Video Series: Communal Culture Episode 7: Table Fellowship

⬤Brian: In 1954, a group of 11-year old boys was brought to a camp in Oklahoma. The boys hadn’t known each other before, and a culture quickly developed. Scientists posing as camp counselors stood by jotting notes. A week into it, the boys discovered they were not alone: another group of boys like them was living in another part of the camp. Wary of the strangers, competition began, hitting one side against the other, which eventually devolved into open combat.

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⬤Brian: Shalom! Welcome to Bridges to the Bible! I’m Brian Johnson!

⬤Marcia: And I’m Marcia Johnson! Why did the boys act this way? What were they thinking?

⬤Brian: Well, they had just spent a week developing a culture, expected norms of how they should act. And then they met this other group. Understand that cultures are defined by the group that you are in and the group that you are not in. So now they’re being defined by who is not in their group, and they then competed for resources. People like to form groups; we naturally do this. We like that sense of belonging, and part of our identity is by the groups that we are in and the groups that we are not in. This is the seventh and final part of a series on the communal nature of Biblical culture. Visit BridgesToTheBible.com, where you can download the episode guide, which includes study notes to follow along, discussion questions, and more.

⬤Marcia: So far in this series we’ve looked at the communal nature of eastern versus western worldviews, we’ve looked at honor and shame, names and naming, the bet av (the father’s house), the patriarchal structure, including marriage and gender roles, and redemption within the bet av.

⬤Brian: Today we’re going to look at the concept of table fellowship, of in-groups and out-groups.

⬤Marcia: What are in-groups and out-groups?

⬤Brian: An in-group is a group of like-minded people; there’s something that holds them together, something they find in common. Think about a group like: you attend the same church, or you go to the same school, or you live in the same neighborhood.

⬤Marcia: Maybe you root for the same college team, or you’re in the same political party, or you work for the same business, or on the same work team.

⬤Brian: Out-groups, on their hand, are those who are not in your in-group. These are people who go to a different school, a different church, live in a different neighborhood, who are part of a different political party, for instance. And so they are not one of us. It’s “the other.”

⬤Marcia: Well that could easily form into an “us” versus “them.” That sounds pretty straightforward and something we deal with every day.

⬤Brian: And an in-group is a group that supports one another; they respect each other; they’re loyal to each other to a certain degree.

⬤Marcia: Was the world of the Bible any different?

⬤Brian: Well, they had the same concept of in-groups and out-groups, but it was stronger than ours, because they’re more communally focused. They’re going to be looking to support one, another care for one another, redeem one another if needed. Think about they want to bring honor to their group; they don’t want their group to have a bad name.

⬤Marcia: So who is in an in-group?

⬤Brian: Well, for them, your bet av is in your in-group. Then from there could be your clan, your neighbors, your friends, your village, your tribe. It depends on the context that you’re in socially. But your core family is always in.

⬤Marcia: What about the out-groups?

⬤Brian: Well, the out-groups don’t get the same respect as in-group members. You don’t particularly care about them; you’re indifferent or you disdain them. It’s “us” versus “them”; it’s human versus doubtfully human.

⬤Marcia: Well, that’s awful to look at people that way, but I guess, on the other hand, you can’t look out for everybody, and you have to prioritize who you’re going to be giving support to and who you’re really involved with.

⬤Brian: So let’s look at Jesus and how he interacted with different groups.

⬤Marcia: Jesus recruited disciples; he said “Follow me!” He was inviting people to be part of his in-group.

⬤Brian: So how do we know who would have been a part of Jesus’s in-group?

⬤Marcia: It’s who you eat with; this is called “table fellowship.” Sharing a meal was sharing a life! The people at your table could be seen from the street, so it was a very public thing to see who was eating with whom. So who would you expect Jesus would want to sit at his table?

⬤Brian: Well Jesus is calling people to repent, to obey God. I guess we could sum it up in: he would most have an in-group with the righteous, those people who want to obey God and please him (not saying that they are perfect). So, for instance, Jesus calls a group of fishermen: not necessarily saying that these are the most righteous people or the best, but this group of fishermen seem to be wanting to please God in the best way that they can. On the other hand though, at sort of the other end of the spectrum, from this group of righteous is the Pharisees. Now, the Pharisees are really trying to please God in every way that they can, and they are very fussy as a result about who they eat with. They are only going to eat with, have table fellowship with, people in their in-group people, who are like them.

