Throughout Scripture, God has made himself known in extraordinary ways through everyday acts like being invited into a home and sharing a meal. I am convinced, therefore, extending hospitality to strangers and being received as a stranger, in today’s culture, is essential to the missional identity of the church. I have spent a great amount of time exploring the missional role of hospitality in order to gain a deeper appreciation of the call of Jesus. Through this line of study, I have come to the conclusion that only when we consider the missionary implications of receiving hospitality and of being strangers, can we claim to be engaged in truly mutual relationships. Unless the person who extends hospitality is also able to become the stranger and be received by another, we are merely creating unidirectional lines of power flow however unintended this may be. This, I believe, is quite antithetical to the missional example of Israel’s patriarchal identity conceived as being nomadic wanders, native to neither Egypt nor Canaan, having left family and inheritance behind in accordance with God’s call and Jesus’ habit of sharing a table with tax collectors and sinners, Pharisees, and prostitutes as a guest. This is why hospitality is the locus of the missional activity of my church Matthew’s Table. For meals in Jesus’ day defined social boundaries in terms of who was approvable and who was not. In the 1st Century, mealtimes were far more than occasions for individuals to consume nourishment. Being welcomed at a table for the purpose of eating food was richly symbolic of friendship, intimacy, and unity. To be invited to eat, because of the rich symbolism, became the occasion in which a person would sense that they were an integral and accepted part of a group. By dining with sinners, Jesus gives a concrete example of God’s ultimate forgiveness and unconditional acceptance of all people who respond positively to the call to follow him. Therefore, at Matthew’s Table, we follow Jesus’ example and practice this kind of radical table fellowship as a strategy to cultivate community.