Jesus' Table...

Have you ever thought about Jesus’ first public expression of who He was to the people of Israel? Me being a ‘why’ person and all...chuckle:

Why a wedding?
Why that miracle?
Why the vagueness of purpose?

It is fascinating that the introduction of the Good News would begin to unfold at a wedding. Tracer is a photographer...and her life is weddings. And there is one thing that has struck me as I have looked through the hundreds of pictures she has taken.


A wedding is a microcosm of a life. It paints us a picture of life as it was, is and could be. Even today, amidst the dismal divorce and disaster rate, it is a clear expression of the hope of what is and could be! It is an expression of Love. Life. Community. Family. Faith, or lack of it.
A wedding has all the pieces of life. The misfits. The beautiful. The dysfunction. The joy of love. The old and young. The newly wed and maybe the nearly dead.

It’s here, in a celebration of one of the our basic human rituals that Jesus begins to reveal Himself. As if to say, ‘this is what I'm all about: All of life...every speck of it. This is where I want you to live life...and give life.’

This passion that Jesus had for feasting, for celebrating, for welcoming the unwelcomed, for being thrusting himself into the middle of the reality of our humanness weaves its way throughout the gospels. It is in these very settings that Jesus' followers would learn that missional may not be some arduous journey to a far off foreign land...that perhaps the longest journey maybe just sitting across the table of a stranger or a neighbour; the sick or those how seemingly have no need; the poor, and the oppressed or our families.

Whom you eat with defines whom you won't eat with. With Jesus it never appears to be a ‘social’ program...it is radical, scandalous, outrageous...it's the Kingdom. It is the servant returning to his master's table with unopened invitations and list of excuses, and the master sending him out again. This time the servant heads to back alleys filled with syringes, skid row hotels, park benches, under bridges...any where, so his masters table will be filled to overflowing. All are welcomed and all are invited. Here at this open table, we discover the world upside down...where suddenly the host is the guest, and the guest the host. Where the host is blessed more than the guest. Jesus entered into the other's world, and let them invite his followers as their house guests. In that way grace, life, healing, restoration could be poured back and forth. Wow. Does my heart ring with that.

Another story of outrageous food and faith is the feeding of the 5000. This table is not constructed of wood and four legs...it is ‘He’ standing on a hillside with 5 small barley loaves, and 2 fish, raising arms giving thanks and blessing. Two miracles here, one that 5000 people were fed...and the second, that 5000 people shared this table. There is the outrageous reality that in faith, that we often find surplus when we welcome those from outside our boundaries and borders to share what is ours.

These stories could be the reality of what this ‘missional’ conversation is really all about. It is sacramental living. Not as a ritual, but as the redemptive imagination that is spiritual truth. It is sad, in a sense, that we have ritualized the bread and wine. This ritual of who's in and who's not...who's welcome and who's not. I wonder if Jesus imagined it to be that. Jesus’ table, the meals of bread and fish always reflected the Kingdom...surplus, and food that fed the poor. Jesus’ table always reflected the truth of the Kingdom, the truth of what missional should be about...redemption, restoration, justice, community...the reordering of a new creation.

And how can we forget the table stories after Jesus' resurrection. Jesus cooking fish on a charcoal fire on the beach. The ultimate picture of failure in the disciples having gone back to their old jobs fishing on the lake and being plumb out of luck. Jesus calls out from the shore, telling them to drop their nets on the other side of the boat. They haul in an incredible draft of fish. Peter seeing his friend/messiah, wades through the water to shore. On the beach Jesus invites, welcomes, and cooks fish for his friends on an open fire. He turns to Peter and says, ‘feed....’ And I'm not talking just feeding food, a meal in the soup kitchen, I'm talking about feeding them the incarnational reality of the life of Jesus. In other words go and invite and celebrate.

To live in the neighbourhood of Jesus...is to live and believe that all the world is welcome...to go and to come. If the world is welcome to Jesus, if my neighbour is welcome to Jesus, then every living moment is a door of hope into which ‘other’s’ are welcome.

I love this quote that I heard from Ed Stetzer a couple of years ago, ‘it's possible to be a missionary without ever leaving your zip code.’ Missional is being dispersed in the midst of humanity. Jesus’ mission started with leading of the Holy Spirit. He sends us into the world under the leading of the same Spirit. To bear witness, to build, to expand His Kingdom ...to redeem, restore, to feed, and to heal.

re-positioned

The gospel spreads best not through force but through fascination. Jesus doesn't insist on who he is or isn't. When people asked Jesus, ‘Are you the Messiah?’ he would answer by asking. ‘Tell me what you see, what you hear.’

I can’t remember where I read that...but it has been percolating for a while....

Jesus never answered a whole lot of questions in the gospels. Jesus was asked 183 direct questions in the New Testament.

Do you know how many he directly answered? 3.

What a frustrating insight to ‘we’ who have grown up assuming that the very job description of a ‘Christian’ is to give people answers and to resolve peoples' dilemmas. Apparently this is not Jesus' understanding of the function of a ‘follower’.

I think Jesus' parables were designed to be re-positioners. As he illustrates, and probes, and articulates...He corners us and makes us own our unconscious biases, breaks us out of our dualistic mindsets, challenges our image of who we are, who He is in God and who the world is, ..and all the while He presents new creative possibilities.

I think, as I sift through the life of Jesus...even Jesus doesn’t usually wait for or expect specific answers.

His reality is an awakening of redemptive imagination.
His heart is relationship.
He fascinates us with the beauty and reality of the Kingdom; a reality that is captured by infinite hope and new possibilities.

For me, the parables of Jesus are a microcosm of His passion interacting with the truth of who we are. They reveal Jesus’ priorities in ‘evangelizing’. I think a better way to describe these ‘interactions’ would be conversations of fascination.

Jesus’ conversations were filled with purpose. It seems He constantly asks questions.
Good questions.
Unnerving questions.
Re-aligning questions.
Transforming questions.

He leads us into a liminal reality; a space that has the potential for deep transformation.
He leaves us betwixt and between, where God and grace can get at us, and where we are not at all in control.

Have we shaped Jesus into simply a systematic theologian who walked around teaching dogmas...and in the process lost some of the essence of the journey of the Great Pilgrim?
Have we forgotten that He is the engaging transformer of the soul? That it is His divine imagination excites and produces the flame of passion?

Could it be that the conundrum of the church began when we started looking for easy answers...instead of asking hard questions?

How many of us are laying in the ditch beside the tracks because we have pursued others in order to save them...rather than submitting to the journey of brokenness that allows Him to change us and in the process redeem the world?