Many have welcomed Amoris Laetitia and our bishops’ criteria for the application of its Chapter 8 as a wave of fresh air, especially those many couples living in an ‘irregular’ second relationship. Such couples have suffered for years, feeling somewhat left out of the communion of the Church.

It is saddening that some individuals, priests and laity, simply cannot accept our legitimate superiors’ position. They seem to have failed to see the true evangelical spirit of mercy underlying these documents.

Unfortunately, some have even chosen to take their disagreement to the ‘battlefield’ of the social media. If these people are driven by love for our Holy Mother Church, why not seek personal dialogue? The very fact that they sought other public means of communication makes their action questionable in the first place. Some have even spoken on condition of anonymity.

Controversy apart, I would like to brush up on some exegetical implications of Luke 15:1-2. I suggest reading these verses in the light of what I call “Near Eastern table fellowship”. Indeed, these opening verses in Lk 15 set the interpretative key for the whole chapter. Jesus will proclaim the three famous so-called “parables of mercy”, namely the Parable of the Lost Sheep, The Lost Coin and The Prodigal Son, as a response to the judgmental murmuring of the Phari­sees in verse 2.

In Luke 15:1-2 we read: “Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him to listen. And the Pharisees and the scribes murmured, saying: ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them’.”

What is striking is that in the original Greek of verse 1, Luke uses the periphrastic participle phrase instead of the normal imperfect tense, to underline and emphasise an iterative; in other words, a continuous action that started in the past and continues in the present. Therefore it was Luke’s intention to underline that sinners and tax collectors were continually drawing near to Jesus in order to listen to his proclamation of the Word. This is already significant in itself as a first step towards conversion.

What is blatantly shocking in the Phari­sees’ books is Jesus’s attitude. Not only does Jesus receive sinners and tax collectors, he enters into the very intimate host-guest relationship of ancient Near Eastern table manners. This relationship is still observed to this day among the Bedouins of this region.

Let us not make of the Eucharist ‘the prize for the perfect’, lest we find ourselves to be like the Pharisees, a stumbling block for Jesus’s mercy

Jesus “receives sinners and eats with them”; as host, he offers them food. This is something that is shocking indeed, for it implies that Jesus enters into ‘table fellowship’ with these sinners. Nothing is said of them having left their previous life. Rather, that periphrastic phrase implies that as sinners they approached Jesus in the past, and as sinners they continued approaching him.

Offering a host-guest relationship meant offering protection to the guest. The guest’s enemies would become the host’s own enemies. This unwritten code states that once the guest is hosted, that guest would become the host’s next of kin.

In the famous psalm of the Good Shepherd, Psalm 23:5 makes a direct allusion at such a code: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” In the ancient world it was axiomatic that table fellowship and hospitality symbolised spiritual unity.

In Luke we find other instances of such a relationship between Jesus and sinners, such as in Lk 5:30, where again, the Phari­sees grumble against Jesus’s actions, as was the case when Jesus entered Zacchaeus’s house, again with the Pharisees protesting: “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” (Lk 19:7)

Indeed, in Lk 15:1-2, Jesus appears as the Good Shepherd who feeds his sinful sheep, entering into spiritual communion with them, just like Psalm 23:2: “He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.”

In the feeding of the multitude, all the evangelists allude to this verse in the psalm, the most explicit being Mark 6:39, where we read that Jesus makes the people “sit upon the green grass”. In Luke’s account, Jesus orders his disciples: “You give them something to eat!” (Lk 9:13), meaning that Jesus’ attitude as host in Lk 5:30 and 15:1 is supposed to be that of his disciples as well.

Concluding, it is true that the law is black and white, and that Jesus preached that divorce and adultery are intrinsically wrong. It is also true that his call to “go and sin no more” still holds. That is the black and white of the law. But life is a much more complex reality, and it does present its grey areas.

Jesus himself, in Lk 15:1-2, is presented as accepting people living in a sinful situation, and as the Good Shepherd, offers them food. The Pharisees are shocked because that implies spiritual communion.

Jesus did embrace the law, and we should aim at the good that the law aims at achieving. But Jesus also reminds us that all people require food for the journey, and he embraced sinners while they were still sinners. Therefore, let us not make of the Eucharist ‘the prize for the perfect’, lest we find ourselves to be like the Pharisees, a stumbling block for Jesus’s mercy.

Fr Joseph Ciappara OFM is an assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Theology, Department of Sacred Scripture, Hebrew and Greek, University of Malta.