Eat
B.E.L.L.S. • Sermon • Submitted
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Recap BELLS series. Building Missional Habits into our lives.
What is a Missional Habit? Doing things that alert people to God’s universal Reign.
(Pic of Riverside symbol) https://images.app.goo.gl/uEvWNPDuGVNhVNVg8
The E in B.E.L.L.S. is Eat.
Some families with Italian heritage have the Sunday afternoon dinner.
English Pastor Tim Chester posed this question. How would you complete the following sentence: “The Son of Man came...
There are three ways the New Testament completes that sentence; while the first two are well known, the third not so much.
45 For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
The first two tell us about Jesus purpose in coming: To serve, to give His life as a ransom, to seek and save the lost. The third describes his method.
34 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.’
How did Jesus come? He came eating and drinking.
We will revisit Luke 7:34 later.
Let’s think about this; when He gives his first followers something to remember him by, what is it? FOOD!
19 And he 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.”
Eating and sharing a meal
46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,
There is something special about sharing a meal together. Especially when you are invited to someones home.
The invitation to share a table is a profoundly meaningful one in every culture. It represents hospitality, inclusiveness, generosity, and grace.
Living a life the alerts others to the Reign of God can be done one meal at a time.
Last week I talked about what it would look like if we sent a word of affirmation, did an act of kindness, or gave a gift large or small to three people each week. Two ppl in our church and one person outside our community of faith. What would happen?
I want to challenge us to foster the habit of “Eating” with three ppl each week. Same as “Blessing
“ last week, I want to encourage us to have two meals with ppl in our community of faith and at least one meal with someone that might not know Jesus yet.
Your meal could be an elaborate dinner party, or it could be a breakfast, or even just a coffee.
Just sit across a table from three ppl and talk.
The table and eating are the great equalizers in relationships. When we eat together we discover the inherent humanity of all ppl.
We share stories, hopes, fears, and disappointments.
Something about sharing a meal helps people to open up to each other.
We also can open up and share the same things including our faith in Jesus.
Alan Hirsch wrote this in one of his books.
Sharing meals together on a regular basis is one of the most sacred practices we can engage in as believers. Missional hospitality is a tremendous opportunity to extend the kingdom of God. We can literally eat our way into the kingdom of God!
He ends this thought with this -
If every Christian household regularly invited a stranger or a poor person into their home for a meal once a week, we would literally change the world by eating!
Let’s revisit:
34 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.’
Glutton: an excessively greedy eater.
Glutton, they must have seen Him eating all the time.
Drunkard, must have seen Him drinking all the time. Drunkard- Wine drinker. Used in a derogatory sense of a winebibber or drunk derelict.~ Lexham Theological Wordbook,
Of course Jesus was neither glutton or drunkard.
Who did He eat with? Well they called Him a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Which implies they saw Him primarily “Eating” and drinking with those far from God.
Jesus modeled sharing a meal with someone that seem like they have their life all together and with those that it is very evident they don’t have it all together.
36 When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table.
Wait Pharisees? I thought they were the enemy.
Wouldn’t sharing a meal with someone imply that we affirm all their values?
In Jesus’ day a person would not eat with someone of different social standing, and certainly never with someone of a different religion. Jesus turns it on its head.
Ben Meyer in his book - The Aims of Jesus - writes
The act of Jesus was to reverse this structure: communion first, conversion second. His table fellowship with sinners implied no acquiescence in their sins, for the gratuity of the reign on God cancelled none of its demands. But in a world in which sinners stood ineluctably condemned, Jesus’ openness to them was irresistible. Contact triggered repentance; conversion flowered from communion. In the tense little world of ancient Palestine, where religious meaning were the warp and woof of the social order, this was a potent phenomenon.
What a beautiful expression “Conversion flowered from communion”. Don’t we see that play out in the Chief Tax Collector Zacchaeus.
5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. 7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” 8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
So like Jesus we should be prepared to eat and share a table with sinners as a habitual missional practice.
Ill: Southern Baptist Minister in Portland Oregon.
Neighbor claimed to make the best Margarita in all of Oregon
Regularly hosted margarita and poker nights in his garage.
All the neighborhood men would attend but the Pastor would decline the invitations.
Believing this to be a strong witness to his faith.
Hearing this another Pastor asked him how many times his neighbor had asked him about his faith?
The answer “Never”. How often have you shared anything about your faith with your margarita making neighbor. Answer? Never.
Challenged him to accept the next invitation and when he did the neighbor about fell over.
The Bapt Pastor join the poker night and stayed true to his convictions and drank only soda.
No one minded and he had more conversations about faith than he’d had in ages.
As we go through this BELLS series I would like to encourage you to have a meal with 3 ppl in the coming weeks and have one of them be with someone that does not know Jesus yet.
Don’t be surprised when you your neighbor or friend reciprocates your hospitality. You will start to get return invitations. And when this happens you will get serious missional traction.
Remember not to judge the lifestyle, eating or drinking habits of your host. See the opportunity as a gold mine for missional relationship building.
Don’t lose sight of the good goal of conversation, but follow Jesus’ model of communion first and see what flowers from it.
What if the reputation of Christ followers at Church on The Hill was they love to eat with other people and helping them eat their way to a relationship with Christ.
Muslim man shares his story with a Christ follower and then asked the Christ follower to share his story.
