[T]able fellowship [is] a map of economic discrimination, social hierarchy, and political differentiation…What [Jesus] advocates, therefore, is an open commensality, an eating together without using table as a miniature map of society’s vertical discriminations and lateral separations…Since Jesus lived out his own parable, the most predictable counteraccusation to such open commensality would be immediate: Jesus is a glutton, a drunkard, and a friend of tax collectors and sinners. He makes, in other words, no appropriate distinctions and discriminations. And since women were present, especially unmarried women, the accusation would be that Jesus eats with whores, the standard epithet of denigration for any female outside appropriate male control. All those terms–tax collectors, sinners, whores–are in this case derogatory terms for those with whom, in the opinion of the name callers, open and free association should be avoided.

The Kingdom of God as a process of open commensality, of a nondiscriminating table depicting in miniature a nondiscriminating society, clashes fundamentally with honor and shame, those basic values of ancient Mediterranean culture and society.

–John Dominic Crossan’s Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography

Painting by Jessica Delorme

Tags:class distinctioncommensalityeating togetherJessica DelormeJesusJohn Dominic Crossantable fellowship