A provocation by Zenzile Molo.
We have spent today looking at two of the stories Luke tells of meals around the table with Jesus. Luke 14: a meal with the Pharisees where Jesus turns blessing and honour on its head and tells a parable which illustrates his point of inclusion and inviting the outcasts, but which shows how this decision is costly – it’s not about gaining honour and blessing, it’s about reorienting ourselves to a whole new way of being! A whole new way of being a Kingdom people in the here and now of everyday… one where we’re all invited… we’re all included… and where this experience of invitation and inclusion leads us to our own major lifestyle shifts around who’s at our table.
And then we got to Luke 5, one of the shortest and most disruptive stories in the gospel tradition: the calling of Levi, a tax collector. It’s a simple line: “Jesus said, ‘Follow me,’ and Levi got up, left everything, and followed him.” (Levi! A tax collector! A collaborator! Can you imagine how this would have gone down with the other disciples… the fishermen who’d been exploited and Simon the zealot who wanted to take down the Romans through force!?). And then comes the next scandal. Jesus doesn’t simply call Levi to discipleship; he joins Levi in his home, surrounded by other tax collectors and those labelled “sinners” by the religious elite. The table becomes the site of struggle (both inclusion and confrontation).
For us as South Africans, with a knowledge of “struggle” deep in our bones, seeing the table itself as a similar site of struggle within the gospel of Luke, (a struggle for freedom and inclusion) can be transformative and inspiring for our own work in the world. As we discussed, this party in Luke 5 with Levi and his friends is no ordinary dinner party. In first century Palestine, to eat with someone was to declare solidarity, to say: you belong. And so, Jesus’ act here is a theological bombshell. He doesn’t just preach to the marginalised from afar; he sits among them, eats with them, and publicly refuses the moral gatekeeping of the Pharisees. It’s no wonder they respond with outrage. “Why do you eat with tax collectors and sinners?” they ask, as if to say: don’t you know who’s allowed at the table? But Jesus replies, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
Here, Jesus redefines sickness and health, righteousness and sin. And by doing so, he confronts the very social hierarchies that decide who gets to belong and who remains outside. This is a moment of deep social analysis. Jesus exposes how political and religious structures label certain people as impure, unworthy, or lost. But he also goes further: he invites them in. The table becomes a place of radical hospitality and also a space of repentance. That’s how “the calling of Levi” passage ends – with Jesus saying “I have not come to call the self-righteous, but sinners to repentance.” in vs 32 of chapter 5.
The word repentance in the Greek is metanoia: not just confession, but a reorientation of life. A turning away from one thing, towards something totally different. Here in this Levi story, the repentance was about Levi getting up and leaving everything… turning his back on the Roman empire and domination, and a turning toward the Kingdom of God: a reality marked by justice, mutual care, and restoration. And the invitation stands to those who’ve declared themselves righteous – the self-righteous. Will they choose to repent, to turn away from religious systems which include some and exclude others, which assign value and status to humans depending on their socio-economic status, able-bodiedness, nationality, job, or anything else. They are invited – what will they choose?
And it’s this repentance that should shake us, especially here in South Africa; a nation that claims to be over +84% Christian while remaining one of the most unequal countries in the world, with some of the highest levels of violence, GBV and corruption. What would it mean for the South African church to respond to this text not just with individual guilt, but with collective repentance? Can you imagine if 80% of our nation committed to metanoia… to turn away from our current-day empires… in other words to turn away from:
- Greed
- A desire to build an empire with me as the king and everyone serving me
- A commitment to squashing others so that I can climb the social ladder
- Being ok with turning an blind eye to other’s suffering
- Including some and excluding others based on the value we’ve assigned them.
These are the challenges posed to Jesus’ listeners in Luke as we look at the Pharisees’ meal in Luke 14 and Levi’s party in Luke 5. And they hold up a mirror to us in the South African church today…
- What would it mean to repent for how we benefit from systems of oppression we didn’t create but continue to benefit from?
- Where have we stopped believing that God’s justice can reach even our own dusty streets and families?
- How many of us say “thank you” to our domestic workers, but never ask how they get home?
- Where have we chosen silence instead of speaking truth to those who misuse their power over us?
- Do I know the names of the people who clean our church toilets, sweep our streets, or guard our parking lots?
- Where have we allowed despair to rob us of the joy and hope that is our inheritance in Christ?
- What do our church spaces say about who truly belongs?
- Have I spoken words over myself that God never spoke; words of failure, shame, or worthlessness?
- Do we build ministries for the poor but refuse to be pastored by them?
- Have I avoided the table of community because I believed my voice or my presence didn’t matter?
- Do we create healing spaces for survivors or do we protect abusers in the name of reputation?
- Have I allowed systems of oppression to define my worth, instead of the One who calls me beloved?
- Do we benefit from generational advantage, from proximity to whiteness, from economic mobility while blaming the poor for being “lazy” or “entitled”?
- What would it look like for me to walk forward in the truth that I am not forgotten, not invisible, and not without power?
- Do I lament injustice from a safe distance, while refusing to give up the comfort that injustice has handed us?
- How do I repent from internalised inferiority complex and in the belief that being black is synonymous with being poor?
This is not a call to shame.
It is a call to repentance.
Because repentance is not just about tears, it is about turning around.
It is not about performative guilt, but about real, costly reorientation.
Jesus invites us to leave behind the tables of empire, tables of exclusion, tables of performance, tables of hierarchies… and to join him at a table where the marginalised are at the core, where dignity is restored, and where all of us are called to transformation.
This is the provocation of the gospel. That the Jesus we worship is not seated comfortably at the head of the table with the powerful. He is at the margins, inviting the ones we often try to keep out. “The spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor”. He is calling his collaborators to turn. He is offering a new kind of table, where no one is invisible and no one is left behind.
We have sat with a text that exposes not just the personal pride of the Pharisee, but the deep, invisible systems that tell us who is welcome and who is not; who belongs and who does not.
We’ve seen that in our own lives in the way we treat other people.
But today is not only a call to repentance, it is an invitation to celebration. Because Jesus is still breaking open our social categories. He is still showing up in unexpected places, with unexpected peoplee. He is still inviting us to a new kind of table, where no one is invisible and no one is left behind. This table is costly; it demands that we unlearn habits of exclusion, that we name and dismantle injustices we benefit from. But it is also glorious; it is the table of freedom, joy, belonging, and presence. And his presence is here.
So I ask you:
Will you come to this table?
Will you let your repentance be filled with joy, and your joy be shaped by repentance?
Will you embrace the costly grace that makes strangers into family?