Jesus often ate with his disciples. But unlike many rabbis, he did not limit his friendship and table fellowship only to “good” people. He regularly shocked and upset the religious leaders, not just by calling people like the tax collector Matthew, but then cheerfully joining him and all his (disreputable) friends for a meal together. This, he said, was a central part of his mission.

• Author Brennan Manning once compared the social impact of what Jesus did here to a wealthy plantation owner in Atlanta, GA in 1925 inviting “four colored cotton-pickers” to Sunday dinner and after-dinner conversation at his mansion. Do you believe Jesus’ approach would attract or offend more people in your neighborhood in 2014? What walls between people might God be calling us to break down?
• Jesus bluntly told the offended Pharisees, “I didn’t come to call righteous people, but sinners.” Scholar Hans Küng wrote, “A Church that will not accept the fact that it consists of sinful men and exists for sinful men becomes hard-hearted, self-righteous, inhuman … though it is true that the Church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinner at a distance.” Make it personal: in what ways can you see that the church has to accept a sinner in order to include you?