A meal with Jesus

 

Chapter 1 - Luke 5 verses 27 to 32 - Meals as enacted grace

Luke describes Jesus' table companions as "publicans (tax collectors) and others" - it is the Pharisees who call them "publicans and sinners".  The message is clear: these "others" don't measure up to the standards of purity expected by the Pharisees.  Jesus doesn't so much provide a new answer to the question "with whom can I eat?" as completely undermine its premise.  He renders the question irrelevant.

Luke 11 verses 37 - 41

Jesus doesn't wash before the meal.  It's a provocative act.  It's the cultural equivalent of refusing a handshake.  Then before anything else is said, Jesus speaks up "You're full of greed you fools."  That's rude in any culture!  This isn't Jesus meek and mild.  This is Jesus spoiling for a fight.  The Pharisees' system of ritual cleanliness stinks, Jesus says.  These religious leaders are like cups that are rinsed on the outside, but inside are the moulding remains of coffee dregs and lipstick.  Jesus finds it repulsive "This cup may look clean on the outside" Jesus says "but if you really want it to be clean, use it to offer aid to the poor."  As far as the Pharisees were concerned, if you gave a dish to the poor it became unclean, because the poor were the great unwashed who didn't fulfil ceremonial washing.  But Jesus says the dish becomes clean because it expresses love.  The cleanliness that counts is found in the heart - Mark 7 verses 20 - 23.  But Jesus' critique of these outwardly respectable people goes further.  The Pharisees may look respectable, but Jesus calls them "unmarked graves" Luke 11 verse 44.  Though people don't see it, they're dead inside.  The reference to the poor is significant. When a teacher of the law intervenes, Jesus replies "Woe to you lawyers also!  For you load people with burdens hard to bear and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers" Luke 11 verse 46.  The effect of this ritual cleansing was not only to create boundaries with Gentiles, but also with the poor. The religious elite had created a system of moral respectability that only the wealthy could ever hope to maintain.  Only the rich had the time and money to do all the required ritual cleaning.  You can't be ritually clean in a slum.  The was bourgeois spirituality.  

We can do this too.  Our expectations of clothing, behaviour, literacy and punctuality can exclude the poor.  These verses also speak to a professionalised church ministry - a life seen as the epitome of godliness but all but impossible for those not in full-time ministry.

The teachers of the law created a system that allowed them to feel superior and then lifted not one finger to help others.  Today's Pharisees might condemn the poor for their dysfunctional families, but lift not one finger to help.  Today's Pharisees might condemn the poor for their excessive drinking but lift not one finger to ease their pain.  Today's Pharisees might condemn the poor for their laziness but lift not one finger to provide employment.  Today's Pharisees might condemn the poor for their abortions, but lift not one finger to adopt unwanted children.  We can't condemn these things at a distance. That's legalism.  We must come alongside, proclaiming and demonstrating the transforming grace of God.

The Pharisees are people who have the word but hide it.  Formally they honour the word, building monuments for the prophets.  But in reality they ignore God's word, effectively siding with those who killed the prophets - Luke 11 verses 47 - 51.  They'd created a system that the poor could never keep and then instead of helping them, despised them for their failures.  Jesus concludes "Woe to you lawyers!  For you have taken away the key of knowledge.  You did not enter yourselves and you hindered those who were entering." Luke 11 verse 52

How might we do this today?  Perhaps through displays of learning or rhetoric that make the non-literate feel that they can't read the bible for themselves.  Perhaps through application that focuses on externals and leaves hearts unchanged.  Perhaps by applying the text to dodgy charismatics or Catholics or dispensationalists or fundamentalists or liberals or pagans - anyone but ourselves.  Perhaps by reading the bible through theological grids so we say what the text does not say rather than what it does say.  Perhaps by emphasizing knowledge but not obedience or love.  A key theme in Luke's Gospel is heeding the word of God.  "heeding" is an old word but one that beautifully combines both hearing and doing.

Jesus is handing out God's party invitations.  They read "You're invited to my party in the new creation.  Come as you are."  The religious leaders agreed there was a party and an invitation and even that it was possible to attend.  But when the religious leaders passed out the invitation, they didn't say "Come as you are".  They said "You've got to get changed you've got to get cleaned up."  As a result people didn't come because they didn't think they were good enough.  This is how the Pharisees took away the key of knowledge.

In Luke 5 verses 12 - 15 Jesus touches a leper.  Normally if you did that you became unclean.  But instead of Jesus becoming unclean, the leper becomes clean.  God's grace transforms the outcast.  Suddenly it isn't uncleanness that's contagious.  That was how it was in the old Levitical system if you touched anything unclean, you became unclean.  But with Jesus it's his holiness that's contagious.

Jesus isn't rejecting the purity laws of Leviticus because they were wrong; he's showing that they're being fulfilled. Leviticus pointed to the need for a holy people; Jesus is the one who will atone for sin, baptize with the Holy Spirit and write God's law on our hearts.  Leviticus-style cleanliness is being superseded.

In Luke 5 verses 17 - 26 Jesus not only heals a paralysed man; he forgives his sin. Forgiveness of sin at that time was focused on the rituals of the temple.  But Jesus forgives with just a word, without reference to the temple.  What the temple symbolized is giving way to the reality to which it pointed.

In Luke 5 verses 33 - 35 the Pharisees ask why Jesus' disciples don't fast.  The Jews fasted to call upon God to come in mercy to liberate the nation.  But what if God's Messiah, full of mercy, is here, sitting at the table with the tax collectors?

In Luke 5 verses 36 - 39 Jesus makes the point explicitly. Something new is happening - something so new it can't be added on to the old, any more than you can sew new cloth on to old.  This is not simply an amendment to the old system.  Grace can't be integrated with self-righteousness and self-importance.  It's radically different, radically new.

The parties of Jesus are celebrations. The Pharisees are mourning over the absence of God and his kingdom.  But in Jesus God has come to his people and his kingdom is dawning.  So fasting gives way to feasting. Their meals are eaten with joy.

Compare the old way with the new way.  The new way is gracious rather than religious, inclusive rather than exclusive, welcoming rather than unwelcoming.  It is characterized by feasting rather than fasting, rejoicing rather than grumbling.  It recognizes its need and finds hope in the Saviour rather than feeling self-righteous and therefore rejecting the Saviour.

This is how Jesus explains himself: "Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick.  I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." Luke 5 verses 31 and 32.  The Pharisees are asking Jesus to behave like a doctor who avoids sick people. Such a doctor clearly couldn't do his work.  Jesus the Saviour can't do his work unless he's with sinful people.

It's the same for those who follow Jesus.  We can't do our work of pointing sinners to the Saviour unless we spend time with them.  The first thing Levi does after following Jesus is to throw a party.  Those who avoid the contamination of sinners are like the Pharisees. Those who earn the label "friend of sinners" by contrast are like their Saviour.

The grace of God is radically subversive.  Running through Luke's Gospel is the message that the last day will involve a radical reversal in which the first shall be last and the last shall be first.  The meals of Jesus picture that day, as he welcomes the marginal and confronts the self-righteous and self-reliant.

Grace turns the world of religious people upside down. They think of life as a ladder. Your righteous acts move you up the ladder towards God.  Your sense of well-being comes from your place on the ladder.  Nothing makes you feel better than being able to look down on other people.  Pharisees need tax collectors to make them feel righteous. 

But the grace of God also subverts secular versions of salvation.  Everyone is trying to find salvation.  They might not ask "What must I do to be saved?"  But everyone has some sense of what it is that would make them satisfied, fulfilled and accepted: success in business, the admiration of others, a beautiful home, a liberated homeland, a secure future, the worship of members of the opposite sex, a great body, wealth and prosperity, the acceptance of friends, a happy family, a dream holiday.

For the Pharisees it went like this: salvation is national renewal. This will be achieved by personal purity.  Those who don't measure up - like tax collectors, sinners and the poor - must be ostracized.

If other people don't measure up, then we despise or avoid them.  Yet, like the Pharisees, we need them so we can feel good about ourselves.  And if we don't measure up, then our "god" turns on us and condemns us.  Life is seen as a race and you're a loser if you're not successful wealthy or attractive.

But self-salvation doesn't work.  it doesn't work, because none of these versions of salvation deliver. They don't bring satisfaction, identity or joy, because we were made to know God and glorify him.  Anything less is a cheap substitute.  It's not salvation.

And self-salvation doesn't work because we can never measure up.  "We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ ..." (Galatians 2 verse 16)

The good news is that Jesus has not come "to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."  He offers true salvation: being welcomed to God's feast. And when we don't measure up, we're not condemned.  Instead of condemning us, our God is condemned in our place.  So salvation is found not through obeying any kind of law, but "through faith in Jesus."

At Levi's party 2 worlds are colliding.  Jesus comes crashing into the Pharisees world of self-reliance, pride, superiority, hypocrisy and self-justification with his utterly subversive message of God's grace.

Levi's party and the stories describing the new, gracious thing God is doing come to a climax in Luke 6 verse 11 "The scribes and Pharisees were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus."  When Jesus eats with Levi, the message is clear: Jesus has come for losers, people on the margins people who've made a mess of their lives, people who are ordinary.  Jesus has come for you.  The only people left out are those who think they don't need God: the self-righteous and the self-important.  Sadly that includes many people.

Luke 15 contains 3 famous parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son.  But notice why these parables were told: "Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him.  And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them."   It is the same issue as we met at Levi's house.  There's something about Jesus that makes tax collectors and sinners want to be with him.  And Jesus eats with them - a sign of friendship and fellowship.  But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law are scandalized.  So Jesus tells these 3 parables to explain himself.  In a sense they expand his statement in Luke 5 verses 31 and 32 that he has come for sinners, not for the righteous.  He's come for those who are lost, and when the lost are found there's always a party.  The shepherd, the woman, and the father each hold a party that mirrors the celebration of heaven.

All 3 parables speak of the sinners and tax collectors - they're like the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son that Jesus has come to find and rescue.  It is while the prodigal longs to share a meal with the pigs that he remembers his father's servants "have more than enough bread" while away from his father "he perishes here with hunger" Luke 15 verse 17.

The third parable also speaks of the Pharisees.  They're like the older brother.  The older brother is angry because the welcome of the prodigal makes his work seem meaningless.  He worked hard for a reward and now the younger son gets a reward without working at all.  That's the scandal of grace.  It means that if you've been working hard to be right with God, then you've been wasting your time because God welcomes everyone - righteous and unrighteous alike, without discrimination.  It's too much for the older brother and he refused to join the party.

