From our point of view today, we might be tempted to say that Jesus hung around with “bad company!” His persistent habit of being with tax collectors and sinners (Matthew 9, 9-13 for example) meant that He was not choosing to be with “the good people,” the right people, the people readily accepted in society. This still scandalizes us in some ways.
In the time of Jesus, however, it was an even worse “move” (or so people thought) for Him to dine with the people in these two groups. The accepted Jewish norm was that dining with such people made one impure and everyone would have “known” to be careful choosing the company in whose presence they would eat.
As we see repeatedly in the Gospels, however, Jesus doesn’t have much patience with such supposedly well-accepted “norms.” He came to announce a Kingdom where all people are gathered together as God’s children, where no one is to be excluded. One of the most powerful signs of that Kingdom was “the common meal,” Jesus’ willingness to sit at table and share food – even with tax collectors and sinners.
Believing in Jesus and His Kingdom means making a commitment to do as He did. So, it remains crucially important to set aside our prejudices and willingly accept others, regardless of race, nationality, or any other barriers we so easily set up to marginalize others. The Kingdom is not made up of “us and others,” just “us” – all of God’s children.
