Jesus and the Renewal of Local Community

In an article titled “Jesus and the Renewal of Local Community in Galilee,” Jonathan Draper challenges the dominant scholarly perspective that Jesus was an itinerant charismatic leader and argues that more attention should be given to group formation in the Jesus movement as a response to the economic and social disintegration and threatened landlessness in Galilee. He contends that Jesus was attempting to “renew local community in villages and towns, to strengthen and renew family and community relations and reverse the downward spiral of violence” (40). Except for a few passages that describe specific instances in which disciples are sent out, the Jesus tradition presupposes the existence and support of settled local communities. Geographically, Jesus moves within a limited radius of a few villages until he goes to Jerusalem. Hence the emphasis on Jesus’ itinerancy may be more a consequence of superimposing post-Enlightenment individualism on the Gospel tradition so that a focus on Jesus as a unique religious figure eclipses his “concrete program of action for social transformation” (Draper, 38).

A brief consideration of meals and some of Jesus’ teachings as practical expressions of the kingdom of God will illustrate Jesus’ strategy for the renewal of community life in Galilee. A place to start is the passage mentioned above that describes Jesus as “a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” This phrase occurs with reference to Jesus in all three of the Synoptic Gospels, where it is leveled by scribes and Pharisees as a criticism of Jesus (Matt. 9:10; Mark 2:15; Luke 5:30; 7:34). This complaint about Jesus reflects his opponents’ perception of him, and may come from an early stratum of the tradition rather than from Jesus himself. Nonetheless, the criticism preserves a reminiscence of Jesus as a social deviant that probably has some basis in history. In the world in front of the text, “sinner” has a moral connotation, but in the context of Judaism, a sinner is one who is not compliant with Torah. What sinners and tax collectors have in common is that while they represent opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, both were dishonored and therefore socially marginalized. Douglas Oakman has made the interesting suggestion that the word for “sin” in Aramaic, which was the language Jesus spoke, was hōvayin, the word for “debtors.” He points out that these debtors could have been farmers or fishers in heavy debt, women enslaved in prostitution, or members of trades endangered by taxes. According to Oakman, “In this understanding, Jesus dines with just these people in order to broker relief” (98).

Meals were an integral part of Jesus’ enactment of the kingdom of God, and they play a prominent role in the Gospel tradition. In addition to their obvious material significance in satisfying the hunger of a preponderance of people who worked to eke out a subsistence living, they also had symbolic import on a number of levels. Crossan has interpreted the significance of Jesus’ meals as a central aspect of what he calls a “brokerless kingdom” marked by “the just sharing of food as the material basis of life, of life that belongs to God” (Crossan, 1991, 341–44; 1994, 66–70). He sees this sharing of meals (commensality) as part of Jesus’ program to restore, from the bottom up, a society fractured by urbanization and commercialization and, on a symbolic level, as a confrontation between the divine realm of God’s kingdom and the temporal realm of Herod Antipas within the wider realm of the Roman Empire. The feeding stories in the so-called miracle tradition also operate at both material and symbolic levels. On the one hand, the appetites of five thousand and four thousand people respectively are satisfied by the multiplication of the loaves and fishes (Mark 6:30–44; 8:1–10). On the other hand, they also serve to declare God’s abundant provision in the midst of ostensible scarcity.

Another important aspect of the kingdom of God signified by Jesus’ meals is the manner in which social norms, boundaries, and social relations are reconfigured. According to Dennis Smith, there are four categories of meals in the Gospels: (1) meals with Pharisees, (2) miraculous feedings, (3) meals with “tax collectors and sinners,” and (4) meals with disciples (D. E. Smith, 223). Smith maintains that only meals with “tax collectors and sinners” and with disciples offer a high degree of historical probability. “Sinner” and “tax collector” are both terms of slander that refer to two groups on the fringes of Jewish society, albeit at opposite ends economically. The scandal in Jesus’ eating with them was his inclusion of two groups who were normally excluded by their social location. In eating with sinners and tax collectors, Jesus exemplified the kingdom of God as encompassing those on the margins of society.

