When is the last time you sat around a table for a meal with your family? What about with people who are not a part of your (biological) family? Because our lives have become so busy, the table has become much less important in our culture. But in the first century, the table was the relational center of everyone’s social world.
Who was around your table said a lot about who you were.
So if you hosting a dinner party, you invited the best people you could to your table. It was important because dinners were often held in pretty public places (your house was probably too small), so everyone could see who came to your dinner. Everyone could see what sort of company you kept.
We explore the story of a Gentile woman from Canaan who asks Jesus to heal her daughter (
Matthew 15:21-28). She’s not a person who most of God’s people in the first century would consider welcomed to God’s table. So what do we make of Jesus’ interactions with her?
