Pharisees Today

The religious elite had created a sys- tem 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 cleansing. You can’t be ritually clean in a slum. This was bourgeois spirituality. We can do this too. Our expectations of clothing, behavior, literacy, and punctuality can exclude the poor. These verses also speak to a professionalized 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. Think how this might play out today. 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. I’m not defending dysfunctional families, drunkenness, and so on. But we can’t condemn these things at a distance. That’s legalism. We must come alongside, proclaiming and demonstrating the transforming grace of God.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table, p. 22

Everyone, Christian or Non-Christian, is Trying to Find 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 men, a beautiful home, a liberated homeland, a secure future, the worship of women, a great body, wealth and prosperity, the acceptance of friends, a happy family, a dream vacation. 

Think about the people you know. Think about yourself. 

1. How do they define salvation? How will they know they’ve
arrived? “I’ll be happy, fulfilled, accepted if . . .”  

2. What must they do to be saved? What law or rules must they follow? “To achieve this I’ve got to...”  

3. How do they view people who don’t measure up to this law?
“People who don’t fit in are...” 

4. What happens when they don’t measure up? “When I don’t
achieve, then...” 

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. 

Every version of salvation involves a principle, a rule, a law. If your idea of salvation is to have friends accept you, then your first commandment will be: “Thou shalt not be uncool.” And uncool people must be avoided at all costs. If your idea of salvation is a beautiful home, then your prophet will be Martha Stewart. Your rule will be antique pine, tiled floors, and distressed paint. Or maybe clean lines, white walls, and no clutter. Your first commandment will be: “Thou shalt not be untidy.” 

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. They’re not salvation!
And self-salvation doesn’t work because we can’t measure up. If you want to be admired by blokes, but you’re not blokey enough, then you’re condemned. Even on a good day you’ll worry what others think of you. If you want security and prosperity, and you lose your job, then you’re condemned. Even when you have a job, you’ll be anxious, over-busy, and unable to say no. “We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ ...” (Gal. 2:16). 

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.”

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table (Re:Lit), 27, 28

Difficult People Expose Our Own Hearts

 

[36] One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. [37] And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, [38] and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. [39] Now 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 7:36-39 ESV)

Simon’s attitude to this woman exposes his heart. It’s always like that. Problem people, difficult people, different people have a habit of exposing our hearts. Behavior always comes from the desires of the heart—Jesus says as much in the previous chapter (Luke 6:43–45). When a fellow ministry leader and I faced a difficult situation, he said, “What I find most disappointing is what it has revealed about my own heart. It’s shown me again that I still need people’s approval, because I fear them more than I fear God.” When someone is difficult, disappointing, or disrespectful, your reaction reveals your own heart. If you react with anger or bitterness, then your “need” for control or respect or success is exposed. If you’re trusting God’s sovereignty rather than your own abilities, and if you’re concerned for God’s glory rather than your own reputation, then it will be a different story. When you discover that someone in your church has fallen into sin, your own heart will be exposed. You may discover grace in your heart from God. But you may also discover pride and self-righteousness.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table (Re:Lit), p.45

They Are Selling Us Hospitality

In his book, Bowling Alone, Robert Putman reveals that there’s been a 33 percent decrease in families eating together over the last three decades.  And more than half of those families are watching television as they eat together. Over the same period there’s been a 45 percent decline in entertaining friends. Growing up I would ask each Sunday, “Who’s coming for dinner today?” Not whether but who, because I knew my parents always would have invited someone. “In the typical American household, the average number of dinners eaten together is three per week, with the average length of dinner being 20 minutes.”  Many homes no longer even have a dining room. We protect ourselves from outsiders, but our security systems and garden gates are our prisons, cutting us off from community. Instead we get our community vicariously through soap operas. Friends is a television program or a Facebook number, not people with whom we eat and laugh and cry. 

Instead we’ve commercialized hospitality. In his history of Starbucks, Taylor Clark argues that the secret of Starbucks’s success is not in its coffee, but “the pull of the coffeehouse as a place.” When sociologist Roy Oldenburg coined the term “third place” to describe a neutral gathering spot that’s neither home or work, “the company,” Clark writes, “now had its philanthropic rallying cry: it wasn’t a coffee company, but a third place bringing people together through the social glue of coffee.” Starbucks’s research showed that people wanted “a cozy social atmosphere above all else. . . . For those seeking a refuge from the world, the cup of coffee they bought was really just the price of admission to partake of the coffeehouse scene.” Starbucks is selling us hospitality.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table, 46, 47

No Time For Mission? Got Time to Eat?

