Y’all, conventional wisdom tells us to separate ourselves from people who might pull us down.  But God says something different through Jesus. Jesus ate with sinners: not just sinful Jews but also Gentiles, people who didn’t want to have anything to do with God.  And through these parables, Jesus conveyed the deep truth that as people of God we’re supposed to eat and live and otherwise co-mingle with people who don’t want to have anything to do with God.  And the reason we’re supposed to do this is the same reason Jesus sent his disciples out into the world: so that by our faith and by our lives of following Jesus, God will transform everyone around us into something else, something better.