A Sinner at My Table.

I am not a party girl. My idea of a good time is to spend the day cooking a meal, choosing a nice wine, setting a lovely table to share with one or two friends, people like me whom I like. My guest list seldom reflects those with whom Jesus sat at table. No tax collectors. No sinners. Sociology calls table fellowship "commensality.” From the Latin mensa (table), it means the rules and rituals of who eats with whom. I’m a good hostess, but flunk Christian commensality. Matthew the tax collector (what else was he doing at a customs house?) passed. He invited the passerby, the stranger Jesus, to his house for a fancy meal (they reclined—anakeimenou—at dinner).

I don’t invite strangers, foreigners, those of shady occupations, laborers, the burdened, the poor, ragged riffraff. But there is a sinner at my table. Me. I am the unsavory person Jesus wines and dines. Jesus went to a great deal of trouble to prepare a meal for me, one of the sinners at his table. I am the hostess invited to consume the Host at his own table! I am one he regularly feeds. And he thereby rightfully expects me to become a feeder, to be blessed, broken, and given, not just for the select few whom I choose, but for everybody whom God loves . . . which is everybody.

Jesus came to call sinners. We who accept his invitation must incarnate his mercy.

Bonnie Thurston. Taken from Give Us This Day.

After years as a professor, Bonnie Thurston lives quietly in her home state, West Virginia. She is a poet and author of numerous books on Scripture and Spirituality, including Maverick Mark: The Untamed First Gospel.