Practicing Jesus’ Table Fellowship in Our Social Media Age

While scholars debate almost everything about Jesus’ life, most tend to agree the Kingdom of God (better translated as Reign of God, as it’s an action over a place) was the focus of his ministry and message.  It was for the Kingdom of God that Jesus lived and ultimately died.  But Jesus didn’t simply talk about the Kingdom; he enacted it.  To follow in Jesus’ footsteps and authentically choose the Kingdom means as much mental assent (it’s possible and I want the world to be this way) as it does real life action (so here’s what I’m doing about it).  All of Jesus’ public actions were meant to demonstrate the Kingdom of God.[1]  Often those actions were tied to his teachings as Jesus would heal, then eat, then teach with one flowing into the other.[2]  Jesus did what he did (miraculous healings, forgiveness of sins, table fellowship, etc.) because that is what life in the Kingdom of God entailed.[3]  His actions were meant to point toward the Kingdom, enact it, and make it present.  The two most prominent actions Jesus utilized in his ministry to enact and make present the Kingdom of God were his table fellowship and his healings.  Here I want to reflect a bit on the nature of his table fellowship and what that means for us in our age of social media.

The Kingdom of God – which I’ll define here as the world radically transformed in the Image of God – was radically egalitarian (to use John Dominic Crossan’s phrase); a world without boundaries, borders, divisions, or hierarchies.  It was also a world which required faith.  We must work with God to live this world into being, having faith that God will do God’s part to make it so.  At table Jesus cast a new vision of society by making the qualities of the Kingdom of God, evident in his parables and aphorisms, manifest in real life. 

It was not done without risk or insult.  Matthew 11:18-19 shows Jesus speaking about the charges leveled at both himself as well as John the Baptist by their detractors.  He says, “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’  Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”  Whether or not the words go back to Jesus himself is irrelevant.  The charges most certainly do.  There is no logical reason the early church would invent an image of Jesus so harsh and humiliating.[4]  But the charges made sense given the company Jesus kept.  Jesus dined with and accepted tax collectors and sinners.  He dined with women, made them central to his movement, and afforded them the sort of respect and equality given only to men.[5]  No boundaries were sacred.  What Jesus was doing was unacceptable.

A bit of context may be needed to see how who Jesus ate with could get anyone upset much less serve as a tool for revolution.  At the time, impurity was understood as contagious in Judaism and you it caught by being around the impure.[6]  As Historical Jesus scholar John Dominic Crossan explains:

We might see Jesus’ message and program as quaintly eccentric or charmingly iconoclastic (at least from a safe distance), but for those who take their very identity from the eyes of  their peers, the idea of eating together and living together without any distinctions, differences, discriminations, or hierarchies is close to the irrational and the absurd.  And the one who advocates or does it is close to the deviant and the perverted.  He has no honor.  He has no shame.[7]

Jesus upended the social norms in practice at table as he did in teaching with the Beatitudes.  He wasn’t worried about his reputation.  He wasn’t worried about anything other than the people he ate with and the world that meal was creating.  Deviant?  Perverted?  Are we that brave?  Am I?  I think about this often. 

Crossan terms this practice of Jesus’ open commensality.  “Commensality” – deriving from the Latin word for table, mensa – reflects how the rules of socialization are played out at table.[8]  Essentially, table fellowship reflects how the world works.  Where you sit (and even if you are included) reflects the lines of economics, politics, and social status.  Jesus’ table had no boundaries, hence Crossan’s “open commensality.”  He writes, “Open commensality is the symbol and embodiment of radical egalitarianism, of an absolute equality of people that denies the validity of any discrimination between them and negates the necessity of any hierarchy among them.”[9]    

In the Kingdom of God there are no boundaries, borders, divisions, or hierarchies.  All are radically equal.  That was God’s vision.  That was what Jesus created at his table.  And that is what his followers are called to do as well.  We must tear down divisions in the name of the Kingdom of God.  We must make everyone feel welcome and help them experience the depth and reach of God’s love.  Can we do that?  Are we willing to face such harsh criticism from nearly every corner of society for God’s vision of the world?    

Given Jesus’ public action, the Kingdom of God meant inclusion.  All were welcome in the Kingdom – especially those who had been rejected from the rest of society.