So the father goes out to him.  There's grace for the younger son, but there's also grace for the older brother.  Jesus himself eats with tax collectors and sinners but he also eats with Pharisees - Luke 7 verses 11 and 14  Jesus "is not self-righteous about self-righteousness."  The older brother is missing the party because he won't let go of the claims he thinks he has on his father. The story ends unresolved.  Will he go in or not?  We don't actually know.  We're left asking the question.  And as we ask it of the older brother, we inevitably ask it of ourselves.  Would I have gone in?  How do I feel about God's extravagant grace?

In Levi's party and the parables of Luke 15 salvation comes to the margins of society.  That's good news to people at the margins today - and to everyone else.  But if we reject salvation at the margins, if we reject those whom God accepts, then we reject the grace of God and miss out on the celebration.

In Jesus God is doing something so new and so gracious that it takes us by surprise.  Indeed, it's so gracious it scandalizes us.  God chooses all the wrong sorts of people.  He invites everyone to his great party.  He invites the best and the worst, the highest and lowest.  He invites you.

Chapter 2 - Luke 7 verses 36 - 39 - Meals as Enacted Community

Luke's presentation of this meal seems to reflect the Graeco-Roman symposium - a meal followed by an extended discussion.  The diners reclined on couches in semi-recumbent positions with their legs out behind them around 3 sides of a central table, leaving the fourth side open to allow servants access to the table.  Bread and wine would be on the table, along with a main dish into which you dipped your bread.

Homes in the time of Jesus - especially large ones - included semi-public areas.  Some of the rooms opened on to a courtyard that outsiders could enter.  Visitors could see what was happening and even contribute to what was being said.  People could readily come in off the streets to pay their respects to the householder or to transact business.  The poor too might hang around hoping for leftovers.

The woman is probably loitering in the public area, and then slips into the dining room and starts rubbing Jesus' feet as they stretch out behind him on the couch.

Except this is no ordinary home. This is the home of a Pharisee and the Pharisees guarded their purity closely.  The Promised Land had been defiled by Roman occupation, but at least the Jewish people could keep their own bodies pure, ready for the day of liberation.  So the Pharisees avoided contact with those they considered impure - like this sinful woman.  Although she isn't explicitly called a prostitute, that's what's implied when Luke tells us that she was, literally, "known in the city as a sinner" (verse 37).  To the Pharisees she is like an infectious disease.  Yet Jesus accepts her.  He demonstrates God's grace by welcoming sinners.

But this woman treats Jesus with a shocking degree of intimacy.  This is not appropriate public behaviour.  She lets down her hair to wipe her tears from Jesus' feet.  In that culture, letting down your hair was what you did in the bedroom.  Then the woman kisses Jesus' feet and pours perfume on them.  There's even a suggestion that she's treating Jesus as a client, possibly the only way she knows how to relate to men.  "Everything about this woman is wrong; she does not belong here and the actions she performs are inappropriate in any setting for someone like Jesus."  But Jesus doesn't stop her.  He could have said, "I appreciate what you're doing, but it's not really appropriate behaviour."  He does nothing.  Prostitution if that was her business, is a commercial parody of hospitality.  But Jesus recognises her actions as the real thing.  He reinterprets what she does as a loving act rather than an eroctic act.

Jesus doesn't stop her, even though his reputation is at stake.  "When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself 'if this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.'" (Luke 7 verse 39)  Jesus is happy to link his identity to hers - just as he is happy to link his identity to yours and mine.

Just before this story Luke recounts the accusation that Jesus is "a friend of sinners."  How is Luke going to defend Jesus against this accusation?  He doesn't.  In fact he tells a story that shows that it's true.  Jesus is the friend of sinners.  He links his identity to ours to reveal himself as the gracious Saviour.  He comes "eating and drinking" to show that sinners can be part of his kingdom.

Involvement with people, especially the marginalized, begins with a profound grasp of God's grace.  We can easily regard marginalized people in the church as "a problem" to be "handled".  But the grace of God turns out to be uncomfortable and embarressing.  The radical grace of Jesus disrupts social situations.  And we don't like church to be disrupted.  So often our instincts are to keep our distance.  But the Son of God ate with sinners.  He's not embarrassed by them.  He lets them kiss his feet.  He's the friend of riff-raff, traitors, the unrespectable, drunks, druggies, prostitutes, the mentally ill, the broken and the needy - people whose lives are a mess.

Ultimately Jesus gave his life for them.  Luke prefaces the story by telling us that Jesus' enemies accuse him of being "a glutton and a drunkard", something we saw in the introduction.  It's an allusion to Deuteronomy 21 verse 21 which describes how a rebellious, drunken son is to be stoned.  Jesus, they are saying, is a rebellious son of Israel.  "Yet wisdom is justified by all her children" Luke 7 verse 35.  In other words, we will see who proves to be the rebellious child.  And it turns out not to be Jesus.  Jesus will prove to be a faithful Son, indeed the faithful Son of Israel.  Israel itself is a rebellious son of God.

But here is the crazy irony.  Jesus does die the death of a rebellious son. Not stoned, but hung on the cross.  The same passage in Deuteronomy that condemns a rebellious son declares that everyone who hangs on a tree is cursed.  Jesus is not the rebellious son.  I am.  You are.  But Jesus dies the death of a rebellious son.  He dies my death.  He dies the death of rebellious sinners.

There are 2 sides to this story in Luke 7.  It's not only a story of Jesus welcoming sinners; it's also a story of a sinner welcoming Jesus.  Twice Luke tells us that this party took place in the home of a Pharisee - Luke 7 verse 36 and 37.  Luke emphasizes the location.  There's no doubt where this is happening.  This is Simon's house.  And that means Simon is the host.  Today a host might shake guests hands, take their coats and offer them something to drink.  In Jesus' time you offered water for their feet and greeted them with a kiss.  But Simon does none of these things.  He is the host who's not really a host.  

Instead the woman is the host who's not even a guest.  She's a gatecrasher.  Jesus contrasts Simon's hospitality with hers:

You gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair

You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet

You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.

She was the one who welcomed Jesus - not Simon.  And it's not even her house.  Jesus says "Do you see this woman?" verse 44.  But Jesus is contrasting this woman with "your house".  I am in your house but she's been my host.

So why does she do it?  Perhaps she sees in Simon's treatment of Jesus something of the way in which she has been treated.  Simon is only interested in Jesus for his entertainment value - the ecentric preacher and miracle worker was the must-have guest on the social circuit.  He doesn't care for Jesus as a person. This woman could relate to that. She was accustomed to being used by men without respect.

But there's something more going on.  Jesus says her faith has saved her - Luke 7 verse 50.  What she is doing is a response of faith to something she's heard or seen in Jesus.  Maybe she's met Jesus already or heard about his reputation as the friend of sinners.  Maybe she's listened to him preaching good news to the poor - Luke 7 verse 22 and 23 or telling people to forgive rather than condemn - Luke 6 verse 37.  Maybe she's heard him proclaim blessing to the poor - Luke 6 verse 20 - 22 or seen him eating with tax collectors - Luke 5 verses 29 - 32.

What's the difference then between these 2 people?  To the onlookers the answer is obvious.  One is a righteous, respectable man; the other is a degraded, sinful woman who sells herself for money.  But Jesus sees things altogether differently.  When Simon condemns Jesus, Jesus responds not by defending his actions but by explaining hers.

The principle is simple.  If someone forgives you, you'll love them. If someone forgives you a lot, you'll love them a lot.  Even Simon concedes this.  And this woman clearly loves Jesus a lot.  Her audacity, her tears and her affection for Jesus make that clear.  So Jesus can say with confidence that her sins are forgiven.

But what about Simon?  Simon hasn't even shown the normal courtesies of a host to Jesus, and he's despised this poor woman.  He hasn't shown love.  The only conclusion can be that he's been forgiven little - and probably not at all.  Simon is not only a legalist but has structured his world around his legalism.  Meals express inclusion.  But this meal has been warped by legalism.  SImon wants his meals to express the wrong kind of inclusion.  Simon thinks he's invited the righteous, so the unrighteous are forced to gatecrash.  But Jesus reveals that Simon's definition of righteousness is upside down.

Simon decides Jesus can't be a prophet because he doesn't seem to have the God given insight to see the true character of this woman.  But Simon is in for a shock.  Jesus can see what kind of woman she is - he acknowledges that her sins are many - but she's been forgiven.  More than that, Jesus can see into Simon's heart to know what's he thinking.  Luke writes "He said to himself ... And Jesus answering said to him ..."  Jesus replies to Simon's thoughts as if he had spoken them aloud.  But the real shock is this: Jesus sees the heart of this woman and he sees the heart of Simon - and he's more disgusted by what he sees in Simon's heart than by what he sees in the woman's heart.

So Simon's attitude to this woman exposes his heart.  It's always like that.  "Difficult" people have a habit of exposing our hearts.  Behaviour always comes from the desires of the heart - Jesus says as much in the previous chapter - Luke 6 verses 43 - 45.

Whenever we look down on someone for being smelly or disorganised or lazy or emotional or promiscuous or socially inept or bitter then we're like graceless Simon.  And if we look down on people for not understanding grace, then we are like graceless Simon.  If you're thinking about how this applies to someone else, then you're like Simon.  Jesus says to us, "If you look down on others, you love little, because you understand so little of your sin and my grace."

The difference between Simon and the woman is not just how they view Jesus.  It's also how they view themselves.  Simon has no sense of forgiveness, because he has no sense of need.  But the woman has a strong sense of her brokenness.  She knows her life is a mess.  And she sees Jesus as someone who accepts her anyway.  So she has an overwhelming love for him - a love that risks social disgrace.

Involvement with people, especially the marginalised, must begin with a sense of God's grace.  But not just God's grace to them but his grace to me.  

Hospitality involves welcoming, creating space, listening, paying attention and providing.  Meals force you to be people-oriented instead of task-oriented.  Sharing a meal is not the only way to build relationships, but it is number one on the list.  Generous hospitality leads to reconciliation.  It expresses forgiveness.  Paul uses hospitality as a metaphor for reconciliation when he says to the Corinthians "Make room in your hearts for us.  We have wronged no one ..." 2 Corinthians 7 verse 2.  Hospitality can be a kind of sacrament of forgiveness.

Hospitality will lead to "collateral damage".  But remember that God is welcoming you, into his home through the blood of his own Son. The hospitality of God embodied in the table fellowship of Jesus is a celebration and sign of his grace and generosity  And we are to imitate that generosity.

