If Jesus made room at His table for people who were messy, broken, different, and rejected, what might our tables—and our lives—look like if we did the same?

Who are you inviting to your table? As Thanksgiving approaches, Willow Weston takes a closer look at the people Jesus chose to eat with—and challenges us to consider whether our own relationships reflect His example. It’s easy to surround ourselves with people who think like us, believe like us, vote like us, worship like us, and generally make us comfortable. But Jesus lived differently.

Growing up above the Roslyn Cafe, Willow’s childhood table was surrounded by all kinds of characters. Looking back, she wonders whether that eclectic gathering place filled with people from every walk of life might be exactly the kind of place Jesus would have chosen to eat.

Throughout Scripture, Jesus repeatedly shared meals with people others avoided. In Mark 2, He calls Levi—a despised tax collector—to follow Him, and the very next scene finds Jesus at a dinner party surrounded by tax collectors and sinners. In a culture where sharing a meal was a declaration of friendship, Jesus was making a powerful statement about who was welcome at His table.

Willow challenges us to recognize the ways we can develop what she calls “spiritual eating disorders”—drawing lines around who we will and won’t befriend. We may avoid people who make us uncomfortable, disagree with us, bring us down, or don’t appear to be changing fast enough. Without realizing it, our faith can become insulated from the very people Jesus continually moved toward.

But Jesus didn’t come to escape messy humanity. He entered into it. He sat at tables, shared meals, and called unlikely people His friends. And He invites us to follow Him into that same kind of life.

This Thanksgiving—and beyond—Willow challenges us to look around our tables and ask: Does the way I live and love look like Jesus?

Key Takeaways

• Look at who’s around your table: Our relationships can reveal something about the way we’re living out our faith. Are we only surrounding ourselves with people who are like us?
• Remember how Jesus ate: Sharing a meal was an intimate declaration of friendship in Jesus’ culture—and He intentionally ate with people society and religious leaders rejected.
• Stop treating people like projects: Jesus didn’t build relationships only with people who appeared spiritually promising. People aren’t projects to fix; they’re people to know and love.
• Practice hospitality that looks like Jesus: Sometimes an invitation into your home, a seat at your table, or a shared meal can communicate God’s love more powerfully than words.
• Make room for someone new: Don’t let Thanksgiving be the only time you consider who is welcome at your table. Let your everyday life tell a story of radical hospitality and friendship.

How This Episode Will Encourage You

Following Jesus isn’t an invitation to escape the messiness of humanity. It’s an invitation to enter into it with Him.

Willow reminds us that Jesus was willing to sit across the table from people who were rejected, misunderstood, hurting, and far from perfect. Through something as ordinary as eating together, He communicated something extraordinary: I see you. I am with you. I call you friend.

As you gather around the table this Thanksgiving, consider who might be missing. Who needs an invitation? Who have you kept at a comfortable distance? Who might experience the love of Jesus simply because you made room?

May our tables—and ultimately our lives—look a little more like His.

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He was the surgeon of their soul. And in eating with them, he operated on their hearts and their posture. He operated on their eyes and their vision.

And they came out with full bellies and a right image of who he is and who they are. By saying, I am your friend and the distance between us, I traveled your humanity. Jesus says, with his life and with his death, I will not escape.

Welcome to the Collide Podcast. We're a growing community of everyday chicks colliding with Jesus in our mess, our pain, our joy, and our stories.

We value showing up as we truly are.

So that's what you'll find here, walls and masks being torn down so that we can allow Jesus to meet us where we truly are and hear about other women doing the same. We can't wait to collide with.

Welcome to the Collide Podcast. I'm Willow Weston, the founder and director of Collide, and I'm so glad that we get to hang out today.

I'm looking ahead to this next week and realizing that Thanksgiving is coming up.

And if there's one thing that I kind of notice to be true about all of us around the holidays is that we're kind of groaning about all the people we have to be around, right? Like, I hear from others and I find myself saying it, too.

So I'm like, right here with you, but we're saying things like, oh, man, I have to hang out with my crazy second cousins, or, oh, my uncle gets like three sheets to the wind and Thanksgiving gets so obnoxious or great, I have to hang out with all the people whose politics are so offensive, right? I just want to choke them with a turkey bone.

