Rather than focusing on “unclean” people Jesus focuses on the boundary separating “clean” from “unclean.” As Volf says, “these boundaries themselves were evil.” The inherent difficulty with this reframing was that Jesus’ notion of sin—exclusion—brought him into conflict with the Levitical purity codes (or how those codes were interpreted). Holiness demands boundaries and quarantine. Jesus’ ministry of table fellowship was dismantling these boundaries and breaking the quarantine.