Meals also have the power to shape and reshape community.  A person to whom we may have related in one role becomes a person to whom we relate to as friend.  Serving another changes the dynamics of a relationship.  Meals indicate social status, and they thereby allow us to transform social status. This is what Jesus is doing in eating with the marginalized  The marginalized cease to be marginal when they're included around a meal table.  In this culture our shared meals offer a moment of grace.  A sign of something different.  A pointer to God's coming world.  Around the table we offer friendship and celebrate life.  Our meals offer a divine moment, an opportunity for people to be seduced by grace into a better life, a truer life and a more human existence.

Meals were central to the life of the apostolic churches: "Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts." Acts 2 verse 46.  The only local church gathering the book of Acts describes concerns the church at Troas.  We read that they "were gathered together to break bread." Acts 20 verse 7. They met for a meal.

The church is to be a community of broken people finding family around a meal under the tree of Calvary.

Chapter 3 Meals as Enacted Hope – Luke 9

Meals can often be occasions for disclosure.  As we relax around the table, we share our hopes and fears and reveal something of our true selves.  In Luke’s Gospel the identity of Jesus is also revealed through a meal, a meal full of echoes of the past.

“Who is this about whom I hear such things?” King Herod asks just before this meal.  The answer given by the people who shared their lives with Jesus was this: “The Christ of God” Luke 9 verse 20.  “Christ” is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word “Messiah”.  It means “Anointed One”.  Jewish kings were anointed with oil so “the Christ” was how Jesus referred to God’s promised Saviour King – the one they hoped would rescue God’s people and put the world right.  But how can we know that Jesus is the Messiah?

In verses 7 - 9 just before the meal, Luke gives us 3 possible answers to the question of Jesus’ identity:

John the Baptist raised from the dead.

2.    Elijah – the bible says Elijah was taken up to heaven in a chariot.  He didn’t die in the ordinary sense and the Jews wondered whether he might come back to prepare the way for the Messiah.

3.    Jesus is “one of the prophets of old”.  Deuteronomy 18 verses 17 – 19 Moses promised that one day a prophet would come – maybe Jesus is a new Moses!

And we get exactly the same 3 options immediately after the meal when Jesus asks the question of his disciples in verses 18 – 20.  And right in the middle Luke placed the story of the feeding of the 5000.  Why? Because this feeding provides the crucial clue as to the identity of Jesus.  What makes the difference between Herod’s unanswered question and Jesus’ answered question is this party in the wilderness.

Jesus is revealed around a meal.  In this passage Jesus offers hospitality.  “He received them” verse 11.  The word “sit” could be translated “recline”.  Luke says the crowd reclined on the grass just as they would at a meal.  This is more than a picnic; this is a banquet with Jesus as the host.  Jesus is known through his catering.

3 important echoes of the OT in this story point to the identity of Jesus. 

The first is God’s provision of manna.  Hundred of years before, God had rescued his people from slavery in Egypt.  But soon the people were complaining about a lack of food. So, God sent manna.  The people in Luke 9 are again in a wilderness without food.  And Jesus looks up to heaven, and bread miraculously comes down.  So Jesus is a new Moses about to lead a new exodus, to rescue God’s people from sin and death.  When Jesus is transfigured 8 days after the feeding of the 5000 with Moses and Elijah, they talk about “his departure” or literally “his exodus”.

The feeding also reminded people of the story of Elisha who told his servant to feed a group of prophets with 20 loaves.  “But his servant said, “How can I set this before a hundred men?”  So, he repeated “Give them to the men that they may eat. For thus says the Lord,” they shall eat and have some left.  So, he set it before them.  And they ate and had some left according to the word of the Lord.  2 Kings 4 verses 42 – 4 

Elisha tells his servant, “You feed them”.  The man protests.  But there’s not only enough: there are leftovers.  And now Jesus tells the disciples “You feed them”.  They protest.  But there’s not only enough; there are 12 baskets full of leftovers.

When Elijah was taken up to heaven, Elisha took his cloak as a sign that he was Elijah’s successor.  He was the new Elijah.  So for Jesus to be doing things like Elisha was to suggest he might be the new Elijah.

So maybe Jesus is the new Elijah who provides for God’s people.  Maybe.  But he’s more than that.  Peter says Jesus is “the Christ of God”.  That’s because the feeding has a third OT resonance.

800 before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah proclaimed this promise from God – Isaiah 25 verses 6 – 9 and Isaiah 55 verses 1 and 2.

No one need ever leave this feast.  In Isaiah 25 death itself is on the menu – God himself will swallow it up.  So this is a perpetual feast.  In Luke 9 the disciples went to send the people away.  But Jesus makes it possible for them to stay.  There’s more food at the end than at the beginning.  This has the makings of a perpetual feast.

This feast is known as “the messianic banquet”.  God’s Messiah will defeat death, put the world right and enable us to enjoy God’s presence.  It’s a wonderful description of God’s coming world – of its provision and plenty and satisfaction.

The feeding of 5000 people was not the full deal.  But it was a glimpse of it.  Jesus is the host of God’s great party just as he was the host of the dinner in this wilderness.  When Jesus saw the crowd “he received them”.  Jesus is God’s Messiah, because he welcomes us to the messianic banquet.  This is what confirms Jesus’ identity.

That’s all well and good for the disciples.  They were there.  They ate the bread.  They collected the leftovers.  But is it credible for us?  After all, that sort of thing doesn’t happen in our world.

But that’s the point.  Our world is a world of hunger, pain, suffering and want.  Even in neighbourhoods where most people have enough to eat, we still live in want.  We’re still unsatisfied.  We may not long for bread, but we long for meaning, intimacy, fulfilment, community, purpose and joy.  We long for the world to be sorted out.

Jesus doesn’t fit in our world.  He breaks down our categories.  He bursts our expectation.  His actions do not fit the laws and expectations of this world.  To judge them by the standards of this world is a category mistake.  To judge them by your experience is to miss the point. They don’t belong in this world because they give us a glimpse of another world.  Jesus’ coming was the start of a new world, his actions a sign of God’s coming world.

Jesus himself proclaims “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.  Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied …”  The tenses are important.  Are hungry now.  Shall be satisfied.  This is the promise of a coming kingdom and a coming feast.  The poor, the broken and the hungry who recognise their need and turn to Jesus will one day receive the kingdom and enjoy his eternal banquet.

But here in this desolate place in Luke 9 for a moment in history, we are given a glimpse of that coming reality.  5000 hungry men “all ate and were satisfied”.  This is not the real thing.  5000 is a lot of people but it’s not all God’s people.  And these people would soon be hungry again.  But while it wasn’t the real thing, it was a foretaste of the real thing.  The 12 baskets of leftovers are a sign that this feast will continue.

Jesus asks the disciples to do an impossible job.  Naturally they feel totally under-resourced.  But Jesus completes the task.

Luke tells the story of feeding the 5000 to highlight the responsibility of the disciples and their inability.  Just before this story Jesus sends them out on mission and tells them not take any bread.  Now they must rustle up bread from nowhere – and not just for themselves, but for a crowd of people.  In the other Gospels the reference to 5000 men comes at the end of the story to emphasise Jesus’ ability to provide.  Luke mentions this detail earlier in the story, where the disciples are asked to feed the crowd, to emphasize their inability.  Then there are the 12 baskets of leftovers – one for each of the disciples – to remind them that Jesus provides.

Jesus is preparing the disciples for his absence.  At the moment they struggle without him.  And the day is coming when he will give them – as he gives us – another impossible task: to proclaim repentance and forgiveness to all nations.  What can we do?  Jesus asks us what resources we have, and he asks us to have faith.  That day the disciples took home 12 baskets full of leftover food. The impossible was not only completed but was over completed.  And those 12 disciples are now 2 billion disciples and counting.

We need a theology of leftovers.  The OT people of Israel were told to gather just enough manna for 1 day.  When they tried to gather 2 days’ worth, it always went bad.  If you acted as if manna was a finite resource that must be hoarded, then it went bad.  You could only consume it by trusting it to be an infinite resource from God.  The disciples thought their 5 loaves were a finite resource that couldn’t be shared.  5000 people from later they still had 12 baskets full of bread.

When it comes down to it, the disciples can’t provide for the people.  They have the power of Jesus but it’s his power.  They share the ministry of Jesus but it’s his ministry.  It’s easy for us to play at being messiah.  We want to help and it’s right that we do show love, as the context demands.  But we need to be careful not to think we can solve people’s problems for them.  It’s not good for us; if we try to save the world, we’ll quickly burn out.  And it’s not good for the people we help; people need to be helped to cope for themselves rather than become reliant on us.  Reliance on us might feed our egos, but it doesn’t bring lasting change.  But even more importantly, Christ is the Saviour – not us.  Our role is to point to him.  We have a responsibility to welcome people to the messianic banquet.  But we can’t bring them in.  What we offer people is Jesus.  His death is sufficient and complete.  He is the Provider.  He is the host.  Not us.

When Jesus sends out the 12, he tells them not to take a staff, bag or bread and he tells them to say wherever they’re welcomed.  But the days when God’s messengers can expect a welcome are numbered.  John the Baptist’s death is a pointer of what’s coming.  On the night before his own death, Jesus reminds the disciples of the time when he sent them out without money.  He says “But now let the one who has a money bag take it and likewise a knapsack.  And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.  For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: “And he was numbered with the transgressors.”  For what is written about me has its fulfilment.”  In other words, the days when you could expect to be welcomed are no more.  The Messiah is about to be treated like a transgressor and this is how his followers can expect to be treated.  From now on you can’t rely on general goodwill.  You must be prepared.  But, while the world may not offer us hospitality, Jesus provides for us.

“Taking the 5 loaves and the 2 fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke them.  Then he gave them to the disciples to set before the people.”  When Luke describes the last supper he writes “And (Jesus) took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

Taking, thanking, breaking, giving – the same words in the same order.  Luke is making a connection.  Jesus is the Messiah who provides for God’s people and hosts God’s great banquet.  Ultimately he provides by dying and he welcomes us because he was abandoned.  As soon as he is acclaimed as the Messiah, he explains that he must suffer and die.  Jesus is the Messiah but not the Messiah people expect.  He won’t conquer the Roman army and liberate Jerusalem. There will be judgment but it will fall on him.  He’ll be judged in our place, so that we can escape God’s judgment and be welcomed to God’s great feast.

8 days after Jesus warns of his coming suffering and death, he is transfigured, and a voice speaks from heaven.  What does the Father say?  As Jesus is transfigured in glory, we might expect the Father to say, “This is my Son; gaze upon him.”  But the Father says, “Listen to him!”  And what has Jesus just been saying?  That he is the Messiah who will be crucified.

