Here’s
another Blog from John Frye at the Shepherd’s Nook.
This guy is just too good!
Read how Jesus used hanging out around food to be the place where
heaven and earth meet. Jeff
Jesus
said, “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you
say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend
of tax collectors and “sinners’.” Jesus is contrasting his kingdom
of God method with his cousin’s, John the Baptist’s way. We
evangelicals do so wish that Jesus had said, “The Son of Man came
expository preaching Isaiah
53 and Psalm
22 and correcting
the doctrinal errors of the Pharisees and Sadducees, and all the other
factions in Israel.” That’s the USAmerican evangelical approach to
social change. “Preach the Word!” It really is too bad that our
Supreme Example didn’t use the “biblical” method of preaching.
Daily
meals became Jesus’ dangerous method. He welcomed marginalized people
to eat with him. They gladly did so at the cafe table set in The Kingdom
of God. They laughed and swapped stories and had a rousing good time.
Jesus’ disciples had numerous side conversations with the
cultural-culinary-religious police about “Why does your master welcome
and eat with these kind of people?” Talk about meal-time
excitement!
Whoever
thought that bread could be a weapon for change?
Imagine with me. Jesus with squinting eyes stares down an upstart
Pharisee and in a Clint Eastwood-like, raspy voice says, “Listen. This
here is a Zebulun 6″
diameter loaf of fresh-baked, crusted-topped,
four grain but mostly wheat bread. I don’t know how many bites are
left. Are you feeling lucky, Punkisee?”
Whoever
thought an ordinary table of people could be the place
where heaven and earth meet? Whoever thought that eating together with
the most unsavory of friends would challenge and reshape a nation’s
vision of holiness? I marvel at the Jesus Way:
creating a national storm with bread, fish and wine, not with swords,
F-16’s and bunker-busters.
“As
oft’ as you quote this verse and preach this Bible text and argue
vehemently for the substitutionary penal atonement view and hold to a
skewed Reformed view of justification by faith alone, you proclaim the
Lord’s death until he comes.” Isn’t that what Paul wrote? How does
that verse go again? We have changed from the Jesus Way.
People
at the margins might not be able to follow our fine, finessed,
exegetically precise, “inner logic” trails to getting right with
God, but they sure do know how to eat. And they did and will eat with
Jesus when he invites them. It was the spiffy, spotless, religious
know-it-alls who were “too good” to mix with the dusty riff-raff.
“Why do you eat food with unclean hands? Why do you eat food with
homosexuals, terrorists, racy women and social rejects? God just would
not eat with people like that.” Yet, Jesus of Nazareth, gritty as he
was, was and is and will forever be God-in-human-form.
Here’s
the clincher. Some of you will have to bite your tongue. There’s no
record that they had “to repent” before they came to eat at Jesus’
table. The fact that they came–tax-collectors, prostitutes,
lame, blind, diseased–and ate and enjoyed Jesus’ welcome was
repentance enough. I didn’t say that they didn’t ever change. I said
there’s no evidence that they had to change before they
came to the table. There’s a word that is really loved and lived by
those at the margins. It’s the word grace. Grace. Embracing
Grace.
For more:
follow on Twitter @jefflampl
Superb vision and reminder. Needs to be hung on the wall for daily self-calibration.
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