Summary: In This Episode: A Meal With Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission Around the Table by Tim Chester. About the Author: Tim is a writer, Bible teacher and church planter, married to Helen and with two daughters. Tim is a pastor of The Crowded House in Sheffield, UK. They emphasise sharing lives together rather than programmes and structures. ‘Ordinary life with gospel intentionality’ is one of the catchphrases. He is founder and associate director of the Porterbrook Seminary which provides an affordable, Bible college-level program of study that enables students to integrate theological training with involvement in ministry through residential weeks, seminar days and distance learning. He is the author of over 20 books on a wide variety of subjects but with a common concern to make the link between theology and practice. Big Ideas Jesus was such an eater-and-drinker that people accused him of doing it to excess. That's hardly the thing we get accused of---partying too much---in Evangelicalism. In Luke's gospel, Jesus is always going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal. Even when he goes to the cross, he's coming from a meal. Jesus' meals are not just symbols, but concrete application and a means of grace. Food is stuff, not ideas or theories. A tangible kingdom, right in front of you, in miniature form. Both Roman and Jewish meals reinforced the existing social order, but gospel meals subverted them, bringing rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, friend and enemy together around the table. Plunder Eating a meal can be an image of the power of the doctrine of justification. If we are justified while we are still God's enemies, our welcome of the stranger and the 'enemy of God' is a picture of justification. Could it be that a real ecclesiology isn't just word, sacrament, and discipline, but also shared meals? Might these be a crucial, indispensable mark of the church? The Lord's Supper is radically subversive. We should take stock of what Jesus is actively doing when we gather around the table: having us eat the same spiritual food and drink the same spiritual drink. Whereas your run-in at the mailbox, or your trip to borrow a tool from your neighbor, are undefined and possibly unnatural and awkward times to move toward the mysterious in the course of conversation, the prior agreement to sit down to a meal, which has a beginning, middle, and end, creates a more natural context for both parties to naturally enter into conversation about mystery. Liberating Good News The Bible's narrative, which starts in a garden with some plucked fruit as an appetizer, ends in a garden-city with a wedding feast. This narrative sticks in the back of our mind and enriches our table grace. It widens our spiritual imagination to the point where we are willing to sit and eat at a table with, perhaps, even our enemies, just as Jesus did with and for us. We get an "easy" way to imitate Christ for people who may never come into a church building. The Big Challenge In a 7-day week, you have 21 meals. You are going to eat with your family, and with Christians. But is it really that hard to carve out a handful of those 21 meals to share with those who don't follow Jesus with you? Start with 2.
