Matthew 9:9-13

The publican feast (Mark 2:13-17; Luke 5:27-32). The point of interest for the evangelist in this narrative is not the call of the publican disciple, but the feast which followed, a feast of publicans and “sinners” at which Jesus was present proclaiming by action what He formerly proclaimed by word: a sinful past no doom. The story, though not a miracle-history, finds a place here because it follows the last in Mark, in whose Gospel the incident of the palsied man forms the first of a group serving one aim to show the beginnings of the conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders. The same remark applies to the next section.