In Luke 9 verse 51 the Gospel heads off in a new direction – literally.  “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  All the action in chapters 1 – 9 takes place in Galilee.  But now we’re heading to Jerusalem and the cross.  So the feeding of the 5000 comes at the end of the first half of the Gospel.  This open-air, large-scale meal is the climax of part 1: Jesus is the Christ.  The rest of the Gospel spells out what it means for Jesus to be the Christ and what it means to follow this Christ.  He is the Christ who must die and to follow him means a life of death to self and service of others.

Jesus is the host of God’s banquet, and he provides for us by dying for us.  This means we shouldn’t look for repeat performances.  Jesus can do miraculous things today.  But we shouldn’t expect these things as the norm.  These are not the fulfilment of God’s promise of a messianic banquet.  We should look to the cross. That’s where God provides for us.  “Jesus then said to them “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven … I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  If anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever.  And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”  John 6 verse 32 and 51.

The feeding of the 5000 not only looks forward in hope to the messianic banquet.  In receiving the bread with thanksgiving, Jesus affirms the goodness of creation.  And by affirming the goodness of God’s creation as he promises a new world, Jesus reminds us that this world is not going to be trashed but redeemed.  Food matters because it is part of God’s good creation and part of God’s new creation.

Food is not just fuel.  It’s not just a mechanism for sustaining us for ministry.  It’s a gift, generosity, grace.  Jesus gave thanks and broke bread.  In so doing, he affirms that food is to be received a gift from God.  Food matters as matter.  It’s a physical substance and part of God’s good world.  We’re to embrace the world as it is – not merely as a picture of some other spiritual world.

Food is a central ingredient in our experience of God’s goodness, not merely an illustration of God’s goodness.  Food is goodness.

Eating is an expression of our dependence.  God made us in such a way that we need to eat.  We’re embedded in creation, this means that every time we eat, we’re reminded of our dependence on others.  Food forces us to live in community, to share, to cooperate and to trade.  In all societies there’s a division of labour, which means we work together to provide the food we need.  This division of labour frees us from constant hunting and gathering to develop science and art.  A humble loaf of bread expresses the mandate God gave humanity to develop agriculture, technology, society, commerce and culture.

Above all, food expresses our dependence on God.  Only God is self-sufficient.  We are creatures and every moment we’re sustained by him.  Even our rebellion against him is only possible because he holds the fabric of our universe together by his powerful word.  Our shouts of defiance against God are only possible with the breath he gives.

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 5 loaves … he gave thanks.”

“Give us each day our daily bread”. That is how Jesus teaches us to pray.  We need to pray for our daily bread not because we’re worried about where our next meal might come from, but because we’re not.

We not only express our dependence on God by feasting, but also by fasting.  Just as food points to the goodness of God, so the hunger of fasting reminds us of our need for God. Fasting reminds us that we’re creatures.  As the hunger pains bite, we recognise with gratitude and prayer our dependence on creation, on community and on God.  Fasting reminds us that we depend on God for physical satisfaction but also for spiritual satisfaction.  Our hunger for food heightens our hunger for God.  Fasting retrains us to turn to God.  In Matthew 6 verse 18 Jesus promises a reward to those who fast in secret – it is not a reward that we earn as if fasting were sort of meritorious act.  Learning to turn to God instead of food is a transferable lesson.  Fasting trains us to turn to God whenever temptation comes. 

One of the dangers of fasting is that some people think abstinence is the epitome of godliness, and they regard food as a distraction from spiritual living.  We have lost much of our ability to appreciate food because we overconsume.  We miss the physical joy of being satisfied because we’re perpetually satisfied.  Fasting is another opportunity to rediscover the joy of simple food received as a gift from God.

Paul warns Timothy of false teachers who “forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods …” You’re spiritual, these false teachers argued, if you deny your physical appetites for food and sex.  The result, however, is that we’re separated from God (because we spurn his goodness), from other people (because we’re elitist) and from the creation (because we treat it as inferior).  Paul calls this teaching demonic – 1 Timothy 4 verse 1.

Paul is clearly not commending gluttony.  It’s all too possible to overconsume when we look to food for refuge.  Food quality and quantity matter.  But we must be careful not to lose sight of the fact that food is a divine gift.  Food is good.  Paul continues “For everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.” 1 Timothy 4 verses 4 and 5  We make our food holy when we accept that God’s word declares it good and when we give thanks to God for it in prayer.

What do we express when we say grace?

·         Our daily dependence on God as creatures and sinners

·         Our dependence on others as we give thanks for those who grew, processed, bought and cooked our food

·         The goodness of food, thereby transforming our food from fuel to a gift to be relished

·         Our gratitude to God thereby reorienting ourselves away from self and back to God

·         Our gratitude for community as we ask God’s blessing on our fellowship over the meal.

God set a table so we could eat in his presence.  This is the heart of what it means to be human.  It involves physicality.  God didn’t create us for mere mental contemplation, but for a shared meal.  But neither is the meal everything.  “God has put us together in such a way that our hunger for the gift of food is designed to lead us to the Giver.”  “Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Deuteronomy 8 verse 3.

The meals of Jesus are a sign of hope.  But this is not hope that moves beyond creation with food and meals.  It is hope for a renewed creation with bodies and food.  It is hope for a meal, a meal in the presence of God.  In the meantime, every meal is a picture of God’s goodness and a reminder of his coming world.

Chapter 4 - Luke 14 – Meals as Enacted Mission

Religion has nothing to offer this crippled man, but Jesus brings healing.  The Pharisees hadn’t experienced grace or recognised their own need.  As a result, they had no grace for the needy.  They had nothing to offer and nothing to say (verses 4 and 6).

This meal reveals the hearts of its participants.  There’s no restoration on the Sabbath.  There’s only jockeying for position.  The poor are excluded.  The religious think their meals maintain the purity of Israel.  But Jesus says they’re the threat to the people of God.  It’s an ugly vision and not at all inviting.  Meals can be a visual representation of our hearts.  If our hearts are concerned for position, honour, status or approval, then that will be reflected in our dining etiquette.

Extending Leviticus 21 verses 17 – 23 in the OT, most Jewish authorities said no-one who was blind, crippled or lame could enter the temple.  How amazing it was, then, that after Jesus cleansed the temple, “the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and healed them.” (Matthew 21 verse 14)

We’re the poor, the blind, the crippled and the lame, urged inside to join God’s great banquet.  We are:

·         The spiritually poor – with nothing to offer for our salvation

·         The spiritually crippled – made powerless by sin

·         The spiritually blind – unable to see the truth about Jesus

·         The spiritually lame – unable to come to God on our own

We also see that God’s grace is the foundation for Christian community.  In Luke 14 verse 12 Jesus talks about giving “a dinner or a banquet”.  In verse 16 the man who prepares a banquet represents God, who invites us to a great banquet.  Our parties are to be a reflection of God’s great banquet.

We see again the way religious people reject God’s grace (Luke 14 verses 16 – 24).  A double invitation was common in traditional Middle Eastern culture.  You invited guests and decided what animals to butcher in light of the responses you received.  A second invitation was sent out, perhaps the following day, when everything was ready: “come, for everything is now ready” (verse 17).  The subsequent excuses in this story are lame if not downright insulting.  The invited guests (like the religious leaders) reject the banquet and insult the host.  So the invitation goes out to the outcasts of Israel and then out still further to the Gentiles in the highways and hedges.  Here people have to be compelled to come, because they can hardly believe they’ve been invited.  The closing words of this story are “my banquet”.  I can’t help but imagine a subtle emphasis on the word “my” as Jesus speaks, so the words of the master in the story become the words of the storyteller.  The banquet of the Messiah is ready.  Are you really going to refuse your invitation?

What’s new in the story of the great banquet is the exhortation to invite outsiders to our meals.  Jesus told this story while dining at a Pharisee’s house.  “Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees …”  The host’s guests were people like him.  But it wasn’t just the Jewish world where you ate with your own.  Giving food to the poor was ok but you gave them food at your back door.  You never invited them in.  That meant contamination.  Today we still like to eat with people like us.

But Jesus says, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your rich neighbours, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid.  But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.  For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” (verses 12 – 14)  The table fellowship of Jesus with its ethic of grace rather than reciprocity, was creating a new countercultural society in the midst of the Empire. 

Luke repeats the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame in verse 13 and 21.  These 4 examples represent the marginalized, powerless and vulnerable as a whole.  They’re the “orphans and widows” of James 1 verse 27 and the “tax collectors and sinners” of Luke 15 verse 1.  Our attitude to the marginalized is to be shaped by our experience of God’s grace to us.  God welcomes us to his party and so we’re to welcome the poor.  The kind of fasting that God desires is “to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house.” (Isaiah 58 verse 7)

We’re called to follow Christ into a broken world.  Simply writing a cheque keeps the poor at a distance.  But Jesus was the friend of sinners.  To invite someone for a meal in Jesus’ time was an expression of identification.  That’s why Jesus’ habit of eating with tax collectors and sinners was so scandalous. 

We think we’re enacting grace if we provide for the poor.  But we’re only halfway there.  We’ve missed the social dynamics.  What we communicate is that we’re able and you’re unable.  “I can do something for you, but you can do nothing for me.  I’m superior to you.”  We cloak our superiority in compassion, but superiority cloaked in compassion is patronizing.

Think how different the dynamic is when we sit and eat with someone.  We meet as equals.  We share together.  We affirm one another and enjoy one another.  People don’t want to be projects.  The poor need a welcome to replace their marginalization, including to replace their exclusion, a place where they matter to replace their powerlessness.  They need community.  They need the Christian community.

Consider Jesus.  Yes he adopted the attitude of a slave when he washed the disciples’ feet.  But think too how often he accepts services.  He accepts hospitality from Levi (Luke 5).  He lets the woman at Simon’s house wash his feet (Luke 7).  He asks for water from the woman in Samaria (John 4).  He’s not just the helper of sinners, still less their project worker.  He’s the friend of sinners, who came eating and drinking.

Prostitutes loved sharing a meal with Jesus (Luke 15 verses 1 and 2).  They avoid the church he founded like the plague.  Something has gone wrong.

The manoeuvring for places of honour in Luke 14 verses 7 – 11 was normal behaviour.  Guests’ standing in society dictated where they sat, so allocating seats was a fraught process.  But what are we to make of Jesus’ advice to take a lower position so you would get moved up?  Is this just a bit of homely wisdom or advice on social etiquette?  I think not.  The punchline is verse 11 “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”  It echoes Luke 1 verses 52 and 53 where Jesus’ mother, Mary sings.

