Chapter Two

2:1-12 He heals a paralytic: This passage highlights the solidarity and faith of four friends of a paralytic.  They seek to be close to Jesus at all costs so that he might heal their friend. Jesus, seeing their faith (5), restores the paralytic completely. At that time, sicknesses were considered consequences of sins, and the sick, therefore were sinners; thus, they were marginalized from the social and religious life of the people. Therefore, Jesus first forgives the paralytic of his sins (religious aspect), lifts him up (physical aspect), and orders him to return to his people, to his home (social aspect).

2:13-17 He calls Levi: he shares the table with sinners. Tax collectors or publicans were considered traitors of the people and, by the Law, sinners and impure. By calling Levi, Jesus breaks the barriers of the Law and makes the Gospel universal. Levi, for his part, by rising from his place, abandoning his office, and following Jesus, breaks with his past and commits himself to a new life offered to him by the Master with his call. Jesus excludes no one. His table is open to all, especially sinners (17). To share the table was to share life itself; it expressed the unity of the diners. This scandalized his adversaries.

2:18-22 On fasting: We pass on to fasting from a banquet scene in the previous passage. The adversaries are now John's disciples and the Pharisees. Although the Law required an annual day of fasting (Lev 16:29; Num 29:7), the Pharisees' eagerness for perfection led them to fast twice a week (Lk 18:12). Jesus does not deny fasting; only that it is improper for us to practice it when we are celebrating a new covenant of love, a new covenant between Jesus (bridegroom) and his people (cf. Jn 3:29; 2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:32; Rev 19:7; 21:2).

2:23-28 On the Sabbath: Cutting corn ears while passing through a field to satiate hunger was permitted by the Law, except on the Sabbath (Ex 34:21; Deut 23:26). Now, the Pharisees accuse the disciples of not obeying the Law after learning from Jesus. Jesus, in the best style of the learned, turns to the Scriptures (1 Sm 21:1-7) to make it clear that the criterion of the Law is the health/salvation of the human being. No law, word, or action that oppresses, marginalizes, or excludes can have God's backing.