People often complain that they lack time for mission. But we all have to eat. Three meals a day, seven days a week. That’s twenty- one opportunities for mission and community without adding any- thing to your schedule. You could meet up with another Christian for breakfast on the way to work—read the Bible together, offer accountability, pray for one another. You could meet up with colleagues at lunchtime. Put down this book and chat to the person across the table from you in the cafeteria. You could invite your neighbors over for a meal. Better still, invite them over with another family from church. That way you get to do mission and community at the same time; plus your unbelieving neighbors will get to see the way the gospel impacts our relationships as Christians ( John 13:34–35; 17:20–21). You could invite someone who lives alone to share your family meal and follow it with board games, giving your children an opportunity to serve others through their welcome. 

Francis Schaeffer says: 

Don’t start with a big program. Don’t suddenly think you can add to your church budget and begin. Start personally and start in your home. I dare you. I dare you in the name of Jesus Christ. Do what I am going to suggest. Begin by opening your home for community. . . . You don’t need a big program. You don’t have to convince your session or board. All you have to do is open your home and begin. And there is no place in God’s world where there are no people who will come and share a home as long as it is a real home.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus, p. 92

Mission as Hospitality

Meals bring mission into the ordinary. But that’s where most people are—living in the ordinary. That’s where we need to go to reach them. We too readily think of mission as extraordinary. Perhaps that’s because we find it awkward to talk about Jesus outside a church gathering. Perhaps it’s because we think God moves through the spectacular rather than the witness of people like us. Perhaps it’s because we want to outsource mission to the professionals, so we invite people to guest services where an “expert” can do mission for us. But most people live in the ordinary, and most people will be reached by ordinary people. Even those who attend a special event will, for the most part, have first been befriended by a Christian. “For those looking to connect with people in the local community it isn’t that hard if you really want to. Just invite people round, let them know they can go home if they need to and then enjoy a meal together. You’re going to eat anyway, so why not do it with others!”  

Jesus’s command to invite the poor for dinner violates our notions of distance and detachment. Mission as hospitality undermines the professionalization of ministry. Mission isn’t something I can clock out from at the end of the day. The hospitality to which Jesus calls us can’t be institutionalized in programs and projects. Jesus challenges us to take mission home. It may be a surprise, given my emphasis on meals, but I loathe church lunches—those potluck suppers in draughty church halls. They’re institutionalized hospitality. Don’t start a hospitality ministry in your church: open your home.  

Much is said of engaging with culture—much that’s right and helpful. But we must never let engaging culture eclipse engaging with people. People are infinitely variable and rarely susceptible to our sociological categories. If you want to understand a person’s worldview, don’t read a book. Talk to them, hang out with them, eat with them.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus, p. 91  (my emphasis)

Missional, Meals, and Mario

Remember, too, that we’re witnesses to grace, not to good works and certainly not to good catering. Jim Petersen tells the story of his friend Mario, with whom he had studied the Bible for four years before Mario became a Christian. The Bible studies reflected the fact that Mario was a Marxist intellectual who’d read all the leading Western philosophers. A couple of years after his conversion, Jim and Mario were reminiscing: “Do you know what it really was that made me decide to become a Christian?” Mario asked. Petersen thought of all their Bible studies and philosophical discussions. Mario’s reply took him by surprise. “Remember that first time I stopped by your house? We were on our way someplace together, and I had a bowl of soup with you and your family. As I sat there observing you, your wife, and your children, and how you related to each other, I asked myself, ‘When will I have a relationship like this with my fiancée?’ When I realized that the answer was ‘never,’ I concluded I had to become a Christian for the sake of my own survival.” Petersen did remember the occasion. He remembered his children behaving badly and his frustration at having to correct them in front of Mario. Yet Mario saw the grace of Christ binding that family together.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus, p. 95

Apologetic Sound Bites: ‘How can you claim there’s only one true religion?’

Tim Chester:

"How can you claim there’s only one true religion?’ You may be asked this question as you’re at the photocopier at work or at the bar buying a round. Here’s the second part in the apologetics series that will give you some ideas of how to respond when you only have five minutes. 

