Later, when [Jesus] went out, he saw a tax-gatherer, Levi by name, at his seat in the custom house. He said to him, "Follow me."
And he rose to his feet, left everything behind, and followed him.
Afterwards Levi held a big reception in his house for Jesus. Among the guests was a large party of tax-gatherers and others.
The Pharisees and the lawyers of their sect complained to his disciples: "Why do you eat and drink with tax-gatherers and sinners?"
Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to invite virtuous people, but to call sinners to repentance."
Then they said to him, "John's disciples are much given to fasting and the practice of prayer, and so are the disciples of the Pharisees. But yours eat and drink."
Jesus replied, "Can you make the bridegroom's friends fast while the bridegroom is with them? But a time will come; the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and that will be the time for them to fast."
He told them this parable also: "No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an old one; if he does, he will have made a hole in the new cloak, and the patch from the new will not match the old. Nor does anyone put new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will be wasted, and the skins ruined. Fresh skins for new wine! And no one after drinking old wine wants new; for he says, the old wine is good."
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