In the kingdom of God, the world’s ordering of things will be turned on its head.  God’s choice of poor, insignificant Mary is a sign of what’s coming.  There will be a reversal of status.  Luke’s message is: when God reverses the worldly order of things, make sure you are on the underside.  Verse 12 – 14 are about a meal swap: invite the marginalized, just as God invites you (who were once marginalised from him) to his resurrection feast.  Verses 7 – 11 are about a position swap: instead of jockeying for status, humble yourself and God will honour you at the resurrection.

It's time to take a step back and ask why Luke wrote his Gospel.  He opens by saying “It seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught (chapter 1 verses 3 – 4).

What has Theophilus been taught and how does Luke’s account bring certainty?  If Theophilus has been taught just the story of the life of Jesus, then it’s difficult to see how Luke’s account might add certainty.  I suggest that Theophilus has been taught that a day is coming when the first shall be last and the last shall be first.  He’s been taught that God has an eternal banquet to which sinners are invited, but from which the self-righteous and the self-important are excluded,

Just before the meal of Luke 14, Luke reminds us of this great reversal, again with meals at the fore.  Judgement is described as hospitality refused: “When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door saying, “Lord open to us” then he will answer you “I do not know where you come from” (Luke 13 verse 25).  Having shared a meal with Jesus (as the Pharisees did in Luke 14) will not be enough (chapter 13 verses 26 – 27).  Jesus longed to gather the children of Jerusalem, but they wouldn’t come (chapter 13 verse 34). This is the story the parable of the great banquet will retell in chapter 14.  Now the participants of the messianic banquet will be drawn from across the world “People will come from east and west and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God” (chapter 13 verse 29).  The conclusion is this “Behold some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” (chapter 13 verse 30)  A great reversal is coming.

Luke’s account of Jesus can give Theophilus certainty of the things he has been taught because it demonstrates that Jesus’ ministry – and above all his table fellowship – is a foretaste of the great reversal.  Jesus welcome sinners and eats with them, as we saw earlier in the story of Levi’s dinner party, just as God will do in his eternal banquet.  He humbles the self-righteous and self-important but welcomes the humble and marginalized.  Jesus’ ministry is a picture of the great reversal on the final day.  The make-up of the Christian community is a powerful testimony to the rich and powerful.

Luke’s alternative strategy for reaching people like the “most excellent” Theophilus is to point to the table fellowship of Jesus.  We reach the rich by reaching the poor.  Only in this way will we challenge the value system of the elite and embody God’s grace (1 Corinthians 1 verses 26 – 31).

If there is going to be a day of reversal then Theophilus needs to align himself with the marginalized, poor and persecuted community of Jesus.  “Luke’s emphasis was probably “hard bread” for the elite Christians among his readers.  For participation in such a social inclusive community might well have cut them off from their poor social networks on which their status depended.”  That’s the significance of verses 7 – 11.  Make sure you’re lowly because one day the lowly will be exalted.  Make sure you’re with the outsiders, because one day the outsiders will be insiders.  Throughout Luke’s Gospel one’s attitude to the poor is the touchstone of genuine discipleship.

The call to believe the message of this coming reversal is the reason why confidence in the Word of God is also such an important theme in Luke’s Gospel.  Luke wants Theophilus to trust God’s word about the future.  Luke 11 tells us “A woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” (verses 27 and 28)

Luke’s plea for people to believe the message of the great reversal also explains another significant theme in his gospel: the threat posed by possessions.  This is what threatens to stop people like “most excellent” Theophilus from committing themselves to Christ’s community.  “No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and money.” (Luke 16 verse 13)  In the parable of the sower, the seed sown among thorns represents people who fail to produce a crop because “they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasure of life” (chapter 8 verse 14)  Jesus warns a crowd of listeners “Be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of one’s possessions” (chapter 12 verse 15), before telling a parable of a farmer who has a bumper crop, but is not rich towards God (chapter 12 verses 16 – 21).  Jesus “lifted up his eyes on his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor for yours is the kingdom of God … But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation” (chapter 6 verses 20 and 24).  The rich young ruler of Luke 18 leaves Jesus sad, because he loves his possessions, prompting Jesus to say “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!  For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” (chapter 18 verses 24 and 25)

Shortly after his encounter with this rich young man, Jesus meets another rich man and invites himself over for a meal (Luke 19 verses 1 – 20).  Zacchaeus clearly loved money, because he’d sacrificed social acceptance to gain it and made himself an enemy of God.  That’s a high price to pay.  Yet after his encounter with Jesus, Zacchaeus is a changed man.  Unlike the respectable rich man in Luke 18 whose possessions prevent him following Jesus, Zacchaeus expresses his repentance by declaring that he’ll give away half his wealth and repay fourfold whomever he’s cheated.  The grace of God embodied in the meal with Jesus liberates Zacchaeus from his enslaving greed.  That’s the pattern Luke invites us to follow.

Meals enact mission.  But they enact mission because they enact grace.  We don’t know what Zacchaeus already knew or what Jesus might have said over the meal.  But we know the invitation of Jesus scandalized the crowd (chapter 19 verse 7) – this “small” man was a person non grata (literally a “person without grace”) in their eyes.  This invitation expressed God’s grace, and God’s grace transformed Zacchaeus’ heart.

Jesus didn’t run projects, establish ministries, create programmes or put on events.  He ate meals.  If you routinely share meals and you have a passion for Jesus, then you’ll be doing mission.  It’s not that meals save people.  People are saved through the gospel message.  But meals will create natural opportunities to share that message in a context that resonates powerfully with what you’re saying.

Hospitality has always been integral to the story of God’s people.  Abraham set the agenda when he offered 3 strangers water for their feet and food for their bodies.  In so doing he entertained God himself and received afresh the promise (Genesis 18 verses 1 – 18).  God was Israel’s host in the Promised Land (Psalm 39 verse 12; Leviticus 25 verse 23) and that would later shape Israel’s behaviour.  A welcome to strangers and provision for the needy were written into the law of Moses.  Rahab is saved because of her faith expressed through hospitality (Joshua 2; James 2 verses 22 – 25).

Hospitality continues to be integral to Christian conduct in the new covenant “Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality” (Romans 12 verse 13).  “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.” (1 Peter 4 verse 9; see 1 Timothy 5 verse 10).  “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me.” (Matthew 10 verse 40; see 25 verses 35 – 40); “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” (Hebrews 13 verse 2)

In Acts 10 God told Peter in a dream to eat from a collection of unclean food.  I’s a key moment in the mission of the early church for it prepares Peter to take the gospel to Gentiles for the first time.  Peter says to those Gentiles “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.  So when I was sent for, I came without objection …” (Acts 10 verses 28 – 29)  Mission to the nations begins with a new understanding of hospitality.

So hospitality was integral to the life of the people of God in the bible story.  And it has continued to be integral to the church’s mission.

Jesus’ command to invite the poor for dinner violates our notions of distance and detachment.  Mission as hospitality undermines the professionalization of ministry.  The hospitality to which Jesus calls us can’t be institutionalized in programmes and projects.  Jesus challenges us to take mission home. 

Chapter 5 – Meals as Enacted Salvation – Luke 22

5 times Luke reminds us that this meal is the Passover – verses 7, 8, 11, 13 and 15.  The first Passover meal was eaten the night before the exodus, when God liberated his people from slavery in Egypt – Exodus 12.  The last supper looks back on the first Passover meal, but it also looks forward to the messianic banquet promised in Isaiah 25.  Jesus says “I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God …. I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes” Luke 22 verses 16 and 18.  This shared meal is a foretaste of God’s coming new world.  Luke has placed the Lord’s Supper in the context of the Bible story, looking back to the Passover and forward to the messianic banquet.  To understand the Lord’s Supper, we need to sketch a biblical theology of food and meals.

Before the fall, food was the way we expressed our obedience and trust in God.  We obeyed God by eating from any tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Eating continues to express our dependence on God and our submission to his good reign.  We gratefully receive food in all its wonderful variety as a gift from God.  At the fall, food was the way we expressed our disobedience and mistrust of God.  It was an attempt to live life without God (expressed through taking forbidden food).  Paul says, “Although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” Romans 1 verse 21.  As a result of the fall, we would no longer honour God by living by his word, or express gratitude by receiving the food on which we depend as a gift from him.

We are embodied persons and so sin affects our bodies.  No sooner did Adam and Eve rebel against God than they felt ashamed of their bodies.  Sin distorts all of our relationships, including our relationships with food.

The moment God gave us to eat, rest, enjoy, commune and express gratitude are written out of our schedules so we can get on with achieving our own goals. We’re too busy proving ourselves or managing our lives without God to stop and express our dependence.

Food is meant to express our dependence on God, but we use food to express our independence from God. 

Food can become a means of salvation and deification now, just as it was in the garden of Eden.  Satan tells Eve that she and Adam will become like God if they eat the forbidden fruit.  Our concern for self-image is an attempt to be godlike.  We want to be worshipped.  We are concerned with our glory instead of living for God’s glory.  We fear the rejection of other people instead of fearing God.  We are controlled by the opinion of others instead of recognizing God as the glorious One whose opinion is the one that truly matters.  Today we still take the fruit or deny ourselves the cake – to become godlike, people with bodies others will worship and serve.  The tragic irony is that Adam and Eve were already like God, having been made in his image.  But we attempt to remake ourselves through food into a form that others will worship.

We often use food as an escape instead of finding refuge in God.  We self-medicate with food.  We become priests bringing offerings of chocolate to ourselves.  We find comfort in sugar, salt and fat instead of the living God.  The result is ill health and weight gain.  Some people then try to manage this through dieting, bulimia or anorexia.  Life without God is an empty life, and we cannot fill that emptiness with food.  We miss the opportunity to turn to God.  We want to live by bread alone.  We find true refuge in the comfort of God and true satisfaction in the goodness of God.

Neither eating to live (food as fuel) nor living to eat (food as salvation) is right.  We’re to eat and live to the glory of God.  When we remove God from our lives, our relationship with food becomes distorted.

For some people food is aspirational.  We use it to express the image or lifestyle to which we aspire.  We use or misuse food to form our identity instead of finding identity in Christ.  We use food to achieve identity instead of receiving it by grace.

The first thing that happens when Adam and Eve eat the fruit is that they feel shame (Genesis 3 verse 7).  Still today our attempts at self-salvation through food lead to shame.  They generate body-image problems.

The story of God’s redeeming our broken world begins with his promise to Abraham – the promise of a people who know God, living in a land of blessing.  Abraham’s family becomes the nation of Israel and the defining moment in Israel’s history is its exodus from slavery in Egypt.

