‘At The Table With Jesus’
Stories of encounters between Jesus and those considered ‘marginalised’.
There are people
we would rather Jesus did not love.
We know what they have done
The harm they caused,
the lives they broke,
the trust they betrayed.
We know where they belong.
Outside.
Justice matters.
The wounded must be heard,
the vulnerable protected.
But what happens
when the one who caused the wound
comes looking for mercy?
When the perpetrator
wants a place at the table?
Surely not him.
Surely not her.
Zacchaeus was a small man
who had made himself large
at the expense of others.
He was rich
because other people were poor.
Philo tells of tax collectors
who seized the families of debtors,
stretched bodies upon the rack,
and turned suffering into money.
Cruelty was good business.
Zacchaeus was chief among them,
a man who prospered
within a system of exploitation.
His name meant righteous,
though nothing about his life
suggested righteousness.
Perhaps his mother
had whispered it over his cradle,
imagining the man he might become.
A name waiting for a life to catch up.
My mother would have warned me
to stay away from such a man.
She cared more about my holiness
than my happiness.
And perhaps she was right
to fear what such company
might do to me.
But Jesus seemed more concerned
with what his company
might do for Zacchaeus.
He wanted to see Jesus,
but the crowd stood in his way.
Perhaps they thought
they were doing Jesus a favour.
So he climbed a tree.
And Jesus stopped.
He looked up
and called him by name.
Zacchaeus.
As though he knew
the man beneath the reputation,
the possibility beneath the corruption.
Come down.
I must stay at your house today.
The crowd began to mutter.
They were not wrong
about Zacchaeus.
That was the difficulty.
Their anger had a history.
Their resentment had a reason.
And still
Jesus entered his house.
I wonder
who we would leave outside.
Someone whose actions
still sit heavily upon us.
Someone we would prefer
God to judge
rather than forgive.
But mercy is not amnesia.
It does not ask the wounded
to pretend they were never hurt.
Mercy tells the truth
about what has happened
and refuses to believe
that the truth about a person
ends there.
Something happened
around that table.
Zacchaeus stood up
and began to give things away.
Half his possessions
to the poor.
Four times what he had taken
from those he had cheated.
The man who had spent his life
taking from others
began to give.
Grace did not leave him
where it found him.
Perhaps that is the scandal
of merciful justice.
The same grace
that welcomes the sinner
calls the sinner to change.
And none of this is easy.
Especially when the scars remain.
Perhaps forgiveness
will take longer
than one afternoon.
But Jesus keeps setting the table.
For the wounded
and the guilty.
For the respectable
and the despised.
For those whose failures
are known to everyone,
and those of us
whose failures
remain conveniently private.
For the Son of Man
came to seek
and to save
the lost.
Even those
we would have left
up in the tree.
And perhaps the miracle
is that Jesus looked up,
saw everything Zacchaeus had done,
and still called him
by the name
he had been given.
Righteous one.
Come down.
There is room for you at my table.
And there is still time
to become
the person
you were meant to be.
Original message by Leon Chen
The Bridge Church Macquarie Park NSW
11 October 2026
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