“When Jesus opens the table to all, the table begins to tell a new story. But it is a story unlike the story of his contemporaries. The observant person’s table story: You can eat with me if you are clean. If you are unclean, take a bath and come back tomorrow evening. Jesus’ table story: clean or unclean, you can eat with me, and I will make you clean. Instead of his table requiring purity, his table creates purity. Jesus chooses the table to be a place of grace. When the table becomes a place of grace, it begins to act. What does it do? It heals, it envisions, and it hopes…
The table of Jesus talks by envisioning a new society, a society of grace, of inclusion, of restoration, and of transformation. We need to ask what, at the physical level, our churches are saying.”
From “The Jesus Creed”, by Scot McKnight (pp.36, 39)