From the Margins: Opening the Eucharistic Table to All

Since at least the second century CE, Christian communities have erected fences around their eucharistic tables, offering a less than hospitable vision of Christian community, especially when it comes to reflecting Jesus’ practices of table fellowship. For adherents of Open and Relational theology, which presupposes that God is by nature love, following Jesus’ practice of dining with marginalized members of Jewish society (sinners and tax collectors), it is appropriate to remove the fences and offer unfettered hospitality to everyone, such that divine encounters at the table at which Jesus presides and where the Holy Spirit is at work transforming relationships with God and with all who gather, including strangers and persons living outside the Christian faith, the church, following Open and Relational perspectives can be a welcoming place for the marginalized and contribute to a less violent and more welcoming world.