1. People often liken religions to blind men encountering an elephant. The first blind man feels the stomach of the elephant and concludes it is a wall. The second feels the trunk and concludes it is a snake. The rest conclude it is a spear, tree, fan and rope, depending upon where they touch. The story purports to prove that all religions reflect the truth, but none grasps the whole truth. If people tell this story, ask them: ‘How do you know it’s an elephant?’ In other words, the story assumes the teller is as enlightened, objective observer. 

2. People may say: ‘If you were born in Iran, you’d be a Muslim not a Christian.’ But the same goes for the pluralist. ‘If you’d been born in Iran, you wouldn’t be a pluralist.’ In other words, your belief that all religions are equal (or misguided) is as culturally and social conditioned as my belief in Jesus (more so since going to church is now a minority activity in our society).  

3. Jesus claimed he was the only way to God (John 14:6). If all religious roads lead to God then Jesus was a liar and Christianity is false. In which case, not all religions lead to God. 

4. People sometimes ask if you fully investigated all religions before deciding to follow Christ. Two responses: (1) You don’t need comprehensive knowledge before you can be confident something is true. You don’t read every newspaper and interview multiple eye-witnesses before believing a sports result. (2) I didn’t decide Christianity was the best religion; Jesus laid claim to my life. 

5. Ask people to define religion. Jesus is not another religious figure, but the end or opposite of all religion. Religion is about an upwards movement of humanity towards God. Jesus represents of downward movement of God towards humanity. 

6. Because Jesus is God’s initiative towards humanity, the message of Jesus is a message of grace. It is not dependant on human achievement, but upon God’s gracious and completed work. So Jesus alone gives assurance of salvation. 

This material is adapted from a Porterbrook Learning module.

Some great books by Tim Chester that I would recommend:

• You Can Change
• A Meal with Jesus
• Total Church
• Close the Window 

Did Your Easter Service Fuel Mission at Your Church?

It certainly did for the early church.  Notice the connection between the event of Easter, the witness, and the proclamation of the Gospel in the sermons in the book of Acts.

[22] “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—[23] this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. [24] God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. (Acts 2:22-23; Acts 2:24 ESV)

[32] This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. [33] Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. (Acts 2:32-33 ESV)

[12] And when Peter saw it he addressed the people: “Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk? [13] The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. [14] But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, [15] and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. (Acts 3:12-14; Acts 3:15 ESV)

[10] let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. (Acts 4:10 ESV)

[28] saying, “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man's blood upon us.” [29] But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men. [30] The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. [31] God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. [32] And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.” (Acts 5:28-29; Acts 5:30-32 ESV)

[28] And though they found in him no guilt worthy of death, they asked Pilate to have him executed. [29] And when they had carried out all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. [30] But God raised him from the dead, [31] and for many days he appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people. [32] And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, [33] this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, (Acts 13:28-33 ESV)

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis write in their book Total Church:

The early church understood mission very well. Vinoth Ramachandra, the IFES Secretary for Dialogue and Social Engagement in Asia, says, “Missionary outreach, both to Jews and to pagans, was not an activity tagged on later to a faith that was basically ‘about’ something else; rather it flowed from the very logic of the death and resurrection of Jesus.”

Porn-Free Church

Tim Chester:

I’ve contributed a chapter to a new free ebook called Porn-Free Church: Raising Up Gospel Communities to Destroy Secret Sins which is produced by Covenant Eyes. Here’s the blurb:

Pornography is prevalent everywhere today. In fact, one in eight online searches is for pornography. Because pornography thrives in secrecy, many members of your congregation may be trapped in a cycle of sin and shame, thinking that they’re the only ones facing the temptation.

Download our free e-book, Porn-Free Church: Raising up gospel communities to destroy secret sins, to find out how you can help your congregation find freedom from porn in the Gospel. You’ll learn:

• How pornography is harming our churches.
• How to talk about pornography to people in your church.
• What the Bible says about accountability.
• How to counsel men struggling with pornography.
• How to move past large events and pancake breakfasts to create a culture of accountability in your church

To download the book for free visit: http://www.covenanteyes.com/porn-free-church/

For more on living porn free see my book on porn which is available in the UK under the title Captured by a Better Vision from amazon.co.uk and which is available in the US under the title Closing the Window from amazon.com

Apologetic Sound Bites: ‘How can you claim there’s only one true religion?’

