Who belongs?

And as [Jesus] reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mark 2:15-16)

I heard it long ago and many times since: ‘If you draw a circle to define who’s in and who’s out, be assured Jesus is on the outside looking back at you.’

It’s a cliché, a bit tired. But perhaps it fits today amid the brutal question roiling the soul of America: Who belongs? How big should the circle be? Differences of opinion are currently being played out on the streets of Minneapolis.

Christians have a dog in this fight. At the heart of a truly Christian consciousness, lies the love of Christ, who is constantly seeking to restore human community to a fullness of love and belonging, where graces are shared and every human soul knows its worth.

There is something in the Christian heart that hates walls that divide, a desire to welcome every willing soul into the respect and warmth of human community.

It is well accepted that nations need borders, and no nation can or should be expected to accommodate all who want to enter. But the faith of the church leans toward welcome, toward mercy, toward compassion, shaped as it is by Jesus, who so regularly stood outside circles of exclusion, erasing lines of division drawn by the privileged, the fearful and the self-righteous.

There’s nothing more telling in this regard than Jesus’ meal practice. Take the quote above.

Most translations have Jesus sitting at table with a group of outcasts and social disasters whose behavior has placed them well outside community acceptability. But he doesn’t sit. He reclines, along with everyone else enjoying the meal.

Lying on his left elbow, the typical practice of his time and place, he reaches with his right arm for bits of food or to take a cup. The picture is one of relaxation, familiarity, comfort, ease, savoring the pleasure of food, drink and human presence with people who were regularly reminded they didn’t belong, except here, with Jesus.

It is impossible to think of this without imagining a smile of satisfaction tugging at the corners of his mouth. Lord knows, I feel his joy as I imagine him there, creating his own circle of acceptance into which his critics would have been welcome had they been willing.

This after all was his purpose, to regather and restore the people of Israel to their true spiritual vocation of being ‘a light to the nations,’ where the Lord ‘will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines’—the fullness of human existence, as the prophet Isaiah proclaimed.

Something of this hope and vocation, ‘a light to the nations,’ is deeply embedded not only in the hearts of those who cherish the boundary-breaking joy of Jesus’ witness, but also in the American dream of many peoples becoming one for the good of all.

This dream and vocation are daily attacked on the streets of our nation by those who draw narrow, exclusive circles because they have replaced the vision of America with arrogant delusions of their superiority.

Even more troubling, many American Christians have lost or never knew and felt the gracious vision of Jesus reclining with his excluded friends. Seduced by the rhetoric of fear and falsehood, they fail to know the joyful mission to which they are called. But Jesus doesn’t forget. He is still there, inviting all of us to come home and share the feast of welcome.

Perhaps this is why I cherish the demonstrations of Christians singing in the streets of Minneapolis, so much more than the bitter vitriol (however understandable) that merely mimics the brutality of ICE. The singers seem to know Jesus.

David L. Miller