One of the more striking aspects of Christ’s ministry was His willingness to eat with sinners. In fact, that is what He doing here, now, in this meal. He is eating with sinners.
But we have to be careful to understand this properly. Some have taken His willingness to associate with the lowly as an example of Him being, as one scholar put it, “the consummate party animal.” But a faithful Christian laboring in an inner city soup kitchen is also eating with sinners, and we would scarcely think of that as being a “party animal.” There is eating with sinners, calling for another round for the house, the way the prodigal son ran down his bank account, and then there is a ministerial eating with the outcast, in order to establish a new kingdom, a new way of doing things. This latter approach is what Jesus was doing.
But at the same time, there is eating and drinking. There is thanksgiving. There is a celebration. But it is on God’s terms, as He fashions us into a new humanity. It is not on our terms—whether the old style respectability or the old style orgiastic revelry. God upends everything about the old humanity—its sanctimoniousness and its lasciviousness both.
Christ established a new humanity centered on a table of grace. This grace is not proud, and this grace is not unclean. This is an accomplishment that only God could bring about, and He did it through the death and resurrection of His Son. So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.