Tim Chester:

"How can you claim there’s only one true religion?’ You may be asked this question as you’re at the photocopier at work or at the bar buying a round. Here’s the second part in the apologetics series that will give you some ideas of how to respond when you only have five minutes.

1. People often liken religions to blind men encountering an elephant. The first blind man feels the stomach of the elephant and concludes it is a wall. The second feels the trunk and concludes it is a snake. The rest conclude it is a spear, tree, fan and rope, depending upon where they touch. The story purports to prove that all religions reflect the truth, but none grasps the whole truth. If people tell this story, ask them: ‘How do you know it’s an elephant?’ In other words, the story assumes the teller is as enlightened, objective observer.

2. People may say: ‘If you were born in Iran, you’d be a Muslim not a Christian.’ But the same goes for the pluralist. ‘If you’d been born in Iran, you wouldn’t be a pluralist.’ In other words, your belief that all religions are equal (or misguided) is as culturally and social conditioned as my belief in Jesus (more so since going to church is now a minority activity in our society).

3. Jesus claimed he was the only way to God (John 14:6). If all religious roads lead to God then Jesus was a liar and Christianity is false. In which case, not all religions lead to God.

4. People sometimes ask if you fully investigated all religions before deciding to follow Christ. Two responses: (1) You don’t need comprehensive knowledge before you can be confident something is true. You don’t read every newspaper and interview multiple eye-witnesses before believing a sports result. (2) I didn’t decide Christianity was the best religion; Jesus laid claim to my life.

5. Ask people to define religion. Jesus is not another religious figure, but the end or opposite of all religion. Religion is about an upwards movement of humanity towards God. Jesus represents of downward movement of God towards humanity.

6. Because Jesus is God’s initiative towards humanity, the message of Jesus is a message of grace. It is not dependant on human achievement, but upon God’s gracious and completed work. So Jesus alone gives assurance of salvation.

This material is adapted from a Porterbrook Learning module.

Some great books by Tim Chester that I would recommend:

• You Can Change
• A Meal with Jesus
• Total Church
• Close the Window 

Missional, Meals, and Mario

Remember, too, that we’re witnesses to grace, not to good works and certainly not to good catering. Jim Petersen tells the story of his friend Mario, with whom he had studied the Bible for four years before Mario became a Christian. The Bible studies reflected the fact that Mario was a Marxist intellectual who’d read all the leading Western philosophers. A couple of years after his conversion, Jim and Mario were reminiscing: “Do you know what it really was that made me decide to become a Christian?” Mario asked. Petersen thought of all their Bible studies and philosophical discussions. Mario’s reply took him by surprise. “Remember that first time I stopped by your house? We were on our way someplace together, and I had a bowl of soup with you and your family. As I sat there observing you, your wife, and your children, and how you related to each other, I asked myself, ‘When will I have a relationship like this with my fiancée?’ When I realized that the answer was ‘never,’ I concluded I had to become a Christian for the sake of my own survival.” Petersen did remember the occasion. He remembered his children behaving badly and his frustration at having to correct them in front of Mario. Yet Mario saw the grace of Christ binding that family together.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus, p. 95

No Time For Mission? Got Time to Eat?

People often complain that they lack time for mission. But we all have to eat. Three meals a day, seven days a week. That’s twenty- one opportunities for mission and community without adding any- thing to your schedule. You could meet up with another Christian for breakfast on the way to work—read the Bible together, offer accountability, pray for one another. You could meet up with colleagues at lunchtime. Put down this book and chat to the person across the table from you in the cafeteria. You could invite your neighbors over for a meal. Better still, invite them over with another family from church. That way you get to do mission and community at the same time; plus your unbelieving neighbors will get to see the way the gospel impacts our relationships as Christians ( John 13:34–35; 17:20–21). You could invite someone who lives alone to share your family meal and follow it with board games, giving your children an opportunity to serve others through their welcome. Francis Schaeffer says:

