widow's son, who was on his way to the cemetery, touched the coffin and got up with a brand new life.

It's not good pastoral etiquette, but Jesus showed up four days after the funeral and called Lazarus from his tomb. "Lazarus, come forth."

I think we have this thing mixed up. Christianity is not a funeral; Christianity is a wedding. We have something to rejoice and to be excited about. Oh, brothers and sisters, sometimes we think there's incompatibility between good sense and good religion. We have a lot of cranial Christianity, and we detach it from cardiological Christianity. We not only need to think good. We need to feel good and not divorce any of this.

He said, "I came that you might have joy and that my joy in you might be complete." What is best? The old or the new? I think it's the wrong question.

The question is not "What is old, what is new?" but "What is true?" Does Jesus anticipate Pilate's question in the eighteenth chapter of John: "What is truth?" By responding to Thomas's inquiry, "Lord, we don't know the way," he says, "I am the Way, the Truth.."

What is truth? I'm concerned about people who have gotten to the point where they believe anything. What is truth about the trajectory of our theology? We have a theology of the think theologically. But we don't have enough theology of the do theology. Jesus not only thought taught in boats, he taught on he did theology, for he healed the sick, and he gave release from the captives and the recovering of sight to the blind.

What is truth? What is true about the complexion of our churches as they reflect the kingdom of God? Martin Luther King, Jr. said that "the 11:00 o'clock hour on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour during the week." I want to tell you, not much has changed.

There's a lot of cosmetic changes, but the interiorization tells me that not much has changed. We need to return to Howard Thurman's and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s beloved community. There is a powerless conscience and a consciousless power. Until all of us recognize, regardless of our racial stripes, that we are made in the image of G is no hierarchy; there is no superiority; but we are made in God's image; we're all God's 'll never have new wine in new wineskins.

What then is the nature of worship? Worship, in terms of truth, is not for humans; it is for God. God is the audience; we are the actors on the stage, and whatever we do, whether it's done in a blended fashion or contemporary fashion or traditional fashion, is done to glorify God. It's not for us; it is for God. But God is so good that he lets me get a little bit out of it as well.

Worship is not so much an event; it's an encounter where I come into the presence of God, and something happens to me because I'm there. I love popcorn, but I could never understand the gospel of popcorn. You can put it in the microwave oven; those kernels of corn will be exposed to the same radiation, have the same butter solution mixing up, but when it's all over, some kernels never pop.

Brothers and sisters, when we come in the house of God, we ought to "pop" sometimes. We ought to give God some glory for what he has done. Don't be ashamed to let the world know you love the Lord.

Worship, according to Harold Best, is not so much a verb as it is a noun. If I get my together, my will follow. If you get my attitude right, then the actions will follow. Are you really tired of a leaky wineskin that won't hold the new wine of the new experience God wants to give you? Are you really tired of a patched up Christianity that keeps pulling away from your spiritual maturity?

God wants to do something totally revolutionary and radical in you and in me.

Robert Smith is professor of preaching at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, in Birmingham, Alabama. He served as contributing editor for Preparing for Christian Ministry, and has served as a judge for Harper and Row's Best Sermons.

(c) Robert Smith

Preaching Today Tape #169

www.PreachingTodaySermons.com

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Robert Smith, Jr. serves as professor of Christian preaching at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama.