Monthly Archives: September 2021

One day I met a couple who both had AIDS and had several children at home with the disease. This was in the early to mid-80s. I visited them at their home, and they told me about how people in the pharmacy that week had turned and almost ran the other way when they saw them. They told me how people at work didn’t want anything to do with them. Everyone was afraid that they would give them the virus.

That’s when they asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee, and offered me an old stained, chipped cup. I accepted, but as I sat looking around at their unclean, messy kitchen, I wondered if that cup had even been washed. The idea that the virus might mutate crossed my mind. I drank their coffee, but I wondered if I was putting myself at risk.

We know now there was nothing to worry about, but at the time it seemed like a risky thing to do. Well, in the first century, that’s how people felt about eating and drinking with people who were not Jews, or were not following ritual practices, or who were living sinful lives. Being around them might very well contaminate you. It is hard to overstate how universal and how powerful this idea was. And yet Jesus welcomed these people and whenever they invited him over for a meal, he went.
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