A Meal with Sinners
In other cases, meals ratify covenants; celebrate military victories; accompany the anointing of kings and the establishment of their reigns; celebrate special family occasions, such as birth, marriage and death; and accompany prescribed festivals that memorialize key events in the salvation history of God’s people.
In other cases, meals ratify covenants; celebrate military victories; accompany the anointing of kings and the establishment of their reigns; celebrate special family occasions, such as birth, marriage and death; and accompany prescribed festivals that memorialize key events in the salvation history of God’s people.
As to the meaning of Jesus’ behaviour, the unifying theme that emerges is one that may be called ‘contagious holiness’. Jesus discloses not one instance of fearing contamination, whether moral or ritual, by associating with the wicked or impure. Rather, he believes that his purity can rub off on them, and he hopes that his magnanimity toward them will lead them to heed his calls to discipleship.
In more traditional societies and in subcultures that preserve older customs within our modern world, meals can still reflect times of special intimacy. Families may expect to eat together; close friends or relatives may be invited, especially for the evening meal; and leisurely conversation, perhaps with after-dinner games around the table, still forms an important recurring ritual.
Even closer parallels emerge during the celebration of special events: wedding receptions, funeral wakes, parties for rites of passage (though they may well be secular as well as religious: for example, graduation from a school rather than a confirmation or bar mitzvah), the inauguration of a head of state, or the announcement of a company merger.
A theme that did not fall within our purview in surveying the biblical material is nevertheless amply represented in the Scriptures: the need for God’s people to share from their surplus, especially of foodstuffs, with the poor and needy at home and abroad. In a world of almost record disparities between haves and have-nots and more than one billion of starving, sick or malnourished individuals, the contemporary task takes on an unprecedented urgency (see esp. Sider 1997).
More challenging is how to implement Jesus’ comparatively unique vision in extending the intimacy of table fellowship not merely to the stranger, but also to the outcast and even the enemy
Of course, as in Jesus’ ministry, the point of all such outreach efforts is not merely to provide food for the hungry, break down cultural barriers, or develop friendships with those with whom one might not naturally associate.