Meals are a prominent theme in the Gospel of Luke, but what is striking about many of Luke’s meal scenes is that they are depicted in the style of a Greco-Roman symposium, which provides the occasion for Jesus to teach (see Luke 7:36–50; 11:37–44; 14:1–24; 22:7–30). Formal meals in Greek or Roman settings were a microcosm of society, and meal etiquette served to reinforce the rigidly stratified Greco-Roman social order. In Luke’s meal scenes, Jesus often challenges this hierarchical social ranking and teaches the “biblical” virtue of humility. For example, Jesus tells a parable that is only in Luke in which he gives this advice about the seating arrangement at a marriage feast.

But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, “Friend, move up higher”; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. (Luke 14:10–11)

While the disregard for social honor and stratification evident in this passage is consistent with what is known about the historical Jesus, the challenge to social convention has been recontextualized for Luke’s Greco-Roman audience. The historical Jesus’ meals with “sinners and tax collectors” and Luke’s meal scenes both subvert social convention and act out an inclusive vision of the kingdom of God. However, the original cultural context of Jesus’ meals is Jewish, while Luke has set them in a Greco-Roman context, where they challenge conventions of status and honor.

The meal scenes in the Gospels illustrate just how difficult it is to separate history from tradition, to differentiate what Jesus said and did from their symbolic interpretations by his first followers. The prominence of meals in the Gospel tradition indicates that table fellowship was an important aspect of Jesus’ ministry and that it had symbolic significance. However, what table fellowship with Jesus meant in the Jewish context of rural Galilee is somewhat different from the symbolic function of the meal tradition in the Gospels, which reflect a more Greco-Roman setting. In the agrarian context of Galilee under Antipas’s rule, eating with sinners and tax collectors, and even the feeding stories, can be seen as dealing with the crisis of poverty and dispossession materially and socially through both a concrete and symbolic representation of the kingdom of God. Whatever meaning was originally ascribed to the meals Jesus had with Galileans, once they became a part of memory and tradition about him, their significance was largely symbolic. Jesus was eating with Galilean peasants who may not have kept all of Torah, or at least the traditions of the elders (Oral Torah), as the debate about his disciples’ eating with defiled hands indicates (Mark 7:1–23). In the Gospel tradition, “sinners” and “tax collectors” become terms of slander used by Jesus’ opponents, who accuse him of transgressing social and religious boundaries. The audiences of the Gospels were communities that included gentiles, who were de facto “sinners,” and others who would not have been considered part of the covenant community. These communities were on the margins of Judaism and Greco-Roman society, so a key role of the meal tradition was to legitimate the inclusion of those on the fringe and to depict Jesus’ inclusive vision of the kingdom of God as a reordering of social relationships.

Many if not most of the references to meals in the Gospels indicate a symbolic interpretation that connects them with communal meals shared by communities of Jesus’ followers. The Lord’s Supper tradition is the most obvious example (Mark 14:22–25 // Matt. 26:26–29 // Luke 22:15–20), but the feeding stories and other meal scenes also have eucharistic overtones. The “breaking of the bread” signifies the presence of the Lord at community meals, and this is also tied to an eschatological interpretation. Jesus expresses the eschatological significance of the last meal he eats with his disciples when he says: “Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God” (Mark 14:25 // Matt. 26:29 // Luke 22:18). The meal anticipates a banquet at the end of time, which is described by Isaiah.

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples

a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,

of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

And he will destroy on this mountain

the shroud that is cast over all peoples,

the sheet that is spread over all nations;

he will swallow up death forever.

Then the LORD GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces,

and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,

for the LORD has spoken. (25:6–8)

These images were associated with a future messianic banquet: victory over primordial enemies (e.g., death), eternal joyous celebration, abundance of food, the presence of the Messiah, and the pilgrimage of the nations (D. E. Smith, 169). All of these are important themes in the Gospels, but because the meal tradition is so entangled with communal meal practices that celebrate the presence of the risen Jesus and look forward to his return as Messiah, it is difficult to ascertain what exactly in these meal stories goes back to Jesus himself.