Chester - A meal with Jesus: discovering grace, community, & mission around the table

It was midnight, and I was sitting down to the biggest plate of meat Id ever attempted to consume. Unfortunately, Id just eaten the equivalent of a full meal.

Id spent the day with Daniel and Marie Elena Ruffinatti, who work in Argentina with prisoners and people in psychiatric institutions, as well as their families.

On my first day with the Ruffinattis we visited the largest psychiatric hospital in Argentina, which had over 1,300 men living in large, plain wards with nothing to do. The first man we met had been in the institution since he was eight. He was now in his midfifties. Most had received little love throughout their lives. They had usually been abandoned by their families, and the director conceded that most of his staff didnt really care for the patients. But Daniel and Marie Elena greeted everyone with great affection, and peoples faces lit up when they saw them.

We then went to Daniel and Marie Elenas home, where we met Nico, their eight-year-old adopted son who had been abandoned by one of the prisoners. Nico had HIV. He spoke no English and I spoke no Spanish, but he proudly showed me his magnificent tree house. Daniel told me hed built it in style to teach Nico that God was preparing a home for him when he died.

By 5:30 p.m. I was ready for a quiet evening and an early night. But instead we headed off again into the city to a high-security jail to visit prisoners who were dying of AIDS. It was a horrible place. The smell was awful and the people were in a terrible stateweak, bedridden, dying. Yet Daniel and Maria Elena embraced these people, bringing sweets and shampoo, praying with them, and showing love.

We finally left the jail at 10:30 p.m. This is what Daniel and Marie Elena do week in, week out. We hadnt eaten, so we went to a restaurant. Argentineans eat lots of meat. I thought the salads served as a starter were the main meal because they included so much meat. After working my way through a plate of meat and salad, I was presented with the main course. And so it was that at midnight I faced two cuts of meat, either of which would have equaled a family Sunday roast. Daniel and Marie Elenas story demonstrates the radical power of Gods grace, grace that Jesus embodied in his meals.

Luke 5:2732

After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, Follow me. And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.

And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? And Jesus answered them, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.

The problem here is not the party. The Pharisees knew Gods kingdom was going to be a party. Their objection is with the guest list.

Tax collectors were social outcasts who commonly used their position to cheat people. But there is more to their story. They were collaborators. They were working for the enemy. But theres more to it even than that. The Jews were looking for the day when God would defeat the Romans and re-establish his kingdom. So it wasnt just Jews versus Romans, it was God versus Romans. And the tax collectors had opted for the Romans. They were traitors to the nation and they were traitors to God. They were Gods enemies.

And here they are partying with Gods Messiah. God is sitting down and eating with his enemies.

To see how scandalous this is we need to appreciate the role meals played in the culture of the day. New Testament scholar Scott Bartchy says:

It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of table fellowship for the cultures of the Mediterranean basin in the first century of our era. Mealtimes were far more than occasions for individuals to consume nourishment. Being welcomed at a table for the purpose of eating food with another person had become a ceremony richly symbolic of friendship, intimacy and unity. Thus betrayal or unfaithfulness toward anyone with whom one had shared the table was viewed as particularly reprehensible. On the other hand, when persons were estranged, a meal invitation opened the way to reconciliation.

In a famous essay, anthropologist Mary Douglas showed that in all cultures meals represent boundary markers. They mark the boundaries between different levels of intimacy and acceptance. Policing the human body was a way of policing the social body by maintaining a common identity.

Jewish food laws not only symbolized cultural boundaries, they also created them. It wasnt easy for Jews to eat with Gentilesit still isnt today. You couldnt be sure you were being offered kosher food prepared in a kosher way (different utensils had to be used for meat and dairy, the blood had to be properly drained, and so on). If followed faithfully, dietary regulations inevitably meant Israelites couldnt enter into the intimate relationships that shared meals create. Scholars believe that Jews rarely ate with Gentiles in Jesuss day.