Table fellowship

THE RAGAMUFFIN GOSPEL by Brennan Manning
© 2005 Pages 58-62, Chapter 3, the Ragamuffin Gospel… Great Read

In modern times it is scarcely possible to appreciate the scandal Jesus caused by His table fellowship with sinners.

In the year 1925, if a wealthy plantation owner in Atlanta extended a formal invitation to four colored cotton pickers to come to his mansion for Sunday dinner, preceded by cocktails and followed by several hours of brandy and conversation, the Georgia aristocracy would have been outraged, neighboring Alabama infuriated, and the Ku Klux Klan apoplectic. Sixty or seventy years ago in the deep South, the caste system was inviolable, social and racial discrimination inflexible, and indiscretion made the loss of reputation inevitable.

In first-century Palestinian Judaism the class system was enforced rigorously. It was legally forbidden to mingle with sinners who were outside the law: table fellowship with beggars, tax collectors (traitors to the national cause because they were collecting taxes for Rome from their own people to get a kickback from the take), and prostitutes was religiously, socially, and culturally taboo.

Sadly, the meaning of meal sharing is largely lost in the Christian community today. In the Near East, to share a meal with someone is a guarantee of peace, trust, fraternity, and forgiveness—the shared table symbolizes a shared life. An Orthodox Jew’s saying “I would like to have dinner with you” is a metaphor that implies, “I would like to enter into friendship with you.” Even today an American Jew will share a doughnut and a cup of coffee with you, but to extend a dinner invitation is to say, “Come to my mikdash me-at, the miniature sanctuary of my dining room table, where we will celebrate the most sacred and beautiful experience that life affords— friendship.” That is what Zacchaeus heard when Jesus called him down from the sycamore tree, and that is why Jesus’ practice of table fellowship caused hostile comment from the outset of His ministry.

It did not escape the Pharisees’ attention that Jesus meant to befriend the rabble. He was not only breaking the law, He was destroying the very structure of Jewish society. “They all complained when they saw what was happening. ‘He has gone to stay at a sinner’s house,’ they said” (Luke 19:7). But Zacchaeus, not too hung up on respectability, was overwhelmed with joy.

It would be impossible to overestimate the impact these meals must have had upon the poor and the sinners. By accepting them as friends and equals Jesus had taken away their shame, humiliation, and guilt. By showing them that they mattered to him as people he gave them a sense of dignity and released them from their old captivity. The physical contact which he must have had with them at table (see John 13:25) and which he obviously never dreamed of disallowing (see Luke 7:38–39) must have made them feel clean and acceptable. Moreover, because Jesus was looked upon as a man of God and a prophet, they would have interpreted his gesture of friendship as God’s approval on them. They were now acceptable to God. Their sinfulness, ignorance, and uncleanness had been overlooked and were no longer being held against them.

Through table fellowship Jesus ritually acted out His insight into Abba’s indiscriminate love—a love that causes His sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and His rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike (see Matthew 5:45). The inclusion of sinners in the community of salvation, symbolized in table fellowship, is the most dramatic expression of the ragamuffin gospel and the merciful love of the redeeming God.

Thorough biblical research indicates that Jesus either had His own home in Capernaum or at least shared one with Peter, Andrew, and their families. Undoubtedly, in His ministry as an itinerant evangelist, Jesus often slept on the side of the road or stayed with friends: “The Son of man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20). But we may have taken this statement too literally. “It is difficult to understand how Jesus could have been accused of entertaining sinners (see Luke 15:2) if he did not have some kind of home in which to do so.”

Upon returning home from His missionary journeys, Jesus probably had some kind of quasi-permanent residence wherein He often served as host. Meal sharing occurred with such regularity that Jesus was accused of being a drunkard and a glutton (see Luke 7:34). The guest list would include a ragtag parade of donkey peddlers, prostitutes, herdsmen, slumlords, and gamblers. A social climber Jesus was not.

Status seekers today are selective about their dinner guests and make elaborate preparations (linen, china, silver, fresh flowers, an exquisite Beaujolais, truffle sauce, Long Island duck with glazed raspberries, Death by Chocolate dessert, and so on) for people they want to stand well with. Then they anxiously await the morning mail to see if their dinner invitation is reciprocated.

Consciously or unconsciously, the social gadflies of our day do not underestimate the ritual power of meal sharing. Jesus’ sinner guests were well aware that table fellowship entailed more than mere politeness or courtesy. It meant peace, acceptance, reconciliation, and brotherhood. “For Jesus this fellowship at table with those whom the devout had written off was not merely the expression of liberal tolerance and humanitarian sentiment. It was the expression of his mission and message: peace and reconciliation for all, without exception, even for the moral failures.”

The gospel portrait of Jesus is that of a person who cherished life and especially other people as loving gifts from the Father’s hand. The peripheral figures whom Jesus encountered in His ministry reacted in various ways to His person and His message, but few responded with gloom or sadness. (And they were those, such as the rich young ruler, who rejected His message.) The living presence of Jesus awakened joy and set people free. Joy was in fact the most characteristic result of all His ministry to ragamuffins.