Changing the Way We Think About Why We Share Our Bread

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part VIII of our series on Sharing Your Bread

We noted in our last post why feasting is so important to Jesus.  In short, the feast represents all that humans need: reconciliation, provision, belonging, and fellowship with God and humanity.

But there’s more.

Jesus pays so much attention to food and drink that John Koenig says, “The kingdom of God is like a movable feast, a roving banquet hall that seeks the people of Israel as guests and hosts.” (Koenig, p. 44).

It’s a movable feast. But, as the parable from Matthew 22:1-14 indicates, even though the feast traveled to the guests, most of the guests who everyone suspected would come, chose not to.

According to the parable, why did the invited guests not come? Think deeply about this and look closely at what the parable gives as the reasons.

    • For those who declined not to come, with whom did they want to have fellowship?
    • How did the king respond?
    • How does this correspond to what Jesus experienced with his own banquets?

As you think about that, read this great quote from John Koenig:

“Over 150 years ago Alexis de Tocqueville observed a tendency in the United States toward an individualism ‘which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and to withdraw into the circle of family and friends’” (John Koenig, New Testament Hospitality, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985, p. ix).

It turns out that this phenomenon of wanting to isolate ourselves and hang out only with the people we like isn’t just an American phenomenon. It’s a human phenomenon!

In our fallen nature we turn inward and focus only on caring for ourselves and those like us. Fellowshipping with Jesus—and with others in Jesus’ name—means turning outward toward those who are not like us. And that is an invitation that most people throughout history choose to reject.

Think about Jesus’ own disciples, with whom he ate every day. What kind of people were in that group? Fishermen, tax collectors, women, a zealot, a traitor. Luke, the author of the book of Acts, calls them “uneducated, common men” (Acts 4:13).

And it’s true: The one group that does tend to accept Jesus’ invitation are the outcasts—the poor, the sinners who have no illusions about self-respect, those who have lost everything, those who have tasted the world’s promises and found them to be only empty and destructive.

Koenig puts it like this: “Jesus’ community offered a welcoming place where they could feel honored as children of God apart from the niches they had fallen into at birth or carved out for themselves over the years” (Koenig, p. 29).

So let’s summarize what we’ve learned so far:

    • The primary way Jesus shared the invitation to discipleship wasn’t by inviting them to church but by inviting them to a feast.
    • He didn’t just use the meal to talk about going to church with him. Feasting with him was the way a person followed him, because when one feasts one practices all the behaviors that will be necessary for citizenship in the new heavens and the new earth.
    • Most people who are invited to a feast will reject the invitation.
    • Thus, the invitation must be extended to those who no one would have ever thought to invite in the first place.

So who are we in the parable of the wedding feast? We are the servants. Let’s go back and re-read the parable and see what the servants are asked to do and what they experience. And then let’s ask ourselves:

    • As we’re sharing with people about Christ, are we inviting people to a church service or to a feast?
    • When those we invite from our spheres of influence choose not to come, what are we commanded to do?
    • Who is the guest without wedding clothes?

Jesus’ focus on feasting should change the way we think about why we share our bread.

The problem with homelessness, for example, is not hunger but exclusion from God’s feast—a feast that most of the world rejects. Peter Leithart says,

“At the Lord’s table, we eat bread and drink wine together. And this is way things ought to be: the ideal world is not a world of atomized individuals but an irreducibly social reality. Biological need can be satisfied in isolation; we can eat in the car, at a desk, in front of a computer screen, but a feast is a social event” ( p. 172)

So as Christians we never share our bread simply to alleviate physical hunger. We share our bread to extend the invitation to the kingdom of God where “all these things”—food, shelter, family, eternal fellowship with God and his children, and the forgiveness of Christ—are added in.

The food is the pretext and provision for fellowship with God and his people.

How should this affect meal time for Christians?  What will you do different as a result?

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Why is Feasting So Important to Jesus?

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part VII of our series on Sharing Your Bread

We concluded our last post by noting the three important themes that come up in the parable of the wedding feast.

Today, we want to take a look at the parable itself and explore why the picture of a feast is so important to Jesus.  Here’s Jesus in Matthew 22:1-14, shortly after his final entry into Jerusalem:

1 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

4 “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’

5 “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

13 “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

This parable is about a wedding feast. But for Jesus, the wedding feast isn’t intended to symbolize a church service. Instead, the church service is supposed to symbolize a wedding feast!