Don’t start with a big program. Don’t suddenly think you can add to your church budget and begin. Start personally and start in your home. I dare you. I dare you in the name of Jesus Christ. Do what I am going to suggest. Begin by opening your home for community. . . . You don’t need a big program. You don’t have to convince your session or board. All you have to do is open your home and begin. And there is no place in God’s world where there are no people who will come and share a home as long as it is a real home.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus, p. 92

Mission as Hospitality

Meals bring mission into the ordinary. But that’s where most people are—living in the ordinary. That’s where we need to go to reach them. We too readily think of mission as extraordinary. Perhaps that’s because we find it awkward to talk about Jesus outside a church gathering. Perhaps it’s because we think God moves through the spectacular rather than the witness of people like us. Perhaps it’s because we want to outsource mission to the profes- sionals, so we invite people to guest services where an “expert” can do mission for us. But most people live in the ordinary, and most people will be reached by ordinary people. Even those who attend a special event will, for the most part, have first been befriended by a Christian. “For those looking to connect with people in the local community it isn’t that hard if you really want to. Just invite people round, let them know they can go home if they need to and then enjoy a meal together. You’re going to eat anyway, so why not do it with others!” 

Jesus’s command to invite the poor for dinner violates our notions of distance and detachment. Mission as hospitality undermines the professionalization of ministry. Mission isn’t something I can clock out from at the end of the day. The hospitality to which Jesus calls us can’t be institutionalized in programs and projects. Jesus challenges us to take mission home. It may be a surprise, given my emphasis on meals, but I loathe church lunches—those potluck suppers in draughty church halls. They’re institutionalized hospitality. Don’t start a hospitality ministry in your church: open your home. 

Much is said of engaging with culture—much that’s right and helpful. But we must never let engaging culture eclipse engaging with people. People are infinitely variable and rarely susceptible to our sociological categories. If you want to understand a person’s worldview, don’t read a book. Talk to them, hang out with them, eat with them.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus, p. 91  (my emphasis)

Mission Through Meals

Jesus didn’t run projects, establish ministries, create programs, 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 three strangers water for their feet and food for their bodies. In so doing he entertained God himself and received afresh the promise (Genesis 18:1–18). God was Israel’s host in the Promised Land (Ps. 39:12; Lev. 25:23), and that would later shape Israel’s behavior. 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 2:22–25).

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

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus, p. 89

Don't Be Condescending With The Poor

We think we’re enacting grace if we provide for 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 some- thing 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. A woman once told me: “I know people do a lot to help me. But what I want is for someone to be my friend.” People don’t want to be projects. The poor need a welcome to replace their marginalization, inclusion to replace their exclusion, a place where they matter to replace their powerlessness. They need community. They need the Christian community.

If you tell someone he’s a sinner who needs God while you’re handing him a cup of soup, then he’ll hear you saying he’s a loser who should become like you. But when you eat together as friends and you tell him what a messed up person you are, then you can tell him about sin and grace. Jim Petersen writes: “I know of no more effective environment for initiating evangelism than a dinner at home or in a quiet restaurant.”

Consider Jesus. Yes, he adopted the attitude of slave when he washed the disciples’ feet. But think, too, how often he accepts ser- vice. 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 friends of sinners, who came eat- ing and drinking.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus, p. 82, 83

We Can't Just Write Checks

Audit the activities of your church. How many offer some kind of reciprocal payback? Is your youth program designed to reach lost young people in your neighborhood or to provide a safe haven for church kids? Are your home groups doing adventurous mission together or offering a cozy support group? 

Luke repeats the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame in verses 13 and 21. These four examples represent the marginalized, powerless, and vulnerable as a whole. They’re the “orphans and widows” of James 1:27 and the “tax collectors and sinners” of Luke 15:1. Our attitude to the marginalized is to be shaped by our expe- rience 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” (Isa. 58:7). 

We’re called to follow Christ into a broken world. Simply writing a check keeps the poor at a distance. But Jesus was the friend of sinners. As we learned in chapter 2, to invite someone for a meal in Jesus’s time was an expression of identification. That’s why Jesus’s habit of eating with tax collectors and sinners was so scandalous.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus, p. 82

The World is More Delicious Than it Needs To Be

The world is more delicious than it needs to be. We have a super- abundance of divine goodness and generosity. God went over the top. We don’t need the variety we enjoy, but he gave it to us out of sheer exuberant joy and grace. God’s creative joy wasn’t only for the beginning of creation, leaving us “eating leftovers.” God continues to sustain creation out of joy. “The bloom of yeast lies upon the grape skins year after year because He likes it; C6H12O6=2C2H5OH+2CO2 is a dependable process because, every September, He says, That was nice; do it again.” This means the quality of our food should matter to us. We’re to treat food as a gift, not merely as fuel. We’re to treat creation as a responsibility entrusted to our care by God to be used for his glory. We should take an interest in where our food comes from: the ingredients in the meal, the care of the livestock, the conditions of the workers, the treatment of the producers. 