⬤Marcia: The Pharisees wouldn’t have welcomed Jesus into that in-group then, right?

⬤Brian: Well actually, we have stories of Jesus eating with Pharisees. For instance in Luke 7, it says that Jesus was invited to the table of Simon the Pharisee.

⬤Marcia: What?! I usually think of Jesus being in conflict with the Pharisees. So if they were having him over, it was just to trap him, right?

⬤Brian: No, remember that they’re only going to eat with someone in their in-group, so the fact that they’re there means there is some amount of acceptance of Jesus. Actually, Jesus’ theology is very similar to that of the Pharisees.

⬤Marcia: But we usually see them pretty upset with each other!

⬤Brian: Well, that’s true, but the Pharisees commonly debated with one another, just like they do with Jesus. This is an in-group debate that’s going on.

⬤Marcia: But I thought that they wanted to kill Jesus.

⬤Brian: Well that’s true. There are some Pharisees who did want to kill Jesus. They tend to agree more with Pharisees from Judea, down in the south rather than the Galilee where Jesus was in. But you see in the book of Acts, various Pharisees who are actually defending the apostles, and many Pharisees who actually joined the apostles.

⬤Marcia: But Jesus doesn’t limit himself to Pharisees and others who hold God in high honor. He reaches out to those who are not so interested in following God, the outcasts like tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors were looked at as traitors; they had sold out to the Romans. We look at Matthew: he was a tax collector called by Jesus. He then gets his in-group of tax collectors together with Jesus and the other disciples, and we read in Matthew 9: “And as Jesus reclined at the table in the house, behold many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?'”

⬤Brian: Jesus’ actions confuse the Pharisees because Jesus is considered part of their in-group. Now, it’s no big deal for tax collectors to eat with fellow tax collectors; that’s their own in-group. But Jesus, if you’re part of our in-group, you wouldn’t eat with that out-group, would you? And Jesus is teaching them that they shouldn’t be calling them outcasts.

⬤Marcia: And Jesus explains it saying, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.” Jesus is inviting people to the table who don’t have it all together. Some do repent and accept him, and others reject him.

⬤Brian: So Jesus was very popular in the Galilee, in the region that he spent most of his ministry, but when he went down south to Judea, he encountered some different circumstances.

⬤Marcia: The Judeans saw themselves as better educated; they’re more elite; they’re part of the leaders in Jerusalem. They viewed themselves as a separate in-group from those in Galilee.

⬤Brian: Now it’s interesting in the gospel of John, it refers commonly to the “Jews” interacting with Jesus, but the term in Greek for “Jews” and “Judeans” is the same word. So if you look in there most of the time, it’s actually referring probably to Judeans, rather than the Jews as a whole, and most of that time it’s actually referring to the Jewish leaders, those in charge of the Temple.

⬤Marcia: Like Sadducees: they were a group of aristocrats in charge of the Temple, and unlike the Pharisees, their theology was very different than Jesus’. They saw themselves definitely as an out-group to Jesus. The Sadducees wanted to trap Jesus, and they really saw him as a threat. Jesus’ words to the Sadducees was like speaking to an out-group: he used sarcasm with them. They were supposed to be the religious leaders that knew the scriptures better than anybody, and Jesus, multiple times, says, “Have you not read…?”  — basically like “Have you not ever read the Bible?” And sadly the Sadducees did not accept Jesus.

⬤Brian: Yeah so in John 7, we see: “After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews (the Judeans) were seeking to kill him.” However though, it’s not that all Judeans were against Jesus; Sadducees, yes, but there were others of the common people who were for him. For instance, he had friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus who lived not too far from Jerusalem. And Lazarus died, and Jesus raised him back to life, and it says in John 12 that, as a result of this many Judeans believed in him.

⬤Marcia: So is that it? Jesus invited fellow Jews to be part of his in-group?

⬤Brian: There’s more to it than that. The Jews’ in-group included their neighbor, and so they looked at “neighbor” from Leviticus 19:18, where it says: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The literal Hebrew says: “you love your neighbor like you,” so they said, okay, my neighbor is someone who is like me. And who is like me? My fellow Jew is! But there were debates on exactly what that meant, and so Jesus is asked about this: in Luke 10 it says, “who is my neighbor?”

