Jesus Calls the Disciples

Frames in this band: B Biography · G Geography · E Economics · s sources

● Tell it in matching halves. Use the same hand motion each time somebody is called, so they hear the pattern before you point it out.

• Simon and Andrew are at the lake. They are fishermen. They are throwing a big net into the water. Jesus walks by and says: come with me. They put the net down and go.
• A little further along, James and John are in a boat with their dad, Zebedee, fixing their nets. Jesus says: come with me. They climb out of the boat and go. Their dad stays in the boat with the men who work for him.
• Later, a man called Levi is sitting at a little table beside the road. His job is taking money from people. Nobody likes him. Jesus walks by and says: come with me. Levi gets up and goes.
• That night they all eat dinner together — the fishermen, and Levi, and Jesus, and a lot of people nobody wanted to eat with. Some people watching were upset about it.

● Read one verse from the Bible itself, slowly.

“‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will send you out to fish for people.’” (Mark 1:17)

● Now act it out. Everybody up.

● Give them the jobs: the net throw (both arms out, then pull back), fixing the net (fingers picking), counting money at the table (tap, tap, tap). Send the fishermen to one side of the room and Levi's table to the other. Then say “come with me” and have everybody walk to you at once. Do it twice. The second time, say: “Look who is standing together.”

○ Put two chairs far apart — one for the fishermen, one for Levi. Then push them together and add more chairs around them. “This is the part that made people angry. They all ended up at one table.”

Has there ever been an empty seat next to you when you wished somebody would sit there?

Levi's job made people angry with him. Do you think he had any friends?

● Give them the words. Write four where they can see: left out, glad, surprised, nervous.

● Say it plainly, once: “Jesus did not wait for Levi to be nicer first. He asked him to come along, and then they ate dinner.” Do not explain it further.

○ Practice. “There is one empty seat at your table and one person standing up holding their lunch. Show me what you say.” Have two children act it out, then two more.

G — Geography. Spread a blue sheet on the floor for the lake and put towns all around the edge. Walk around it. “Everything in today's story happens right here by the water. The fish are in the middle. The road goes along the side.”

E — Economics. Fish is food, and fish is also money. Give one child ten counters for the fish they caught. Have them walk past Levi's table, and Levi takes some. “That was Levi's job — taking part of the money for the ruler.” Tell them straight: we do not know exactly how much he took. This is just to show how it worked.

B — Biography. Five name cards: Simon · Andrew · James · John · Levi. Four children who smell of fish, one who counts money. Stand them in two groups. Then bring them together and have them hold hands. “Same team now.”

s — sources. Hold the Bible open at Mark. “The story about the fishermen is here — and the story about Levi is over here, a little further on. Same book. Same two words: come with me.” Let a child find the second one with your finger to help.

● Draw the dinner table with everybody around it. Then draw one more chair, with somebody in it. Then finish the sentence — you write it for them if they cannot:

“One person I will ask to sit with me is ______________.”

● Make it real: a real name, and a real place — lunch, the bus, the mat at story time. “Everybody” is not a name.

○ Closing prayer, one lap around the circle. Each child says the name they drew. You answer every time with the same line:

“Thank you, God. There is room at the table.”

Frames in this band: G Geography · S Society · E Economics · s sources

● Read Mark 1:16–20, then 2:13–17. Then build this with them on the board. Do not put it up finished.

Mark 1:16–20	Mark 2:13–17
Four fishermen at work — throwing nets, mending nets	One tax collector at work — sitting at his booth
Jesus says: come, follow me	Jesus says: follow me
They leave the nets. James and John leave their father with the hired men (1:20)	Levi gets up and leaves the booth
Nobody objects	Teachers of the law who were Pharisees ask why he is eating with tax collectors and sinners (2:16)

What is the same in both stories? What is different?

Why does the second one cause trouble when the first one doesn't? How do you know — which words are you using?

Verse 1:20 says Zebedee had hired men. What does that one detail tell you about that family?

○ Read 2:15 again and count the groups of people at the table. Then ask what a shared meal meant to people who were careful about who they ate with. Let them guess before you say anything.

● Set it up plainly, and without a sneer: “Levi's job was real. He took money from his own neighbors and handed it up to the government. People had actual reasons to be angry with him.”

Is it fair to dislike somebody because of their job? What if the job really does hurt people?

What would have to be true for the fishermen to be glad Levi came along?