The only requirement, as it were, to sit at Jesus’ table was your accepting everyone else sitting at the table, too.  All were welcome.  All were loved.  By its very nature, to sit at this table you had to accept this radical new vision of society it modeled.

So why does social media have me thinking about all this?

Well, earlier in the week (for my other blog) I wrote a piece about The Acolyte – the latest Disney+ Star Wars show – being cancelled.  In it I discussed toxic fans in the Star Wars fandom and their reaction to the show (a toxicity, sadly not unique to Star Wars).  As CT Jones frames it in their piece for Rolling Stone:

But another aspect that can’t be divorced from modern fandom is the almost consistent racism and sexism that leads of color receive when they are cast in Star Wars-related projects.  [Amandla] Stenberg [the series’ star] said that after her casting, she was bombarded with racist harassment.  “It’s been very painful to me.  It’s not something that I think you can emotionally prepare for,” Stenberg said on The View.  “We welcome criticism of the show when it comes to storytelling or performance.  But when it comes to death threats — horrific, violent racist language — it’s unacceptable to me.”

 

Kenobi star Moses Ingram has also said people threatened her life when she joined the Star Wars project.  “There’s nothing anybody can do about this.  There’s nothing anybody can do to stop this hate,” Ingram said on Instagram. “I question my purpose in even being here in front of you saying that this is happening.”  The same thing happened to Kelly Marie Tran when she was cast in The Last Jedi.  “If someone doesn’t understand me or my experience,” she said, “it shouldn’t be my place to have to internalize their misogyny or racism or all of the above.”  And John Boyega received so much harassment and racism when he was cast as the lead in Star Wars: The Force Awakens that he claimed Disney executives sidelined him in further films to appease the outspoken white fans.  Disney did not respond to this claim at the time, but has since been more outspoken through the official Star Wars social media pages when new cast members receive death threats.[10] 

Racism.  Sexism.  Homophobia.  Hatred.  Death threats and threats of violence towards actors and creators.  Harassment and bullying of other fans online.  Obviously, this is not okay.  And, while I understand the feeling that nothing can be done to stop this, as someone who identifies as Christian and believes in the Kingdom of God Jesus preached – and as someone who is a fan of Doctor Who, Marvel, DC, and certainly Star Wars – this is something I am called to stand against.

But is it my place to say someone is or isn’t “a fan” of something?  Do I “ignore the trolls” in the hopes that they’ll go away?  Do I speak out against such hatred and stand in solidarity with those so harassed by the racist, sexist, and homophobic attitudes that drive these online trolls?  Obviously the answer to that question is YES.  It has to be, or I’m turning my back on the Kingdom Jesus preached, the Kingdom he made manifest at this table.

While I don’t know exactly what that means in our social media age nor how it should manifest in these fandoms warped with the hateful ideology born of people’s fear.  But I think Jesus’ table fellowship may provide an answer, or at least the beginnings of one – an answette, if you will.  Yes, anyone can be a fan of anything.  Everyone is welcome in any fandom or online space, just like at Jesus’ table.  Yet we must be vigilant in calling out such toxicity and if someone is spewing vitriol at POC, women, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and anyone outside of the hegemonic white, cishet, male perspective, we must be ready to clearly say they aren’t welcome at the table – or in the fandom – until they, too, can welcome everyone else.  Most of all, we must remain ready to love those so in need of it and, if they accept it, walk with them on the healing journeys which lead to conversion. 

And until they’re ready for such healing, as Jeff (of the Star Wars blog The Imperial Talker) observed as we discussed this at length the other day, the block button’s there for a reason.

[1] Jon Sobrino, Christology at the Crossroads: A Latin American Approach, (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1976), 46-7.

[2] Marcus Borg, Jesus:  Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), 158.

[3] Sobrino, Christology¸48.

[4] John Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus Volume I The Roots of the Problem and the Person, (New York: Doubleday, 1991.), 168.

[5] Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus & The Heart of Contemporary Faith, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 57.

[6] Borg, Jesus, 215.

[7] John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 70.

[8] Crossan, Revolutionary, 68.

[9] Ibid., 71.

[10] CT Jones, “Can the Best of Star Wars Survive the Worst of Its Fans?,” Rolling Stone. Published August 23, 2024. https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/acolyte-canceled-star-wars-fandom-1235086713/