⬤Marcia: And Jesus responds with the parable of the good Samaritan. He turns the traditional response into your fellow human being; not a condition like those that are only similar to you, but the reason for it: that those that are made in God’s image like you. Jesus’ audience expected fellow Jews to be neighbors, but definitely not Samaritans. Samaritans were viewed from Jews as definitely an out-group. They were half breeds: they were only half-Jews, and they did not get along. They look at Samaritans as unBEARable!

⬤Brian: But Jesus actually interacted with Samaritans. For instance, in John 4, he interacts with this woman at the well. He’s crossing boundaries and even asks her for a drink from her cup; it says that they do not share cups like that. Basically, he’s inviting her to the table. And she goes and actually invites other people too who believe in him.

⬤Marcia: Jesus is opening the door, when he’s inviting Samaritans to join him, and later on we read in the book of Acts, that the gospel was brought to the Samaritans. They receive the Holy Spirit and become part of the Jesus movement.

⬤Brian: Alright, so we’ve got the Jews, the half-Jews (the Samaritans). They’ve been invited to the table; they’re part of the in-group. Is that all we’ve got?

⬤Marcia: Well, Israel was God’s chosen, and they developed purity laws that kept Gentiles separate from Jews. They would not eat together. And it wasn’t just about the food; they viewed Gentiles themselves as unclean.

⬤Brian: In Acts 10, it says that Peter had a vision of a sheet that came down from heaven that had all sorts of unclean animals in it. And in the vision he hears a voice saying, “Kill! Eat!”. And he’s like: these aren’t animals that I eat! But he then realizes that it’s not saying that the animals are on the table; it represents those who are at the table, that the animals, metaphorically the Gentiles, should be brought in to the table.

⬤Marcia: Often, people misinterpret the vision that it’s about dietary laws being abolished, but this is not Peter’s interpretation later on in Acts 10: “And he said to them, ‘You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.”

⬤Brian: And Peter then goes to Cornelius’ house and eats with him, and they accept Jesus. Peter is then later actually criticized by the Jerusalem leadership of believers for doing this: you went and ate with Gentiles! They’re unclean! Don’t you know this? And he then explains about the vision of the sheet and God’s instruction to him, and how when they believed in Jesus, they got the Holy Spirit like the Jews did. And they said: wow, the gentiles, I guess, can be part of our in-group!

⬤Marcia: And this is an ongoing controversy in Acts. What do you do with the Gentiles that have come to Christ?

⬤Brian: Yeah, as Paul and others go out to the Gentile world, they’re going to tell them about Jesus; however, there’s going to be some complications that arise, because they’ve got their own in-groups and out-groups, and people who are not going to have table fellowship with one another. The wealthy landlord is not going to be sitting at the table with his slave, or the stately politician is not going to sit at the table with just some commoner.

⬤Marcia: In the house churches, which was the norm for the early church, they had meals together; they called them “love feasts.” People that would have never eaten together before now are not only in the same room, but they’re praying, they’re worshiping, and they’re eating together. We need to appreciate how outrageously counter-cultural this was!

⬤Brian: And then Paul says that they are all unified in Christ, that there is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female. We’re all one in Jesus. Yes, we are different, but we’ve been brought together; we have one Spirit; we’re in the same in-group.

⬤Marcia: And this is the context for Eucharist or communion: they’re actually communing together and with God, remembering Jesus.

⬤Brian: Think about how the Bible ends, near the end of the book of Revelation in chapter 19, it talks about the wedding supper of the lamb. The bible basically ends with a banquet, Jesus eating with his in-group, having table fellowship with them.

⬤Marcia: So who is at your table? If we’re part of Jesus’ in-group, we need to be treating others like easterners treated their in-group, caring for and supporting one another. Followers of Jesus were never meant to commune alone. We hope that you have or you’ll find a really great community of believers to do life with, and inviting others into Jesus’ in-group.

⬤Brian: Continue the conversation at BridgesToTheBible.com! We encourage you to look at the discussion questions. Coming up next, we’ve got a short recap of this series. Until next time, SHALOM!

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