I was overjoyed to trip out with my friends Sunday around this statement of Jesus' METHOD of ministry: “The Son of Man has come (how?) eating and drinking” -Luke 7:34. I deserved it when Mitch made fun of me (in the 2nd service) for getting weepy as I talked about the brewmeister-like process and quality of my Nana's gravy. Yet my emotion was due to passion for each of us to receive freedom and joyful command that when done so in the name/power/way/presence of Jesus, meals can be enacted grace, enacted community, and enacted mission. Especially when we 'eat like Jesus ate,' in a way that we earn the title/insult from religious people as a 'friend of sinners.' This is LOVE that everyone can DO.
Here are further meditations on Luke 7:34 by Tim Chester, the author whose ideas were the basis for my last two messages (from the book, A Meal with Jesus):
Think of your favorite food. Steak perhaps. Or Thai green curry…God could have just made fuel. He could have made us to be sustained by some kind of savory biscuit. Instead he gave a vast and wonderful array of foods. (I ate my favorite food of BBQ at the famous Gary's in China Grove last Friday night before football, with some of my favorite Jesus-followers: Angie, Algie Grubbs (friend, elder, dad of son's great friend) and Darrel Lipe (friend, elder, leader of my son's small group for 7 years)
The world is more delicious than it needs to be. We have a superabundance of divine goodness and generosity. God went over the top. We don’t need the variety we enjoy, but he gave it to us out of sheer exuberant joy and grace. God’s creative joy wasn’t only for the beginning of creation, leaving us ‘eating leftovers.’ God continues to sustain creation out of joy. The bloom of the yeast lies upon the grape skins year after year because He likes it…
Not only did God give us food, he also ordained cooking. Cooking is a central expression of the cultural mandate in Genesis 1-2. God gave this world to us to care for and cultivate. But he also gave it to us to explore and develop. It was God’s intention that we take the raw material of his world and use it to create science, culture, agriculture, music, technology and poetry—all to his glory. Every time you bake a cake or grill a rib, you’re fulfilling that creation mandate. Every cake is a reminder of our freedom to create and be creative in the image of the Creator. Every time you place a meal on the table with quiet satisfaction, you’re sharing the joy of the Creator at the creation of the world when he declared everything good.
Above all, food expresses our dependence on God. Only God is self-sufficient. We are creatures, and every moment we’re sustained by him. Every time we eat, we celebrate again our dependence on God and his faithfulness to his creation. Every time. Food is to be received with gratitude. “Taking the five loaves…he gave thanks” (Luke 9:16).
Mike here again. The homework I gave the past two weeks was simply to do what Love Incarnated Does through the method of 'eating and drinking':
LOVE DOES EAT WITH…
If I’m not yet a Christian – I will ‘eat and drink’ with a Christian in the next week, asking how they first came to follow Jesus, and what his grace and salvation means to them.
If I’m a Christian – I will invite someone to ‘eat and drink’ with me next week who probably thinks there is a boundary between them and God/church/Jesus/etc.
