Radical Hospitality: How Grace Should Shape Your Table

So how do we actually let grace drive our guest lists?

First, pray about your table. Ask God to make it clear to you those he wants you to invite. Ask him to open your eyes to people around you who are lonely, isolated, overlooked. Ask him to give you courage to reach across lines of difference.

Second, start small. You don’t have to host a banquet for fifty people. Start with one person. One meal. One conversation.

Third, be intentional about diversity. If everyone at your table looks like you, thinks like you, votes like you, and has an income like you, you’re probably not practicing what Jesus is teaching here. Look for opportunities to invite people who are different from you—different ages, different backgrounds, different statuses, different perspectives.

Fourth, make it a regular practice. What if you were to commit to one meal a month where you intentionally invite someone who might not otherwise have a place at a table? One meal where you practice radical hospitality.

Fifth, let go of perfection. The goal isn’t to impress anyone; the goal is presence. Connection. You don’t need a perfectly clean house or a gourmet meal. You just need to show up and be willing to make room.

Sixth, embrace the awkwardness. Cross-cultural, cross-class, cross-political connection is often uncomfortable. That’s okay. Lean into the discomfort. Ask questions. Listen more than you talk. Be willing and eager to learn.

Remember, this is about choosing grace over reciprocity, kingdom values over cultural norms.

God invites the poor, the broke, and the outcast because apart from him, this is all of us. This is the gospel: We are all the poor, broken outcasts who could do nothing to earn or deserve God’s favor, couldn’t do anything to save ourselves or clean ourselves up enough.

A lot of us miss this invitation simply because of pride. And we spend our entire lives trying to be worthy enough, putting ourselves above others. That’s not how the gospel works. The Pharisees overlooked the needy because they were unaware of their own need. That’s how pride works. We miss the brokenness around us because we’re unaware that we, too, apart from Christ, are broken.

For Jesus, grace drives the guest list. If Jesus only invited people to the table who could pay him back, his table would be empty. We need to wrestle that one to the ground. Because a lot of us, though we’d never say it this way, in our heart of hearts, think God is pretty lucky to have us on his team.

If Jesus only invited people who could pay him back, our table would be empty. Not a single one of us could fix ourselves, clean ourselves up. That is grace. This is a feast of grace, where everyone is welcome, everyone belongs.

And if you feel you’re too far gone, if you identify more with the outcast, if you’re keenly aware of your brokenness, I’d say it this way: The more undeserving of grace you feel, the better place you’re in to receive it. When we come to the end of ourselves and say, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” that’s the perfect place to receive grace.

And we receive it to extend it. That’s the turn. Our tables are to be an extension of the grace shown to us. For Jesus, party guests are meant to become party hosts. He doesn’t invite us to his table so we can stuff ourselves on all the food and keep it to ourselves. 

Adapted from Every Table an Altar by Ian Simkins. Copyright Ian Simkins© (Sept 2026) by Zondervan. Used by permission of Zondervan, zondervan.com.