EAting together

There's one thing I know about Christians - we love to eat. It's rare that we meet without eating. Even our Sunday morning celebration times tend to be wrapped around coffee and donuts.

I am not complaining.

Here's what I know. Since the time when Jesus walked on this earth - eating together has been huge in our walk with Christ.

Jesus often told parables about banquets and would weave stories about guests who refuse a dinner invitation, who didn't dress appropriately for a banquet, or who chose the wrong seat at the table.

Using the meal itself (as Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg write in their book, "Sitting at the Feet of Rabbit Jesus)to teach a lesson, Jesus would tells these parables at the dinner table.

In fact, the last words of Jesus to his disciples, the night before he died, were as he was eating with his guys.

In Middle Eastern cultures being hospitable is a way of life. It's big.

It is highly valued.

Jesus, in giving instructions to his gang said (Mark 6:8,11), "Take nothing for the journey except a staff - no bread, no bag, no money in your belts...and if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them."

Some followers of Christ have taken this passage literally and have gone with little or no money to places that don't have the same high regard for the kind of hospitality that existed during the days of Jesus.

But Jesus wasn't talking about counting on God to provide daily miracles to feed them.

He was counting of the cultural act of not turning anyone away who was in need of food and drink, especially someone as highly esteemed as a rabbi. Those who were not that culturally adept, were to be left behind.

During mealtimes, people wouldn't sit at tables with chairs; they would sit on mats on the floor with platters or bowls of food placed in the middle.

They would reline on couches at more formal meals and food was placed on small three legged tables with a removable platter for a top.

No silverware. Eating from a common bowl or tearing off a piece of bread from a common loaf.

Cooking done outside.

Nothing fancy about this.

For the people in the times of Jesus, dinner times were much more than having a place to eat, wolfing down the food and running off to an activity. It was a place of mutual trust and vulnerability.

You were in relationship with those around you.

And...that's why people were so offended with Jesus! He would accept invitations from "gluttons" and "drunkards."

I mean, how could any self-respecting rabbi "party" with such low-class people!

But what they didn't realize is that Jesus was living out his own stories (parables) by playing the role of the forgiving father, for instance, welcoming home the prodigal. That's why he welcomed the "outcasts" of society and ate with tax collectors and sinners.

When we went to visit Chicago City Church the other day (inner city Chicago) one of the men told us that he came to Christ as the beginning because of the meal that the Church provides every Tuesday to around 200 people. He said he felt (in the positive sense) tricked as he later accepted to Christ. I explained to him that in church leadership terms, we call that a "hook" and not a trick to bring people to God. All based around a meal.

Joachim Jeremias (a theologian) writes that, "The inclusion of sinners in the community of salvation, achieved in table-fellowship, is the most meaningful expression of the message of the redeeming love of God."

Every time that Jesus ate with sinners, he was expressing the kingdom of God.

That's why our life groups are so important. They give us a setting by which we can express the love of God to each other around a common meal.

And...Is it any wonder (as we have been studying in Revelation) that the New Testament pictures heaven as a wedding feast - the celebration of the union of the Lamb of God with his people! (I see heaven as one eternal life group!)

So - go out and have a meal with someone today - and rejoice together at God's goodness to us......