So holidays kind of have this sense where they obligate us to share meals and sit at tables with people that we don't love being around, or they've kind of gone the other direction. And holidays have become these. This sort of insulated, controlled environment that we've shaped for our own enjoyment.

And we've pushed relationships out that feel obligatory, and now we find that we're only dining with people that we choose to be around and with every year at Thanksgiving.

Rob and I, we've been married almost 20 years this year, and we've always invited anyone that we know who doesn't have a place to go to come over to our house for Thanksgiving.

And admittedly, this has created this sort of eclectic, chaotic, sort of diverse crowd of gatherers who don't eat the same food, care about the same things, and they don't vote for the same presidents Years ago, I remember one of my Christian relatives sitting me down, and I don't have very many of those, and meaning the Christian relatives.

And they sat me down and they told me that they didn't want to come to our Thanksgiving anymore because someone else who always comes has too shady of a past and they didn't want to be around it. And I swear I almost jumped out of my chair and went postal and beat that person over the head with a frozen turkey.

I was so ticked off because I just thought, like, since when are we supposed to live such Christian insulated lives? I mean, since when are we supposed to surround ourselves with people who are exactly like us?

Since when are we supposed to be in relationship with people who think like us, look like us, vote like us, worship like us, and laugh at all the same dumb jokes we do? Perhaps who we do holidays with is a great picture of how we do life and faith.

And perhaps that picture ought to invite each one of us into this question. And the question is, is my life and my faith looking like my Jesus? I know that's a hard question to have to answer. I started thinking.

I grew up living in a cafe that my mom started in a small town in eastern Washington. And many people have heard about it. Maybe you have, too. It's called the Rosalind Cafe because it was on the TV show Northern Exposure.

The downstairs was the cafe and the upstairs was our home. And I grew up in that place eating with all sorts of characters.

I ate breakfast with the old coal miners who would cut my ham and play tic tac toe, and they always let me win. We played tic tac toe on napkins, and they were the sweetest liars pretending to lose.

And I remember there was this artist lady, and her name was Xandu, and she was super bizarre and wore a ponytail that was underneath her chin. And she'd come in and eat under her psychedelically simple swirl canvases that hung for sale on the walls.

And then there was this guy who had too much cerveza one night and passed out in his huevos rancheros while eating, like, literally, his face was in the runny eggs. And I remember thinking to myself, note to self, never drink that much. There was also this waitress at the cafe, and I'll call her Margot Rose.

And Margot couldn't have babies. And she met a man who I'll call Frank. And she met him waiting on him at the cafe.

Well, Margot Rose was married to Charlie, but came up with an arrangement to meet Frank every Tuesday to consent to conceive a child for her and Charlie. And it kind of went sideways when Margot Rose fell in love with Frank while she's married to Charlie.

And as a kid, I remember feeling super awkward drinking cocoa next to Frank when it was Tuesday, because I remember just wanting to be like, it's Tuesday, knowing what was about to take place. But this was my living room as a kid, and these were the people that I grew up living with.

And I look back at that hodgepodge hippie hub of a meeting place called the Rosalind Cafe, and I just wonder if this is the kind of place Jesus would have gone for a great mushroom burger in good company. Eating with all walks of life, strangers, liars, drunks, freak shows, and even kids. That's the kind of eating I imagine Jesus that doing.

Jesus describes himself at one point as the son of man who came eating and drinking, and then he tells us what kind of eating we should be in, the rhythm of that. Most of us probably aren't, if we're honest.

But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, although they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous, the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind. Let me ask you this.

Will you be enjoying Thanksgiving dinner with any of these kinds of people? Because I'm asking myself that same question and I'm not loving my current answer. Jesus was accused of this kind of eating all the time.

People would nastily judge him and say, why does he eat with sinners and tax collectors?

And this happened in a collision in Mark, chapter two, where Jesus was teaching by a lake, and then he's walking along and he collides with a man named Levi. And I don't know why, but I always picture Levi sitting in what looked like a lake, lemonade stand or something. And Jesus, the Bible says, saw Levi.

Maybe it was for the first time, but more than likely, they had crossed paths, or Levi had at least heard about this Jesus guy and the amazing things he was doing. And Levi was a tax collector. Tax collectors were like these middlemen, right?