In his book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser describes animals who never see the sun, and who are fattened on grain, pumped with steroids, and slaughtered in factories by workers paid one-third less than forty years ago and receiving minimal benefits.  It doesn’t have to be like this. Schlosser commends the West Coast burger chain In-N-Out, where the workers are well-paid, with full health benefits, and where food is prepared on the premises from fresh ingredients. Esther and Harry Snyder started the restaurant the same year that McDonald’s was started. When their son, Will, a Christian, took over the business, he discreetly introduced Bible references to their packaging. 

The best thing you can do for your health is to eat less processed food, which is full of added sugar, salt, and fat—none of which is good for us in large quantities. “When my generation of women walked away from the kitchen,” Barbara Kingsolver says, “we were escorted down that path by a profiteering industry that knew a tired, vulnerable marketing target when they saw it. ‘Hey, ladies,’ it said to us, ‘go ahead, get liberated. We’ll take care of dinner.’ They threw open the door and we walked into a nutritional crisis and genuinely toxic food supply.” Many of us have structured our busy lives around the availability of processed food, so we may need to change our lifestyles as well as our shopping baskets if we want to enjoy good food in good company. Food is not meant to be “fast.”

- Tim Chester, A Meal With Jesus, p. 68, 69

They Are Selling Us Hospitality

In his book, Bowling Alone, Robert Putman reveals that there’s been a 33 percent decrease in families eating together over the last three decades.  And more than half of those families are watching television as they eat together. Over the same period there’s been a 45 percent decline in entertaining friends. Growing up I would ask each Sunday, “Who’s coming for dinner today?” Not whether but who, because I knew my parents always would have invited someone. “In the typical American household, the average number of dinners eaten together is three per week, with the average length of dinner being 20 minutes.”  Many homes no longer even have a dining room. We protect ourselves from outsiders, but our security systems and garden gates are our prisons, cutting us off from community. Instead we get our community vicariously through soap operas. Friends is a television program or a Facebook number, not people with whom we eat and laugh and cry.

Instead we’ve commercialized hospitality. In his history of Starbucks, Taylor Clark argues that the secret of Starbucks’s success is not in its coffee, but “the pull of the coffeehouse as a place.” When sociologist Roy Oldenburg coined the term “third place” to describe a neutral gathering spot that’s neither home or work, “the company,” Clark writes, “now had its philanthropic rallying cry: it wasn’t a coffee company, but a third place bringing people together through the social glue of coffee.” Starbucks’s research showed that people wanted “a cozy social atmosphere above all else. . . . For those seeking a refuge from the world, the cup of coffee they bought was really just the price of admission to partake of the coffeehouse scene.” Starbucks is selling us hospitality.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table, 46, 47

Difficult People Expose Our Own Hearts

 

[36] One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. [37] And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, [38] and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. [39] Now 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 7:36-39 ESV)

Simon’s attitude to this woman exposes his heart. It’s always like that. Problem people, difficult people, different people have a habit of exposing our hearts. Behavior always comes from the desires of the heart—Jesus says as much in the previous chapter (Luke 6:43–45). When a fellow ministry leader and I faced a difficult situation, he said, “What I find most disappointing is what it has revealed about my own heart. It’s shown me again that I still need people’s approval, because I fear them more than I fear God.” When someone is dif- ficult, disappointing, or disrespectful, your reaction reveals your own heart. If you react with anger or bitterness, then your “need” for control or respect or success is exposed. If you’re trusting God’s sovereignty rather than your own abilities, and if you’re concerned for God’s glory rather than your own reputation, then it will be a different story. When you discover that someone in your church has fallen into sin, your own heart will be exposed. You may discover grace in your heart from God. But you may also discover pride and self-righteousness.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table (Re:Lit), p.45