Who eats alone at your school? What would it actually take to change that — not what should happen, what would have to happen?

○ Push once, carefully: “Jesus does not say Levi's job was fine. He also does not wait for Levi to fix it before inviting him. Both of those are in the story. Hold on to both.”

E — Economics. Fishing on this lake was a business, not a hobby: boats, nets, hired men (1:20), and partners (Luke 5:10). It was also taxed and controlled by the local ruler, Herod Antipas. Levi sits at a booth collecting for that same administration. Follow the money out loud — fish caught, fish sold, a share taken at the booth. Then ask: does knowing that change who is sitting at the table in 2:15?

G — Geography. The Sea of Galilee is a freshwater lake about thirteen miles long. Capernaum sits on its north shore, on a road, close to where one ruler's territory ended and another's began. That is exactly where a toll booth belongs — you put it where things have to cross. Ask why the story of a tax collector could not have been set in the middle of nowhere.

S — Society. Eating together was not casual. Who you shared a meal with said who you were connected to, and everybody watching knew it. The objection at 2:16 is about a table, not about a conversation. Ask what the equivalent is now — where does sitting with somebody still say something about you?

s — sources. Our source is Mark. Here is something checkable: Mark 2:14 calls the man Levi son of Alphaeus. Matthew 9:9 tells the same story and calls him Matthew. Have two students look them up side by side and read both aloud. Nobody knows for certain why they differ. It is fine to say so.

Put the Economics frame beside the Society frame. If money is what separated these people, what does eating together actually settle — and what does it leave unsettled?

● One sentence, written down, with a real plan attached:

“The person I will sit with this week is ______________, and I will do it on ______________ at ______________.”

● Say out loud what counts: sitting down without being asked, and going over to where they are instead of inviting them to where you are. The second one is harder, and they should know that before they write.

○ Have each student say their sentence quietly to one other student, so the words have been said once before Tuesday makes them say them for real.

Frames in this band: G Geography · S Society · E Economics · R Reason · s sources

● Read Mark 1:16–20 and 2:13–17 with a pencil. Mark the verbs and mark the objection.

• Both scenes have the same shape: he passes by, he sees, he calls, they leave, they follow. Mark says “at once” or “without delay” in both (1:18, 1:20).
• 1:20 — Zebedee stays in the boat with the hired men. Somebody is still running that business tomorrow morning.
• 2:14 — Levi is at a tax booth, at Capernaum, on a road, working for the same administration that regulates the fishing.
• 2:15 — the meal is “at his house,” and the Greek does not make clear whose house. Translations differ; look at two.
• 2:16 — the objection is not about his teaching. It is about eating. And it is put to the disciples, not to Jesus.

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17)

Mark gives you no deliberation, no goodbyes, no reasons. What is that telling designed to make you feel — and what is it leaving out?

The fishermen and the collector are on opposite ends of the same money. What has to happen at a table for those two to sit at it?

2:17 — “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” Is that an insult, a diagnosis, or a joke at the objectors' expense? Argue it out.

○ Read 2:16 aloud again, in a serious voice, as a serious question. Then ask what a person would have to believe for that question to be worth asking. (Worth reaching: that holiness is something contact can cost you.)

● In their world: “Where you sit is a public statement and everybody knows it. Choosing a table is a sentence you say without saying it.”

What has it cost you, or somebody you know, to be seen with the wrong person?

Is there anybody you would help privately but not be seen with? That is the actual question in this passage. Answer it honestly to yourself.

Jesus does not clear the room before he eats. He also never says everything at that table is fine. Where does that leave you when somebody you like is doing something you think is wrong?

○ Name the distinction, and do it without making the objectors stupid: their worry was that contact spreads uncleanness outward. Mark's Jesus works the other direction — contact is how the healing gets in. Both are theories about what happens when people touch.

E — Economics. Fishing under Herod Antipas was regulated: access to the water, harbours, and the movement of goods were all things a ruler controlled and taxed. Levi's booth collects for that administration. Scholars divide on how well the fishing families did — one influential line of work describes them as a heavily squeezed class working under brokers and leases, while others point to boats, nets, hired men (1:20), partners (Luke 5:10), and a real export trade in salted fish and describe a middling business with assets. Ask which reconstruction makes leaving the nets cost more, and whether that changes the story.

