People's unpredictability keeps us depending on God's mandate to share the kingdom with all. Jesus, for his part, was ready to eat with people with whom many of his pious contemporaries would not associate. For Matthew to follow Jesus meant leaving behind a well-paying profession, yet even this costly repentance could not satisfy the religious elite. There are many people with whom most Christians today would not eat (for reasons of either spiritual or social incompatibility); the Pharisees went even further in having special rules governing with whom they would eat (as in ARN 31, 68; 32, 72B).