Chapter 3 - Healing through meal sharing

"In the East, to share a meal with someone is a symbol of peace, trust, brotherhood, and forgiveness; the shared table is a shared life."

"It would be impossible to overestimate the impact these meals must have had upon the poor and the sinners. By accepting them as friends and equals Jesus had taken away their shame, humiliation and guilt. By showing them that they mattered to him as people he gave them a sense of dignity and released them from their old captivity."

"...they would have interpreted his gesture of friendship as God's approval of them. They were now acceptable to God. Their sinfulness, ignorance and uncleanness had been overlooked and were no longer being held against them."

Brennan discusses many great truths in the third chapter of this book, but the first and probably most obvious is the one that strikes me the deepest. Jesus is always about those on the outside, those who are still hurting, lost and broken. The ones who are unlovable or hard to love. Jesus wasn't afraid to be close to them, to be seen with them, to love on them.

The interesting thing is that the idea of being "invited to someone's house for a meal" is not the same for our Western culture as it is for the Eastern culture. But still, some of the same implications remain. We have friends and we have strangers. Jesus invited the strangers to become friends. We have friends and we have "the homeless". Jesus invited those without homes to become friends. We have friends and we have homosexuals. Jesus invited the homosexuals to become friends.

These ideas are not easy for me. To open myself up, to seek out, those who are friendless. But I realize most of that comes from fear. A fear of having to be something or convince someone. The reality is I just need to be me, to befriend the friendless. I can do that. It may mean stepping out of my comfort zone. A favorite professor of mine once had a large group of teens do an exercise. He had everyone in the room put their hand on the shoulder of the person next to them, and then look each other in the eye. We were to stand their unwavering for one minute. It felt like an ETERNITY!

I wasn't there to witness it, but I'm sure Jesus looked every person He interacted with in the eye. It shows the person you see them. You don't see through or past, but you see them. They matter. Putting down the cell phone, not multi tasking, but looking that person in the eye and being present.

I don't have to convince or prove people of their forgiveness and acceptance, I just have to treat them like it.