The Importance of Table Fellowship

In the first century, meal times 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. In judaism, in particular, table fellow means fellowship before god. For rabbi, jesus meals were not a boundary marker, but a sign of god's great welcome into the kingdom. The inclusion of sinners in the community of salvation achieved in table fellowship is the most meaningful expression of the message of the red min love of god. One theologian i read yesterday said that jesus got himself killed because he ate with all the wrong people.