The Scriptures don’t show a single time when Jesus is inviting someone to go to the synagogue (the Jewish “church meeting” of his day) with him. But the Scriptures do show that the most common invitation Jesus offers to people is to share bread with him. God loves to fellowship with his creation around the dinner table!

Peter Leithart from New St. Andrews College says,

“Especially in Jesus’ teaching, the renewed and fulfilled creation that is the kingdom of God takes the specific form of a feast. Jesus used the image of the feast more than any other to describe the reality of his kingdom” (Peter J. Leithart, Blessed are the Hungry, Moscow, ID: Canonpress, 2000, p. 162).

Why is feasting so important to Jesus? 

As Leithart explains, the book of Revelation shows that,

“In short, this is the way the world ends: with neither bang nor whimper but with the laughter of the wedding feast” (Leithart, p. 163).

Why a feast? Well, think what happens there:

    • People who don’t get along with each other have to reconcile. Have you ever tried to eat with someone that you don’t get along with? Either you won’t be able to eat together or you will begin to overcome your differences.
    • People find a “true home” (Koenig, p. 43)—somewhere where they belong, fit in, have friends. Have you ever had to eat alone, like at school or in an airport restaurant? What would it have been like to have been called over to someone else’s table?
    • People who have nothing become full through a sumptuous meal—one of the best they’ve ever had—all provided for by the host.
    • People come to know God as a table companion and other humans as God’s guests, fellowshipping in his name and for his purpose.

Reconciliation. Belonging. Provision. Fellowship with God and humanity. What else does the human being need? What could give a better “taste” of the new heavens and the new earth than a feast like the ones that Jesus provided?

Now, here’s what I want to challenge you with today.  Identify one “feast” in Scripture (other than this one!). Identify who is invited, who attends, and what happens there. Then comment on this blog by answering this question:

What does God want us to know about himself through this feast?

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Three Important Themes in the Parable of the Wedding Feast

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Part VI of our series on Sharing Your Bread

An astonishing amount of the Bible is devoted to the stories of people who reject the call of God. And now that we’re becoming disciples who extend the invitation of Christ to others, it’s important for us to re-read the Scripture through the lens of the God who says (in Romans 10:21), “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.”

The Scripture is the record of God holding out his hands to a disobedient and obstinate people known as the human race.

One of the central themes of the Scripture is that the people who need God, the people who should recognize him, the people to whom he has done nothing but good reject him, ignore him, and ultimately—in the case of Christ—side with the powers of darkness that oppress them in order to crucify him.

    • 2 Chronicles 24:19 (NKJV) says, “He sent prophets to them, to bring them back to the LORD; and they testified against them, but they would not listen.”
    • Isaiah 30:10 (NIV) says, “They say to the seers, ‘See no more visions!’ and to the prophets, ‘Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions.'”
    • John 1:10-11 (NIV) says, “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”

Sometimes it’s so painful that all you can do is laugh.

You have these friends who are always sad and struggling and talking about how bad their life is. And then you invite them to join you in receiving the word of life and they come up with the silliest excuses. The meeting time is too early. Then, it’s too late. The gathering is too formal. Then, it’s too loose. They’re too busy to come to the gathering, but they’re never too busy to moan for hours about how much they’re struggling.

Jesus understood that all too well. In Matthew 17:19, he summarizes his generation this way:

17 “‘We played the pipe for you, 
and you did not dance; 
we sang a dirge, 
and you did not mourn.’

18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ 19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’”

If that were the end of the story, it would be a rather discouraging one, indeed. But fortunately there’s another theme that runs all the way through the Scripture. The Apostle Paul describes it this way in Romans 10:19-20:

“I will make you envious by those who are not a nation;
I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding.”[j]

20 … “I was found by those who did not seek me;
I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me.”

Never forget that the reason you’re here in the first place is because the people who should have believed, rejected the invitation of Christ.

But the Apostle Paul warns us in Romans 11 that that fact should make us humble, not proud:

17 If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, 18 do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. 19 You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” 20 Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.

22 Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. 23 And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. 24 After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!

And this is what the story we’ll be learning about in next week’s blog posts is all about. It weaves together all three of those themes that we just mentioned:

    • God reaches out to the people who should respond to him, and they don’t; so
    • God reaches the people who no one thinks will respond to him, and they do; but
    • their response should lead to gratitude and humility, not pride.

The story is called the Parable of the Wedding Feast, and Jesus tells it to the chief priests and the Pharisees – those who should have responded to his invitation to feast –  but didn’t.

In what ways are you like those who mumble and groan about their circumstances but don’t accept help when it comes? Are you not responding to God in an area you should be?

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