It’s this event that’s embodied in the Passover meal.  Each year the nation of Israel would commemorate and re-enact God’s re-enact God’s redemption through a meal.  The Passover became the identity-defining practice of Israel.  It was their theological education.  Each Passover children were to ask about its significance and the story would be retold.  Through this meal they understood the nature of their God and their own identity.  This is theology served up on the meal table.

Not only were the people of Israel rescued through an event encapsulated in a meal; they were rescued for a meal.  When Israel reached Mount Sinai, the 70 elders went up the mountain where “they beheld God and ate and drank” Exodus 24 verse 11.  They ate a meal in the presence of God.  The Passover represents redemption embodied in a meal for a meal with God.  The land that God promises his people is “a land flowing with milk and honey” Exodus 3 verse 8 in which “you shall eat and be full and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you” Deuteronomy 8 verse 10.

But only the leaders eat with God on the mountain.  The people are terrified by God’s presence.  God is dangerous.  This reminds us that the problem of sin and judgment must be addressed before we can eat with God.

Israel represents a fresh start, a new humanity.  But they have their own temptation story – Deuteronomy 8 verses 2 and 3.

Israel learned too late that man does not live by bread – or for bread – alone.  They repeatedly grumbled against God, because the feared they wouldn’t have enough bread or water or meat – Exodus 16 and 17, Number 11.  “They spoke against God saying, ‘Can God spread a table in the wilderness?’” Psalms 78 verse 19.  They didn’t live in dependence on God, nor did they trust him to lead them into the land of milk and honey – Numbers 13 and 14.  So the whole generation that came out of Egypt died in the wilderness.  Meanwhile God provided manna – a bread from heaven that tasted like honey – in anticipation of the blessing of the Promised Land.  Their first act when Joshua eventually led a new generation into the land was to feast.

The Sabbath law that Israel received at Sinai built the expression of dependence into the eating experience.  The Sabbath day is a day without work, and during the Sabbath year the land was to lie fallow.  What if this lost work and lost year meant you didn’t produce enough food?  Your only guarantee was the faithfulness of God.  You could never entirely claim to be providing for yourself because one year in seven you did nothing except trust God.  The Sabbath laws made eating an act of faith.  Man does not live by bread alone.

Feasts were an integral part of the life of God’s people in the OT.  Deuteronomy 14 describes how every year God’s people were to spend one-tenth of their produce on a feast.  This was a big party and on the menu is “whatever you desire” (verse 26).  The key element was that it was eaten “before the Lord your God” (verse 26).  It was a meal in the presence of God.  This is salvation.  Every third year the meal was to be eaten locally (“within your towns”; verse 28) and the immigrants, the poor, the vulnerable were to be invited.  The people of God are to be a community in which everyone, however marginal, joins the party.

1 Kings 4 describes the high point of Israel’s story, during the reign of Solomon.  The promise of a people as numerous as the sand on the seashore is fulfilled (verse 20).  The promise of a land at peace on all sides is fulfilled, with every man under his own fig tree, enjoying security and provision (verses 24 – 25).  The promise of blessing to the nations is fulfilled with the kings of the earth sending delegations to learn wisdom from Solomon (verses 29 – 34).  Central to this fulfilment is food. Solomon’s daily provisions are listed in splendid detail (verse 7 – 19, 22 – 28).  But it’s not just the king who eats well; “Judah and Israel were as many as the sand by the sea.  They ate and drank and were happy” (verse 20).

But from here it’s downhill.  Solomon marries foreign wives who lead him into the worship of foreign gods.  This sets a pattern for future kings.  The kingdom is divided, with the northern kingdom eventually going into exile in Assyria.  The southern kingdom, ruled by the Davidic line of kings, limps on until eventually it too is exiled, in Babylon.

The prophets warn of this coming judgment, and they often do so in terms of food.  Food is so integral to life that judgment affects diet.  The very first declaration of judgment is when God tells the serpent that he will eat dust – Genesis 3 verse 14.  The Israelites are made to drink the golden calf after Moses has ground it up and combined it with water – Exodus 32 verse 20.

The prophets also speak of restoration after judgment.  The promises to Abraham and David still stand.  Salvation is also described in dietary language.  The renewal of the land will mean the renewal of food.

At the heart of the bible story, at its turning point is another meal, the last supper.  The last supper, which becomes for us the Lord’s Supper, is a celebration of the story’s central act: the cross of Jesus.  The last supper was not only looking back to the Passover and forward to the messianic banquet; it was also looking ahead to the following day, to the cross “He took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying “This is my body, which is given for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.”  And likewise, the cup after they had eaten, saying “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” Luke 22 verses 19 and 20

Think about the events of that following day.  Jesus dies in darkness.  Darkness was a sign of God’s judgment.  Jesus is judged in our place so we can be acquitted.  So as he dies the curtain of the temple is torn in 2.  This curtain was as thick as a man’s hand, separating people from the Most Holy Place, the heart of the temple and the symbol of God’s presence.  The curtain separated God from humanity, because his holiness might destroy us in our sin.  But at Jesus’ death on the cross, sin and judgment are dealt with, and so the curtain is torn in 2.  The way to God is open and we are invited to celebrate the feast.

Jesus is the host of the messianic banquet and the last supper mirrors this: Peter and John are told to prepare the mal, but the preparations have already been made by Jesus – Luke 22 verse 8 – 13.  On the night before he dies, Jesus tells his disciples that he’s going to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house – John 14 verses 3 to 4.  Jesus is the host, and he prepares a place for us through the cross.  Jesus is the Passover Lamb.  His blood is daubed over our lives; the Lord passes over us, and we’re redeemed from our empty way of life – 1 Peter 1 verses 18 – 19.  We’re redeemed so we can come to the mountain of God, eat and drink with God.

Jesus’ death and resurrection inaugurate a new covenant and a new people.  In Luke 4 Jesus recapitulates the temptation story.  Luke has just traced the family line of Jesus back to Adam, describing Jesus as “the son of Adam” chapter 3 verse 38.  How will this new Adam relate to God through food?  Jesus is also the true Israelite; how will this new Israel relate to God through food?  Satan’s first temptation of Jesus is an invitation to turn stones into bread.  Jesus has been fasting for 40 days and just in case we’re not sure what this means, Luke tells us “he was hungry” chapter 4 verse 2.  Nevertheless, Jesus answered “It is written ‘Man shall not live by bread alone’” chapter 4 verse 4.  Jesus is the new humanity and the new Israel, relating to God in trust and obedience.

Just as Israel was constituted by the old Mosaic covenant, so the new community of Jesus is founded with a new covenant.  “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” Luke 22 verse 20.  The word “covenant” is a relational term.  It signifies a bond of loyalty and commitment, a formally agreed-upon promise.  At Sinai God promised to be Israel’s God if Israel would be his people, but Israel broke the covenant – Jeremiah 31 verses 31 and 32.  In the new covenant Jesus represents both God and humanity.  He is God’s Son and the faithful representative of God’s people.  Therefore this covenant is eternal and secure, because it rests on Christ’s perfect faithfulness.  He doesn’t succumb to temptation.  He doesn’t live by bread alone. The new covenant promises not only a people who know God, but a people who are renewed.  “This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.  And I will be their God and they shall be my people … For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more” Jeremiah 31 verses 33 and 34.  God contracts himself to be our Saviour and the contract is signed sealed and delivered through the blood of his Son.

Food can be a curse as well as a blessing. We see it in the bible, and we see it in our world today in excessive dieting, eating disorders, global poverty and unjust trade.  But the gospel offers a better story, which realigns eating.  Food is not the source of life; we do not live by bread alone.  But food is not forgotten or rendered insignificant.  We live “by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” Deuteronomy 8 verse 3.  But this word is embodied in a meal. The communion meal reorients life by relocating us in the story told by the word.  Instead of being defined by the stories of our culture, we live as participants in God’s story.  And the meal points to the goal: eating in the presence of God as a celebration of his generosity in creation and salvation.  We anticipate this in every meal but especially in the Lord’s Supper.

Jesus said “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.  For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” Luke 22 verse 15 – 16.  Before Jesus comes into the kingdom he must suffer.  The good news that Jesus proclaimed was the coming of God’s kingdom.  This is good news, because God’s kingdom is a rule of justice, peace, joy, freedom and life.  Satan’s lie in the garden portrayed God’s rule as bad news and ever since then, we’ve thought we’ll be more free without God – only to end up enslaved.  So God’s coming kingdom is good news.  But we’re all rebels against God’s rule and for rebels God’s coming rule means judgment.  For us, God’s coming kingdom is bad news. But here’s the wonderful twist in the story.  When the King comes to his world, judgment falls not on rebellious humanity, but on the King himself at the cross.  Jesus bore the judgment we deserve, so that repentant rebels can experience the coming of his kingdom as good news.

We find in Jesus a pattern of suffering followed by glory.  Followers of Jesus must follow the same pattern.  Our sufferings redemptive, but we are called to follow Christ’s example of sacrificial love and service.  Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9 verse 23  Paul said we’re “heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” Romans 8 verse 17.  He strengthens and encourages new churches by telling them that “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” Acts 4 verse 22.  But the disciples don’t get it.  At the last supper they even begin arguing about who’s the greatest – Luke 22 verses 24 – 30.

The disciples were probably angling for positions of honour around the table like the Pharisees in Luke 14.  They want honour without service, glory without suffering.  Jesus calls them to the way of the cross, the way of humility and love.  Jesus goes on to give this remarkable promise: if you endure suffering with me, then you will experience the glory of my eternal feast.  If you follow the way of the cross, then you will experience the glory of the resurrection.

Jesus says “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.  For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God” Luke 22 verses 15 – 16.  He longs to eat it.  He longs for a meal with friends.  Why?  Because this meal with friends is a foretaste of his kingdom.  This is why he must suffer: so that his people can come to the mountain and eat with God.  Jesus will experience in the supper a glimpse of the goal of his work of salvation.  In that experience he will be reassured that the suffering that weighs so heavy on his heart is worth it.  This is what it is for, sharing community around a meal table with his people.

The meal functions in the same way for us.  What we call “the Lord’s Supper” is a foretaste of the Lamb’s supper” in Revelation 19, a beginning of the feast we eat with Jesus and his people in the new creation.  It’s not just a picture.  It’s the real thing begun in a partial way.  We eat with God’s people, and we eat with the ascended Christ through the Holy Spirit.

The Lord’s Supper should be a meal we “earnestly desire” to eat. We should approach it with anticipation, with longing, with excitement, with joy.  The Lord’s Supper should be a joyous occasion, a vibrant meal with friends, a feast.

Our earnest desire must surely affect how we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  Today it has commonly become ritualized.  We’re the group in town whose central meal involves a fragment of bread and a small sip of wine.  How is this a foretaste of the messianic banquet?

