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The shocking moral of Jesus’ Parable of the Great Banquet is how Jesus has changed who is welcome at dinner. He welcomes the unexpected, and especially the people you’d least expect.

When the Master tells his servant to go out into the “streets and alleys of the town,” what kind of people do you think lurked in the back alleys of towns? Jesus rams home the point as the story continues. The servant comes back and says that he has invited those people but there’s still room (Luke 14:22), so the master tells him to,

Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in (v.23)

The roads and country lanes back then were places to be feared, where one might find gangs of bandits: the sorts of people that weren’t allowed into the towns, because of their disreputable lifestyles or horrible diseases.

Of course, Jesus wasn’t talking about a literal dinner, but rather about whom our Heavenly Father blesses with his goodness and grace:

the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good – (Matthew 22:10).

If Jesus has changed the definition of who’s welcome at the dinner table, then shouldn’t we all do the same? Here’s a suggestion to help you break down your prejudices. Organize a lunch or dinner in your home and invite people whom you wouldn’t normally invite. Make some new friends!