“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” – Jesus
Most cultures worldwide prioritize what happens at the common table beyond eating. In ancient Mediterranean societies, the culture in which the stories of the Bible were lived out, the table symbolized a place of acceptance, peace, and friendship.
In the Jewish community of the first century, table fellowship was a cultural sensibility practiced judiciously and rigorously. In plain words, you didn’t eat with just anyone! Who you broke bread with indicated who your friends were and where you fit on the social ladder.
And so it was in Jesus’ day. In their pursuit of (self) righteousness, the religious leaders separated themselves from Jewish community commoners. Many of these were labeled “sinners”—individuals with whom a common meal would result in impurity. Ironically, it was amongst these very individuals that Jesus lived and ministered. He was regularly accused of consorting with the social riff-raff of the day – at least so the religious leaders opined. “He just isn’t ‘one of us.’”
Things could hardly have been messier for Jesus than being the honored guest at a banquet designed to fellowship with “tax collectors and others.” Naturally, Levi, the host, had “worldly” friends on the religious leaders’ “do not invite to dinner” list! They would ask Jesus, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?” highlighting what everyone already knew: Jesus was violating religious and social protocol. Scott Bartchy writes, “In his message and table praxis, eating with anyone who would eat with him challenged the central role played by table fellowship in reinforcing boundaries and statuses widely believed to be sanctioned by God.”
Jesus acted counter-culturally. He transformed the table’s role from preserving ethnic and religious purity to announcing grace and acceptance, from enforcing exclusiveness to practicing inclusiveness, and from marginalizing “sinners” and “others” to welcoming them to a personal relationship. This was unprecedented. As a result, he would be misunderstood, suffer undue criticism, and experience alienation and censorship.
Table fellowship, then, serves as a cultural lens through which to understand Jesus’ mission, as Jesus Himself states: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” To translate this using the table-fellowship metaphor: “It is not insiders—the popular and socially apt who need to be invited to eat at our table (they are already there), but the outsiders—the marginalized and alienated, that is, those we deem less important or don’t fit our relational comfort.”
On this and other occasions, it was while Jesus was enjoying food and fellowship at the table that he announced His salvation. At Zacchaeus’ table, a despised chief tax collector, Jesus spoke grace into his world; “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:9-10).
To another marginalized individual, a Roman soldier, an astonished Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the East and the West and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 8:10-12).
Here, Jesus announced a stunning reversal: hated outsiders like gentile Romans from the West would be invited to sit at the table with the Jewish Patriarchs. In contrast, entitled insiders like Jewish religious leaders would be shown the door. Jesus explains in Luke’s parallel passage: “Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and the first who will be last” (13:29). Who do we consider to be last or “different” in our community? Who is first? How might we live out Jesus’ words?
Christians must catch the vision of Jesus’ inclusive, welcoming presence amongst “sinners” and “others” where God’s transforming grace can be exemplified in word and deed. Eddie Gibbs writes, “Hospitality entails not only a seat in the church but a place at the table. The missional church is one that welcomes all comers, regardless of their lifestyle and beliefs, but always with a view to their radical transformation.” I believe families, churches, and communities that claim to be Christian are called to do the same.
With whom have we broken bread recently? Who do we feel comfortable inviting to our table? Could Jesus bring his friends and social acquaintances? Our answer will reveal whether our table is a place of transforming love and grace or a place of intractable indifference.
—Leroy Goertzen
