Luke 5:27-39

New Testament for Everyone

Questions about table-company and fasting

²⁷ After this Jesus went out and saw a tax-collector called Levi, sitting at the tax-office. “Follow me,” he said. ²⁸ And he left everything, got up, and followed him.

²⁹ Levi made a great feast for him in his house, and a large crowd of tax-collectors and others were there reclining at table. ³⁰ The Pharisees and the legal experts began to grumble to Jesus’ disciples.

“Why do you lot eat and drink,” they asked, “with tax-collectors and sinners?”

³¹ “Healthy people don’t need a doctor,” replied Jesus. “It’s sick people who do! ³² I haven’t come to call the righteous; I’m calling sinners to repentance.”

³³ “John’s disciples often fast, and say prayers,” they said to him, “and so do the Pharisees’ followers—but your disciples eat and drink.”

³⁴ “Can you make the wedding guests fast,” replied Jesus, “while the bridegroom is with them? ³⁵ But the time will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them. That’s when they will fast.”

³⁶ He added this parable. “Nobody tears a piece of cloth from a new coat to make a patch on an old one. If they do, they tear the new, and the patch from it won’t fit the old one anyway. ³⁷ And nobody puts new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the new wine will burst the skins: it will go to waste, and the skins will be ruined too. ³⁸ You have to put new wine in new skins. ³⁹ And nobody who drinks old wine wants new. ‘I prefer the old,’ they say.”