The bread and wine in the New Testament are part of a meal.  Luke says of the Jerusalem church “Breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts” Acts 2 verse 46.  In Jerusalem followers of Jesus ate meals together in their homes, eating bread, drinking wine, remembering Jesus and celebrating the community he created through his death.

These were feasts of friends.  Some in the church at Corinth were abusing the meals, but Paul doesn’t tell them to separate the bread and wine from the meal.  Quite the opposite.  He tells them to wait for one another so they can eat the meal together.  Communion should be a feast of friends shared with laughter, tears, prayers and stories.  We celebrate the community life that God gives us through the cross and in the Spirit.  We can’t celebrate it with heads bowed and eyes closed, alone in our private thoughts and strangely solitary even as we’re surrounded by other people.

When we recapture the Lord’s Supper as a feast of friends, celebrated as a meal in the presence of the Spirit, then it will become something we earnestly desire.  It will become the high point of our life together as the people of God.  In this sad and broken world, the Lord’s Supper is a moment of joy because it’s a moment of the future.

Why bread and wine?  Why didn’t Jesus say, “Say this in remembrance of me?”  Why give us physical substances to eat and drink?  The bread and wine are part of a wider social event with a community, a liturgy (however informal), prayers and bible readings.  The bread doesn’t mystically change us, as if it were some kind of magic portion.  But neither is it merely a memory aid and that touches our minds alone.  It’s part of a wider shared experience.  Sharing a meal with other people in the presence of the Holy Spirit, breaking a loaf that someone has baked, remembering together the cross, praying together – all these things affect us.  The Lord’s Supper is more than a mere memorial.  It changes us.  “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” 1 Corinthians 10 verse 17.  The shared activity of partaking of the one loaf forms us afresh as one body.  It reinforces our identity as a community shaped by the cross.

Paul expresses a similar idea when discussing food offered to idols in 1 Corinthians 8 – 10 an argument that ends at the communion table.  Meat on its own – even meat offered to idols – has no significance other than being food from God – 1 Corinthians 8 verses 4 – 8.  The blessing of a pagan priest doesn’t transform it.  So, Paul feels free to eat meat previously offered to idols.  But put the food and the idols together in the relational context of a pagan ceremony and everything changes.  It’s the social context that gives the food meaning – so much so that participation in the event is a participation with demons.  “What do I imply then?”  That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything.  No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God.  I do not want you to be participants with demons” 1 Corinthians 10 verses 19 and 20.

In the same way, the bread and wine on their own have no special meaning, and the blessing of a priest doesn’t transform them.  It’s the social context that gives them meaning – so much so that participation in the event is a participation in the body and blood of Christ “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?”  The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” chapter 10 verse 16.  So why a meal with bread and wine?  

The Lord’s Supper may be more than a memorial but it’s certainly not less than a memorial.  Each time we participate, we’re reminded of the cross.  We’re reminded that our sin is atoned for.  We’re free, forgiven, acquitted, adopted.  And we’re reminded that the cross is our model.  We’re called afresh to serve and to sacrifice.

Communion is a reminder to us.  But it may also be a reminder to God.  The words we so often hear “do this in remembrance of me” are literally “do this for my memorial” Leviticus 2 verse 2, 9, 16, 5 verse 12.  Just as the rainbow in the covenant with Noah was given not to remind us of God’s love, but to remind God of his promises – Genesis 9 verses 12 – 17, so perhaps the bread and wine are to remind God of his new covenant.  When God remembers his covenant, it doesn’t mean he’s previously forgotten but that he’s about to act in keeping with his covenant – Exodus 6 verses 5 and 6.  The Lord’s Supper is a call to God to act in keeping with his covenant; forgiving us, accepting us and welcoming us to the table through the finished work of Christ.

“Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” 1 Corinthians 10 verse 17.

The Lord’s Supper declares the death of Jesus not just in the symbolism of bread and wine but in the community created by the cross.  We’ve seen already time and again how meals create and reinforce community. Christ told us to take bread and wine because they form a meal that binds us together as a community.

This is why what’s happening in Corinth so offends Paul.  The church’s community meal reveals its divisions.  Indeed division seems to have been the goal for some.  In the culture of the day, it was common for banquets to be “occasions for the conspicuous display of social distance and even for humiliation of the clients of the rich, by means of the quality and quantity of food provided to different tables.”  The wealthy in Corinth were using the Lord’s Supper in this way to highlight their social superiority.  But, says Paul, this is not the purpose of the Lord’s Supper. That kind of meal doesn’t proclaim the Lord’s death.  We proclaim his death by eating together as a reconciled community through the cross.  The cross humbles us all as we see the extent of sin, and the cross exalts us all as we’re welcomed into God’s family.  The family that eats together stays together.

“Man shall not live by bread alone” Luke 4 verse 4

We’ve already seen that every meal is a reminder of our dependence, as creatures, on God – the communion meal included.  Every mouthful is a reminder that we’re not self-sustaining.  We may not live by bread alone, but we do live by bread.  We must pray “Give us each day our daily bread” Luke 11 verse 3.

But the communion meal is also a recognition of our dependence on God as sinners.  We live by the death of his Son.  “Man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Deuteronomy 8 verse 3  We live by the word of the cross.  Each mouthful is a reminder that we cannot save ourselves.  We eat bread, rather than merely saying some words, to remind us that we rely on his grace afresh each day just as much as we rely on our daily bread.

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?  The bread that we break is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 1 Corinthians 10 verse 16

We’re not observers around the communion table.  We’re participants.  We do something.  We ingest something.  If the Eucharist involved just some words, then we’d be mere hearers, passively observing the drama of salvation at a distance.  But bread and wine draw us in.  This salvation becomes our salvation.  Objectively our salvation doesn’t depend on participation in the Lord’s Supper.  It’s not a magic meal.  But the Lord’s Supper is described as “communion” or “participation”.  Through the communion meal, salvation becomes a subjective reality for us afresh.  We enact our union with Christ and in him find we’re forgiven, justified and adopted.

"For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” 1 Corinthians 11 verse 26.

Participation in the communion meal is habit forming.  The Lord’s Supper is a drama in which we’re active participants.  Each time we participate, we’re learning and relearning our role.  We’re learning the habits of cross-centred living.

In a busy culture with people desperate to succeed we practise in communion resting on the finished work of Christ.  In a fragmented culture that is radically individualistic, we practise in communion belonging to one another.  In a dissatisfied culture of constant striving, we practise in communion receiving this world with joy as a gift from God.  In a narcissistic culture of self-fulfilment, we practise in communion joyous self-denial and service.  In a proud culture of self-promotion, we practise in communion humility and generosity.  All these practices are habit forming and so seep into the rest of our lives.

After all this has been said, remember Jesus didn’t say, “Think this in remembrance of me.” The Lord’s Supper serves its purposes not when it’s written about in books but when it’s shared in the Christian community.

Chapter 6 – Meals As Enacted Promise

Salvation is experienced in the body.  Jesus is the firstborn from among the dead, the firstfruits of a great harvest.  And he is embodied.  He eats (Luke 24 verses 42 – 43).  He cooks (John 21 verses 9 – 14).  He says, “Come and have breakfast” (John 21 verse 12).  Luke tells the story of a meal to which Jesus is invited on the first Easter day.  Two disciples are travelling from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus when they encounter Jesus, but we’re told “Their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”

Luke 24 verses 17 – 35

One of our problems is that we know the end of the Emmaus story so well.  We know that Jesus is risen.  So, we find it hard to enter into the disappointment and grief of these disciples.  “We had hoped” they say (Luke 24 verse 21).

Yet many people today are following their own version of the Emmaus road.  They’re walking away from hope.  They’re walking in disappointment.  For many this involves walking away from the much more.

Christ doesn’t begin with a resurrection pronouncement.  He begins with a question “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” (Luke 24 verse 17)  He gives them space to tell their story, to share their pain to speak their disappointment.  Luke captures the drama of it: “And they stood still, looking sad” (verse 17).  They’re walking, but they have to stop before they can begin.

We need to begin our interaction with people with a question much more often than we do.  Only as we enter into their stories, their hopes and their disappointments will our message connect and have meaning.  We mustn’t fear others’ pain or hide our own, for Christ is with us even if we don’t always recognise him.

It's not just individuals who are walking their own version of the Emmaus road.  Our whole world is between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  “We had hoped” our culture says.  Modernity was full of hope, full of visions of progress.  Capitalism, Socialism, Scientific progress.  Liberalism.  All were drive by derivative forms of Christian hope.  All shared a sense that history was an onward march. But postmodernity recognises the dark side of progress.  The endemic poverty.  The pollution of the planet.  The social fragmentation.  It distrusts the grand narratives of progress.  “We had hoped”.

We live in a world in which the biblical story seems out of place.  Christianity seems passe and anachronistic.  We live in a world in which, functionally, God is dead.  We no longer need God to make our way in the world.  We can live without him.  So public discourse takes place without God.  Our culture is on the Emmaus road, heading away from Jerusalem.

In a broken world.  Christ’s resurrection is the promise of a new world.  But we have not yet received resurrection bodies, and our world has not yet been renewed (Romans 8 verses 22 – 25).  It remains under the sign of the cross.  We live in a godless and godforsaken world – a world still under God’s curse.  As Christians we have resurrection life, but we have it so we might live the way of the cross.  We live between the cross and resurrection, between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

For now, Christ is incognito.  He is what the Reformers, following Paul, called “the hidden Christ”.  Paul says “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3 verses 3 – 4).  The return of Christ is more often described in the NT as a manifestation.  The reign of Christ is now hidden.  But one day it will be manifest.  All the earth will see his glory and every knee will now.

For now, though we live as disciples of the cross.  We embrace obscurity, hiddenness, weakness, marginality and smallness.  As we have seen again and again in the meals of Jesus, the last shall be first.  This is God’s way.  His kingdom grows unnoticed by the world.  It’s yeast in dough.  It’s seed that grows unseen.  It’s through the cross that Christ reigns in the world.

So, we walk alongside people on the Emmaus road not as victors, not as people with all the answers, but as fellow human beings, fellow sinners and fellow strugglers.  Otherwise, the rumour of resurrection will always sound incredible or glib.

In Luke 24 verse 18 the disciples imply that Jesus is ignorant.  But when Jesus opens the Bible for them, he begins “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” (verse 25).  They had read the Bible, but they’d misread it.  Their description of Jesus as “a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people” (verse 19) echoes the epitaph of Moses in Deuteronomy 34 verses 10 – 12, which suggests they had hoped Jesus was a new Moses brings a new exodus from Roman rule.  “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel … “ (Luke 24 verse 21).  Jesus’ followers had domesticated God, making him just the God of Israel.  They’d looked for glory and missed the note of suffering.  They’d wanted God’s blessings, but had not reckoned with their sin.  We too can look for success without suffering, for blessing without God, for glory that ignores atonement.

