Food Is Spiritual

After this he went out and saw a man named Levi at his work collecting taxes. Jesus said, “Come along with me.” And he did—walked away from everything and went with him. Levi gave a large dinner at his home for Jesus. Everybody was there, tax men and other disreputable characters as guests at the dinner. - Luke 5:27-29 The Message

In a culture where the dinner table was the cornerstone of society, Jesus redefined who was "in" and who was "out." Jesus would eat with anyone, and often did. He ate with the rich and the poor,  he ate with women and men, he ate with religious leaders and prostitutes, he ate with conservatives and liberals, he ate with nationalists and with revolutionaries and with turncoats. That's because the key criteria for Jesus to eat with you was if you were human. Period.

People often judged Jesus for eating with the wrong people. At one point they called him "a glutton and a drunkard." But Jesus didn't seem to mind. He actually seemed to really enjoy a good meal, good conversations, and being with all kinds of people. These days we forget that food is a very spiritual thing, but it is.

So today, ponder who you eat with. Who comes to your table? Whose table do you go to? When's the last time you took a risk around food - not in the kind of food you ate, but in the kind of person you ate with? What if you followed Jesus's example by sharing the table with a wide variety of people? Talk with God about these things.