All Are Invited

Aug 7, 2022    Steve Dozeman

Hospitality is not simply hosting people, but the act of making people feel welcomed and included. Jesus extends his presence and status as a respected religious leader and teacher to a gathering of those who had been excluded and removed from acceptable society. This was the crafty nature of Roman occupation - to cause rifts among the indigenous people by recruiting locals to do the dirty work of collecting taxes. In Jewish circles, this was not only seen as a betrayal of their people, but a disloyalty to God. They were made social outcasts—and Jesus chose to party with them. Jesus-like hospitality will sometimes include the “wrong people” and offend the “right people.”