And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what are you doing out of the ordinary? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same?
Matthew 5:47 (CSB)
Right after asking what’s special about loving people who love us, Jesus asks the same thing about greeting.
Back then, a greeting wasn’t just a wave. It was public. You’d bless someone. Embrace them. You were saying, this person is one of mine. So when we only greet the people already in our circle, we’re telling everyone who counts and who doesn’t.
And Jesus says the Gentiles already do that. The people His audience looked down on. Even they have a group of people they’re warm to. So if all we do is stick with our own crowd, we haven’t done anything different from anyone else.
So what do we do? We push past our circle. We sit with the person nobody made room for. We speak first to the one we’d normally walk past. Not a bigger greeting. A wider one.
Jesus did this. He talked with a Samaritan woman everyone avoided (John 4). He went to eat at a tax collector’s house (Luke 19). He reached out and touched a man with leprosy when no one else would go near him (Mark 1). Every time He greeted someone, He crossed a line the world drew. And He did it so no one would stay on the outside. That same Jesus welcomed us when we had nothing to offer Him.