G — Geography. Capernaum sits on the north-west shore, close to the boundary between Antipas' Galilee and his brother Philip's territory, on a route running inland toward Damascus. A border plus a road is what makes a toll station worth building. Excavation there has found a white limestone synagogue from several centuries later, built over a basalt foundation many take to be a first-century one, and a first-century house under a Byzantine church that was venerated from an early date as Peter's. Neither identification is certain. Ask what a place like this has in one street: fish, freight, soldiers, and a booth.

S — Society. Table fellowship. Eating with somebody implied association, and the questioners' concern about food, tithing, and purity was a serious religious position rather than a pretext. The Pharisees were a lay movement — Josephus gives their number as more than six thousand (Antiquities 17.42) — trying to live a demanding religious life carefully, with tithing and purity kept seriously in ordinary homes rather than only at the temple. Exactly what standard they held themselves to is argued by historians; the question at 2:16 is serious either way. Their question at 2:16 is: how can a teacher share a table with people whose observance he cannot vouch for? Say it that way, as a real question. Then ask what makes it hard to answer.

R — Reason. “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (2:17). Read it two ways out loud — as a plain statement about two groups of people, and as irony aimed at the people who thought they were in the first group. Both readings are held by serious interpreters. Ask what changes in the passage depending on which one you take, and whether the sentence works if you take it both ways at once.

s — sources. The man has two names. Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27 call him Levi son of Alphaeus; Matthew 9:9 calls him Matthew. The lists of the Twelve include a Matthew and a James son of Alphaeus, and no Levi at all (Mark 3:16–19). Three proposals: one man with two names, the first Gospel identifying the collector with an apostle, or two different men. Have them read all three passages before saying which they find likeliest, and require a reason.

Choose one.

• For one week, sit somewhere you do not usually sit — at lunch, in class, at church. Write down what you learn about who your usual seat was telling people you belonged to.
• Name a job in your town that people look down on. Find out what it actually involves, from someone who does it or from a real source, and write four sentences that would surprise your friends.
• Write the strongest version of the Pharisees' question at 2:16, in your own words, so that somebody who agreed with it would say you got it right. Then write Jesus' answer in your own words, and say which of the two is harder to live with.

Frames in this band: B Biography · G Geography · S Society · E Economics · R Reason · s sources

● Close reading across two call scenes. Put five observations on the table:

• The scenes are built identically: he passes, he sees a man at work, he issues a two-word imperative, the man leaves the work. Mark supplies no motive, no deliberation, and no prior acquaintance. Luke 5:1–11 and John 1:35–42 both supply prior contact, in different forms.
• 1:20 — Zebedee, the boat, and the hired men remain. The business is not dissolved; the sons leave it. And in 1:29 the group goes to Simon and Andrew's house, which is still a house, with a family in it (1:30).
• 2:14 — a tax booth at Capernaum. These are toll collectors working under a client ruler, not the tax-farming publicani of the late Roman Republic; English translation blurs the two, and the difference matters for how much power the man at the booth actually had.
• 2:15 — “in his house” is ambiguous in Greek and has been read both ways since antiquity. The guest list changes with the answer, and so does who is hosting whom.
• 2:16 — the objection concerns eating rather than teaching, and it is addressed to the disciples rather than to Jesus. 2:17 answers with a medical proverb and then a statement about whom he came to call.

Mark gives you no psychology at all. Is that absence a claim about the authority of the one calling, a compression of a longer process, or a narrative convention of the period? Defend your answer from the text, not from what you find plausible.

What does the call cost, exactly, if Zebedee's operation has employees? Name what is given up and what is not, and be precise.

○ Read Jeremiah 16:16, where God sends for fishermen and hunters and the image is one of judgment, then Amos 4:2 and Ezekiel 29:4–5, where hooks are threats. Now read Mark 1:17 again. Some scholars hear that prophetic background behind the phrase; others treat it as the obvious metaphor to reach for when speaking to fishermen. Do not decide it for them.

● Say what the offense actually was. Not that he talked to disreputable people — that he ate with them, which in that setting signalled association and shared standing. The objection is about what a table publishes.

Where does your own life still run on who it is safe to be seen with? Name the mechanism, not just the feeling.

The objectors were not cynics. They were people trying to live a demanding religious life carefully. What does it do to your reading that the sharpest objection in the passage comes from serious people?

If welcome comes before change, what happens to change? If change comes before welcome, what happens to welcome? Say which failure you would rather risk — and say it without describing a church you dislike.

