Jesus Cleanses a Man with a Skin Disease

¹² Once when he was in one of the cities, a man covered with a skin disease was there. When he saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”^{(A) 13} Then Jesus^[a] stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, “I am willing. Be made clean.” Immediately the skin disease left him. ¹⁴ And he ordered him to tell no one. “But go, show yourself to the priest, and, as Moses commanded, make an offering for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”^(B)

Jesus Calls Levi

²⁷ After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” ²⁸ And he got up, left everything, and followed him.^(A)

²⁹ Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house, and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others reclining at the table with them.^{(B) 30} The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”^{(C) 31} Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick; ³² I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”^(D)

³³ “For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon’;^{(A) 34} the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’^{(B) 35} Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”

Jesus Heals a Crippled Woman

¹⁰ Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. ¹¹ And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. ¹² When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” ¹³ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.^{(A) 14} But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the Sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured and not on the Sabbath day.”^{(B) 15} But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it to water?^{(C) 16} And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?”^{(D) 17} When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame, and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things being done by him.

Jesus Heals the Man with Edema

14 On one occasion when Jesus^[a] was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were watching him closely.^{(A) 2} Just then, in front of him, there was a man who had edema. ³ And Jesus asked the experts in the law and Pharisees, “Is it lawful to cure people on the Sabbath or not?”^{(B) 4} But they were silent. So Jesus^[b] took him and healed him and sent him away. ⁵ Then he said to them, “If one of you has a child^[c] or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a Sabbath day?”^{(C) 6} And they could not reply to this.

Humility and Hospitality

⁷ When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable.^{(D) 8} “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host,^{(E) 9} and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. ¹⁰ But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.^{(F) 11} For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”^(G)

¹² He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. ¹³ But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.^{(H) 14} And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

The Parable of the Lost Sheep

15 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.^{(A) 2} And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”^(B)