They collected money from individuals to pay the government, and then they padded their pockets while they collected. So the more they demanded from those who had to pay them, the more they got for themselves.

So because of that, they used manipulation and force and fraudulent maneuvers to benefit for their own greed. These tax collectors were playing a part in keeping in captivity the nation of Israel who so desired to be freed up.

They were hated and despised, these tax collectors. The voices of this sort of social and religious culture and structure must have certainly shaped Levi's image of who God was and who he himself was.

And yet Jesus shows up on his scene and says, follow me. When Jesus says, follow me, he's not just saying, do as I do. The phrase actually means, follow with me and share the same road.

In a sense, it's an invitation to participate in what Jesus is doing and where Jesus is going. One commentary I read says it means, start following me and continue as a habit of life to follow me.

In a sense, isn't Jesus saying, come, let's be in the rhythm of doing life together? Levi had yet to discover what they will be in the rhythm of doing, but he's about to find out, because he actually got up and followed Jesus.

Now, Jesus showing up on the scene at some guy's work and saying, follow me seems crazy, but so does Levi's response. Saying, you can take this job and shove it to his boss was crazy talk. And here's why.

Because Levi supposedly worked for Herod, who was the son of Herod the Great. And Herod was not a guy you want to mess with. He was a guy that was actually in charge of beheading John the Baptist.

So Levi not only just left a very powerful and scary guy in a lurch, but he also left his bread and butter, maybe his Lexus, his vacations to cabo, and his 401k. So where does Jesus go? If he's saying, follow me, where is he gonna go?

I just think, like, if you're gonna call people to participate in some kind of movement, it seems like you would first begin with some sort of intentional introduction, maybe your mission and statement, or your. Your vision and values, or a Tony Robbins walk on fire kind of moment, or at least some sort of protocol or expected behavior.

But there's none of that in this story. The next scene is literally a dinner party. So it goes from Jesus saying, come and follow me.

And following him apparently means, let's go to a dinner party. And it was at this dinner party that these religious people see Jesus with, the kinds of people you and I don't invite over for thanks.

And they start sneering, saying, why does he eat with sinners and tax collectors? You see, in this culture, eating was a declaration of Friendship. It was a very intimate and symbolic experience to eat with one another.

And when you ate with someone, you were in a sense saying, we are friends. The Pharisees have often been labeled the separatists, probably because they separated themselves from people who did not live as they did.

Does that sound familiar at all?

I mean, as you're listening to this, does that resonate with the Christians that you've experienced or the Christianity that you've been invited into? The Pharisees were laymen and they kept the law to the T and added other man made laws. The list.

Their separation from others was an attempt to escape humanity. Over time, they'd drawn all sorts of lines of who they would and would not eat with and who they would and would not be friends with.

Over the course of history, he said, they wouldn't eat with the Egyptians, the Samaritans, and the Gentiles. They'd maybe eat with other Jews who lived as they did, believed as they believed, worshipped as they worshiped, valued what they valued.

They had what I would call spiritual eating disorders. And it struck me that maybe we too have spiritual eating disorders. We draw lines all the time of who we will and who we won't be friends with.

And these lines are unconsciously driven by our quote unquote religion. And they are our ways of escaping humanity. Here's some of our spiritual eating disorders.

One is that we don't eat with people who could contaminate us. We think other people might rub off on our kids, or they might influence our husbands, or they might creep us out.

They might taint the social atmosphere that we're going for. And so we smile and maybe say, hey, we should get together sometimes, but then we never do.

Another spiritual eating disorder we have is that we don't eat with people who invalidate us. We invite people to dine with us who validate our theology, our doctrine, our lifestyle, our parenting, and our financial choices.

If we think people will invalidate our Jesus, our political stance, or our opinions on sex, we just won't have them over for steak and potatoes. We package why we don't eat with these people, as we have different values. But where do our values come from? They come from our beliefs.

And where do our beliefs come from? They come from our faith experience. And yet we say we have a faith in a God who doesn't just hang with people who value what he values.

Another spiritual eating disorder we have is that we don't eat with people who bring us down right? Like we don't initiate with people who are chronically sick or clinically depressed.