We live at a unique time in history.  Christianity no longer dominates our culture.  We live after Christendom in an increasingly secular culture.  The Bible story seems out of place and archaic.  People have removed Christ from their worldview.

But don’t despair.  This is a moment of opportunity to rediscover authentic apostolic Christianity shaped by the cross.  The glory, power and wisdom of Christ, says Paul in 1 Corinthians 1, are seen in the shame, weakness and foolishness of the cross.  And they’re seen in the cross-centred lives of those who follow Christ.  Our resurrection life is revealed in our conformity to Christ in his death (2 Corinthians 4 verses 10 – 12).  We make God known to a post Christian world by revealing him in cross-centred discipleship.

In a world in which Christ is incognito, how is he known?  The Emmaus story provides 2 interweaving answers.  First, Christ is known through his Word.

In Acts 1 verse 3 Luke says Jesus appeared to his disciples over a 40-day period.  Yet in Luke’s Gospel we get 3 stories that all take place in one day: early morning at the tomb, afternoon on the Emmaus road and evening in Jerusalem.  And all 3 stories follow the same pattern:

People are bewildered, disappointed and fearful (Luke 24 verses 4 – 5, 18, 21 – 22, 37)

·    They are rebuked (Luke 24 verse 5 – 6, 25, 38 – 39)

·    They are taught Christ’s words or the Scriptures (Luke 24 verses 6 – 8, 27, 44 – 45)

·    They are told that the message of God’s word is that the Christ must suffer and die (Luke 24 verses 7, 26 and 46)

The implication is that the disciples shouldn’t have been bewildered, because they should have realised from the words of Jesus and the Scriptures that the Christ had to suffer and die.  The sign of the resurrection at work in people’s lives is this: they understand what the Bible teaches about the cross and want to tell others.

Here in Luke 24 is the Word incarnate, freshly risen from the grave.  Surely he will simply speak, and the world will listen.  But instead, he chooses to conduct a bible study.  If the risen Christ on that first Easter day made himself known through the Word, then we shouldn’t suppose we can make him known in any other way.  No amount of human wisdom or philosophy or contemplation apart from the bible will tell you the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection.  No-one in the aster story has a clue what’s going on until Jesus explains it from the bible.  Only the exposition of the Word will make people’s hearts burn (verse 32)

What was the message of that first Easter day?  Not just the resurrection but the cross.  The point is this: the Easter message is not only that someone has risen.  We had already seen that happen in the rising of Lazarus.  The Easter message is that the Crucified One risen.  “He showed them his hands and his feet” (verse 40).  The One who was made sin has risen.  The One who died our death.  The One who was made sin has risen.  The One who died our death.  The One who stood in our place.  The One who was forsaken by God.  The One who was rejected by the world.  This is the One who has risen!  This is how Jesus makes good on the promise of grace embodied in his meals.

“We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” say the disciples (verse 21).  The implication is clear.  Hope is gone because Jesus has died, and a dead Messiah cannot bring liberation.  But the message of the Scriptures is that the Christ had to suffer and die in order to redeem.  Only a dead Christ can redeem.  Only a Christ who dies in our place can redeem us from the penalty of our sin.  Christ’s followers thought that the cross demonstrated that Jesus couldn’t be the Messiah, but the Scriptures show that the cross proves he is the Messiah.

Jesus “was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Romans 4 verse 24).  “Justification is a legal term, the declaration that someone is in the right.  The resurrection is that declaration.  It declares that the price is paid.  The resurrection was the declaration that the penalty for sin is paid.  At the resurrection Jesus walked free.  And we walked free with him.

Luke calls on Theophilus to believe the promise of a great reversal at the end of history.  The ministry of Jesus is the evidence of this future, especially his meals.  But the cross and resurrection are the ultimate reversal.  The condemned One is vindicated.  The dead One is risen.  The shamed One is glorified.  Here’s the great reversal at the end of history already taking place in the middle of history.  Here’s the sign of what’s coming.

In Luke 16 Jesus tells the story of a beggar called Lazarus who lives at the gate of a rich man.  Upon dying, Lazarus goes to Abraham’s side, while the rich man goes to Hades.  The rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus with water to cool his pain.  When the rich man is refused, he makes a second request.  He asks for Lazarus to be sent to his brothers to warn of God’s judgment.  Abraham replies, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” (verse 31).  God’s word is enough.  Nothing will persuade us if God’s word doesn’t persuade us – not even apparitions of the dead.  In Luke 24 someone has come back from the dead – just as the rich man requested.  But what he does is proclaim the word of God.

In Emmaus Jesus makes himself known at the moment in the story at which he disappears. “Their eyes were opened, and they recognised him.  And he vanished from their sight.” (verse 31)  Jesus disappears but his word remains.  This is Luke’s message to us.  How do we make Christ known?   Through the bible.  It may not sound trendy, but it’s God’s way, God rules through his word and he extends that rule through his word.

Luke 10 verses 38 – 42  This is a story of conflict between 2 sisters.  Nothing surprising about that – siblings have been fighting since Cain and Abel.  We think we know who’s in the right and who’s in the wrong.  Martha is serving.  Mary’s doing nothing.  Our sympathies are with Martha.  She’s been left with all the work.  The surprising thing is this: Jesus sides with Mary.  Martha’s question in the original Greek is phrased in a way that shows she expects a positive answer.  In English we might phrase it something like “It’s not fair that I have to do all the work, is it?”  How could anyone disagree?  But Jesus rebukes Martha.

Martha is attending to herself as a hostess rather than attending Jesus her guest.  Luke says, “Martha was distracted with much serving” (verse 40)  Distracted from what?  The contrast is with Mary, “who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching” (verse 39),  Martha is distracted from Jesus.  Some of us have to learn that our guests matter more than our hospitality.  As we saw earlier our aim is to serve, not impress.

But it’s not simply the presence of Jesus to which Mary pays attention. The challenge of this story is to be attentive to God’s word.  Jesus says to Martha “You are anxious and troubled about many things” (verse 41).  The word “anxious” is the same word Luke uses in the story of the sower “As for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares (anxieties) and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature” (Luke 8 verse 14).  Martha is distracted from hearing the word of God by anxieties.

Martha is not an enemy of the word.  She’s not “ashamed of Jesus and of his words” (Luke 9 verse 26).  Like many people in churches today, she has not rejected Jesus’ words.  But she’s distracted.  We’re distracted by our careers, homes, holidays, gadgets, image and investments.  Jesus says that one thing is necessary: to sit at his feet and listen to his word.

This story doesn’t promote a spirituality of disengagement or a contemplative life.  It offers a word of invitation.  It reorients us to the word that promises a future banquet.  This promise liberates us from the worries of this world so that we can put first God’s kingdom.  Sustained by the words of Jesus, we’re set free to care for those we meet on the road whom others pass by, like the Samaritan in the preceding story, despite the risks and the costs (Luke 10 verse 30 – 35).

Luke 24 verses 30 – 31, 35

There are resonances here of the feeding of the 5000.  Both take place as the day is wearing away (Luke 9 verse 12; 24 verse 29).  Both are preceded by other suggestions about the identity of Jesus, including that he might be a new Moses.  Both involve the same sequence of Jesus taking bread, blessing it, breaking it and giving it.  The meal for the 5000 was the means in Luke’s story by which Jesus becomes known as the Messiah.  Now the meal at Emmaus is the means by which Jesus becomes known as the suffering Messiah.  Jesus is known at the breaking of bread, at the meal table, sharing food with friends and enemies.  Christ is known in community.

We’re not saying we can separate Christ known around the table from Christ known through his word.  We’re not talking about some kind of mystical knowledge but rather the word embodied in a meal.  The 2 disciples on the road to Emmaus immediately connect the word and the meal.  Their eyes were opened around the table because the scriptures were opened to them on the road (Luke 24 verses 31 and 32).  Nevertheless, their testimony is that “he was known to them in the breaking of the bread” (verse 35).

“We had hoped” the disciples say, “that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24 verse 21). They had a political hope for power, influence and glory.  But Christ is known at the margins of the world.  The resurrection is revealed first to women, whose testimony is treated with suspicion.  The future of Christianity lies not in return to the dominance of Christendom, but in small intimate communities of light.  Often they’re unseen by history.  But they’re what transform neighbourhoods and cities.

An encounter with Christ is a call to action, to involvement, to participation.  You can’t remain a passive observer.  For the 2 disciples, meeting the risen Christ results in a radical change of plan: they literally retrace their steps by returning to the city.  Think of how significant that is.  They do what they’d urged Christ not to – they take the road at night with all its attendance dangers (Luke 24 verse 29).  But more than that, in the morning they had been followers of an executed traitor, fleeing arrest.  In the evening they return to the city.  They return to a mission filled with threats and dangers (Luke 22 verses 35 – 38), one that will take them to all nations (Luke 24 verse 47).  But they return, because now everything has changed.

There’s an important sense in which the messages of secularism and the cross are the same.  God is dead and the world is without God.  The difference is that this is where the message of secularism ends, but it’s where the message of the cross begins.  The scientific revolution, the Enlightenment and modernity all lead to this terrible conclusion: God is dead, and we live in the world without him.

But this is where the message of the cross begins.  God has died and the world was without God.  But on the third day he rose again.  Forsaken by God, Christ took upon himself the curse of humanity to redeem the world.  Now risen as Lord, he lays claim to all of life.  The reason we’re sent out in mission is that all authority has been given to the Son.  The world was without God, but now it’s claimed in Christ’s name.

What are the Christian community’s meals for?  They achieve many things.  They express so much of God’s grace.  They provide a glimpse of what it’s like to live under God’s reign.  They express and reinforce the community that Christ has created through the cross.  They’re a foretaste of the new creation.  They’re a great context in which to invite unbelievers so they encounter the reality of God among us.  But they’re not “for” any of these things.  It’s a trick question.

Everything else – creation, redemption, mission – is “for” this: that we might eat together in the presence of God.  God created the world so we might eat with him.  The food we consume, the table around which we sit, and the companions gathered with us have as their end our communion with one another and with God.  The Israelites were redeemed to eat with God on the mountain and we’re redeemed for the great messianic banquet that we anticipate when we eat together as a Christian community.  We proclaim Christ in mission so that others might hear the invitation to join the feast.

Creation, redemption and mission all exist to that this meal can take place.