Eating with Jesus

You go to church on a Sunday morning. It’s Communion Sunday and when it comes time for Communion, the presider issues an invitation on behalf of Jesus because it’s Jesus’ table, not the church’s table. However, this invitation includes qualifiers. Are you baptized? Are you a member of the denomination? Do you affirm the church’s doctrinal statement? Have you repented of your sins? In other words, are you worthy? In Eating with Jesus, Robert Cornwall asks whether these fences around Christ’s table reflect Jesus' practice of table fellowship. If not, shouldn’t the fences be removed so that everyone is welcome at Christ’s table where followers of Jesus might be nourished for missional service in the world while "strangers" might experience God's love and grace at the same table? Through foundational essays and meditations on the stories of Jesus’ practice of table fellowship, Cornwall invites the reader to envision how a truly open eucharistic table, where the traditional fences are removed, might serve as a crossroads where divine encounters with Jesus can occur that make available God's grace to all who gather at the table through the ministrations of the Holy Spirit, wherever they may be on their spiritual journey.