We don't invite people who are always down on the locker, people whose elevator doesn't go to the top floor. We don't spend Friday nights with people who interrupt us like they have Tourette's. No, right.

Like, we want to be friends with people who are charming, funny, interesting, intelligent and beautiful, but not too intelligent or too beautiful. We like to be friends with people who encourage us and cheer us on and send us Hallmark cards and make our golf game look good.

We like to be friends with people who make us feel that our shiny, happy Christian world is in control and we're doing it perfectly. We don't want to be down, we want to be up. We don't want to be in the valley. We want to be on the mountain. Right?

We don't want to be on earth, we want to be in heaven. And anyone who reminds us that we aren't there yet, they are invited last for the bunco party.

Another spiritual eating disorder we have is that we don't eat with projects that aren't progressing. If we fail to see spiritual openness in someone, we give up.

If we observe the conversation leaning towards the what that stayed in Vegas more than Jesus, eventually we see this relationship as a waste of time. Or if over and over again our advice is not advised, we move on.

Or if someone doesn't make us feel wise or important after a few lunches, we move on to our next project. I mean, person, right? We also donate with people we don't know.

So many Christians, I see it all the time after accepting Christ, you know, they sold their secular CDs but gave away for free their secular friends. And since then, you know, have become a part of Christian culture.

And they're like these Christian culture junkies diving into Christian community eight days a week. So some of us, if we even wanted to invite any irreligious people over for dinner, we don't know any.

And for some of us, even if we knew some, we wouldn't have a clue what to talk to them about. And like the Pharisees, I feel like Christians have drawn all these lines. But it's not so with Jesus.

Jesus says, my friendship with you exists outside of lines.

It exists outside of standards, annoyances, pet peeves, preferences, commonalities like mindedness, religious affiliations, affiliation or tightness with God.

Jesus sits across from our quirks and our stupid jokes, our halitosis, our sloppy eating habits, our ignorant opinions, our stuffy theology, our impatience, our attempt to control conversation, our dreadfully boring Presence and the spinach in our teeth. He is a God that meets people in England for tea and crumpets. He sits with those in New Orleans for gumbo. He enjoys company and eats sushi in Tokyo.

And he's trying out the food bank too. What is the significance of a God eating a meal with humanity?

If you removed all stories and collisions where Jesus was partying and eating with people, what would you think of God? You'd think he wanted to heal you because you're broken. You'd think maybe he wanted to set the record straight about who he is.

You would think that he wanted to have you be freed from slavery. You would think he wanted you to live your life for more than your own purposes. You would even think he died for you.

But would you know that God is your friend?

The significance of seeing Jesus eating with sinners and tax collectors is this the sculptor of Mount Everest in all its splendor sits down over eggs and ham and calls little old us friend. The God who grows the trees and calls forth their bloom and falls their leaves sits down with fallen man and calls him friend.

The God who paints a new canvas at sunset with colors you swear you've never seen before. That God sets down his paintbrush, picks up his fork and gathers round the table with men and women as faded as we are and calls us friend.

The One who breathed life into dust banquets with those very lives that seem dirtier and muckier than the very dust they came from. And he calls us friend. God is not just about healing lepers and then saying peace out.

He's not just about preaching and then moving on to the next stadium. He's not just here for the spiritual pow wow, the serious lecture and the prayer vigil.

He's not just a God who is for you, but a God who wants to be with you. Jesus is not a drive through God. He's not an on the run, gotta go God. He's not a wow. We should get together sometime soon God.

He's not a God that is trying to escape humanity, but a God who sits down with humanity and has wine and matzo balls and grapes with cheese and crackers. Jesus heard these religious people judging him for hanging with sinners.

And he says so poignantly in Mark 2:17 it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. You might be thinking how was eating with them healing the sick?

If this dinner was about healing those who were visibly sick, Jesus could have healed the Cold sores on the guy who brought the cheese dip, right? Or he could have healed the tax collector who was on disability because of his back problems. He could have done it and it would have been epic.

But I think Jesus is talking about something more than a physical healing. The sickness present at this party was a sick and distorted image of God and man and self.