○ The doctor image cuts in both directions at once: it grants that something is wrong, and denies that it is grounds for exclusion. Any use of 2:17 that keeps only one of those halves is a misuse, and both misuses are common. Ask them to name where they have heard each one.

E — Economics. The lake fishery was taxed and controlled under Antipas — tolls on goods in movement, and the ruler's control of access to water and harbours. The scholarly picture divides. One influential line of work (K. C. Hanson's 1997 study is the most cited) describes fishers as a heavily extracted class operating under brokers and leases; others point to boats, nets, hired men (1:20), partners (Luke 5:10), and an export trade in salted and pickled fish, and describe a middling business with real assets. The physical evidence — a first-century boat recovered near the lake shore in 1986, harbour works around the lake, and Magdala, usually identified with Taricheae, whose Greek name is connected with fish-processing — is compatible with a range of pictures. Require students to say what each reconstruction does to the call story, and which one they think the text itself supports.

G — Geography. Capernaum lies on the north-west shore near the frontier between Antipas' Galilee and Philip's tetrarchy, on a route running from the coastal plain inland toward Damascus — the familiar label “Via Maris” is a modern convention for a road whose exact line is debated. A frontier and a road together are what make a toll station profitable. Excavation has produced a basalt foundation beneath the later white limestone synagogue, which many identify as a first-century building, and a first-century house beneath an octagonal Byzantine church, venerated from the fourth century as Peter's. Neither identification is settled, and the second cannot be. Ask what archaeology can establish about a call story and what it structurally cannot.

S — Society. The Pharisees were a lay movement — Josephus puts them at more than six thousand (Antiquities 17.42) — associated with careful tithing and with purity practice. The familiar description of them as extending priestly purity standards to ordinary household meals is one reconstruction, associated with Jacob Neusner; E. P. Sanders wrote a study rebutting it and the question is open. Give students both, and note that which reconstruction you take changes how sharp the question at 2:16 sounds. Eating at someone's table raised real questions: had the produce been tithed, what was the host's standard. 2:16 asks that question seriously. Two things to say to the room, both of them out loud. First, the Gospels were written during a period of conflict between the Jesus movement and other Jewish groups, and their portrait of the Pharisees is shaped by that conflict — historians take this into account and so should students. Second, rabbinic Judaism, which descends in part from the Pharisees, is not the villain of this text. Any reading of Mark 2 that makes “the Jews” the opposition has misread it: everybody at that table is Jewish, including Jesus.

B — Biography. Levi son of Alphaeus (Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27) and Matthew (Matthew 9:9). The lists of the Twelve name a Matthew and a James son of Alphaeus, and never a Levi (Mark 3:16–19). The proposals are a double name, an identification made by the first Gospel, or two different men — one of whom would then be a called follower outside the Twelve. It is unresolved. Ask what a tradition gains by having a toll collector among the Twelve, and whether a plausible motive for a claim counts as evidence against it.

R — Reason. The question this passage answers is: who gets invited. The answer is unsettling in both directions at once. The call comes with no precondition — nobody is asked to reform first. And it is a call: it moves people off their booths and out of their boats. Ask which half their own church emphasizes, what the other half would cost it, and require each student to state the strongest form of the position they do not hold before arguing against it.

s — sources. The word “sinners” at 2:15–16 is genuinely contested. E. P. Sanders argued it means the deliberately and notoriously wicked, which makes the offense that Jesus associated with them without requiring repentance first. Others, including J. D. G. Dunn, argue it works in disputes like this one as a label for those who did not observe the law as the objectors did — which makes it partly sectarian vocabulary. Rabbinic texts do group tax collectors with robbers and treat their money as suspect (for example Mishnah Bava Kamma 10:1–2 and Nedarim 3:4), but the Mishnah was compiled around AD 200 and its evidence for the 30s is indirect. Have students say what each reading does to 2:17, and what evidence would settle it.

Choose one.

• A 300-word paper answering the question the passage asks: who gets invited? Work from Mark 1:16–20 and 2:13–17 only, and state the strongest form of a reading you reject, in terms its holder would accept, before you argue against it.
• Find out who collects revenue where you live, and from whom — a fee, a fine, a toll, a rate, an interest charge. Identify one group that pays a larger share of what it has than another does, and bring the source you used, not a summary of it.
• Sit at a table you have never sat at — a different group at school, a church you do not attend, a meal your family does not usually go to. Clear it with an adult first. Stay for the whole meal, and bring back one sentence you heard that you would not have heard otherwise.