And by Jesus saying it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

I think he knew that by sitting down and sipping Chianti and eating fresh fish, roasted veggies and handmade bread with citizens of humanity who believed that God wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole because his spoken people wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole. That changed their view of God, their view of themselves.

I think he knew that when he reclined with these kind of people, he was the doctor of their sick image. He was the surgeon of their soul. And in eating with them, he operated on their hearts and their posture. He operated on their eyes and their vision.

Then they came out with full bellies and a right image of who he is and who they are by saying I am your friend and the distance between us I traveled your humanity. Jesus says with his life and with his death I will not escape.

But Jesus goes even further in this collision when he says, I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners. Who does Jesus call in the beginning of the story along the lake in the lemonade stand, he calls Levi. And in a sense it's so crazy.

It's like he says to him what I think he says to you and I, when it comes to healing people's right view of who I am and who they are, I am calling sinners to participate.

I am calling greedy, fraudulent, cheating tax collectors who've been outcasted to be in the rhythm with their life of throwing parties and inviting other greedy, fraudulent, cheating tax collectors so all will know that I am their friend. Guys, I am asking myself this, I am asking you this.

If Jesus eats with all walks of humanity, why aren't we since becoming a Christ follower after having not known him half my life? As backwards as it is, my dining room is still a restaurant to this day, but with different patrons.

Now I have cleaner, tidier, predictable, nicer, better tipping patrons. You know, Bible studies and leadership groups and spiritual mentors and my best friends over and maybe you can relate.

The question I have to ask us is, am I trying to escape broken and sick humanity? And if so, am I actually the one who is broken and sick with a Distorted view of God and self and others.

A few weeks ago, my husband and I were invited to a friend's church service. We have these friends, Matt and Denise, and they're starting a new church and we went over to their house. They're having it at their house.

And most of the attenders are from the mission. They're homeless and they're recovering drug addicts and people who've lived on the streets.

And our friends opened up their home for this church service. And this service looked nothing like what you and I might think of as a church service.

Matt, he's an amazing cook and he made some beautiful piece of meat that had been in his smoker all day. And Denise had an array of beautiful side dishes and salads and bread. And kids were there and adults were there and we shared a meal together.

I listened to people share their experiences and their stories. And there was a man there whose parents drug addiction collided with his life and wounded him.

And he now has a horrible drug addiction, has lost his family, and he's trying to get his life back together. And he began to explain how he has no family.

And then he looked around and said, in fact, most of us here who are from the mission, we don't, we don't have family. People have given up on us. One woman who was missing her teeth and she sure liked to talk a lot.

She shared over and over again just how happy she was to be in this community. And she couldn't say it enough. She just feels so loved by these people and she's starting to open her life up to God.

And then a man who lives at the mission piped up, up. He was sitting on the couch and ever so eloquently, with tears in his eyes, said something I might never forget.

He said, I have not been in a home in over a year. And that's when I almost lost it. And so did everyone else in the room.

The experience of being invited into a home with kids and parents and a homemade meal and heat and a cozy couch with candles lit.

When you've been squatting and building entries and camping under tarps, when you've been given up on and you're about to give up and your only source of heat is at a drop in center and someone invites you into their home. How can you not but collide with Jesus and know that he loves you and he's your friend?

As Christ followers, we are invited to participate in the absolute greatest calling a life could ever receive. To eat, drink, and be merry in the ordinary.

And mundane to share an experience at the table and to do all of that with people who are sinners, who are broken, people who are hurting and enslaved. And we get to participate in healing sick images that lie and paralyze and bring death.

We get to participate in replacing those images of God and self with the image of a God who dined with the poor, the blind and the crippled for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I now know as I look back to me being a little girl in the Rosalind Cafe that Jesus was eating there.

And while he was eating there, he was just waiting. And he still waits for his followers to join him and eat with humanity.

This Thanksgiving, may you see the people you eat across the way that Jesus does. This Thanksgiving, may your table be full of sinners and tax collectors.

And if it isn't, may you heed the challenge to call and invite some up to the table. But even more than Thanksgiving, may your life tell this kind of story. Thank you for joining us today at the Collide Podcast.

If you want to find us on Instagram, we're at We Collide and Facebook as Collide Women and our website is wecollide.net. We love to be in touch with you and we look forward to hanging out next.