Monday, February 20, 2012
Food is Stuff
Tonight I'm off for a night at the night shelter
again. Last week was a less than fun-filled affair -- at the beginning of the night, I was threatened by an addcit (not too scary, he was totally off his head) for not giving him some new shoes. During the
night there were some strange noises out the back of the shelter; when I opened
the door in the morning I found blood and used needles. If anything, it helped to confirm the
importance of being at the shelter so the destitute have a safe place to get
sleep. There's been a number of new
service users this week: we've now had asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Libya, Sri
Lanka, Bangladesh, Palestine, and Sudan make use of the shelter.
Though I spend one night at the Night Shetler, Emma does
some hard work behind the scenes. On
Mondays, Emma cooks a meal for the people at the shelter. The Middle Eastern guys in particular tell me
how they look forward to Monday nights because the food is so good, "Just
like my mother's cooking!" was the accolade given to Emma's lamb stew.
One of the joys of helping in the Night Shelter is
sitting down with the guys during the meal.
It's an integral part of our service to the destitute.
For my birthday, I was given Tim Chester's new book A Meal with Jesus. While not wanting
to bore you with yet another post about food, the following passage from his
book resonated and thought it was worth sharing:
...In the ministry of Jesus, meals were enacted grace,
community and mission.
So the meals of Jesus represent something bigger. They represent a new world, a new kingdom, a
new outlook. But they give that new
reality substance. Jesus' meal are not
just symbols; they're also application.
They're not just pictures; they're the real thing in miniature. Food is stuff. It's not ideas. It's not theories. It's, well, it's food, and your put it in
your mouth, taste it and eat it. And
meals are more than food. They're social
occasions. They represent friendship,
community and welcome.
I don't want to reduce church and mission to meals, but I
do want to argue that meals should be an integral and significant part of our
shared life. They represent the meaning
of mission, but they more than represent it: they embody and enact our
mission. Community and mission are more
than meals, but it's hard to concieve of them without meals...
I can pull down books on mission and church planting from
my shelves, I can read about contextualisation, evangelism matrices, postmodern
apologetics and cultural hermeneutics. I
can look at diagrams that tell me how people can be converted or discover the
steps required to plant a church. It all
sounds impressive, cutting edge and sophisticated. But this is how Luke describes Jesus' mission
strategy: 'The Son of Man came eating and drinking.'
We can make community and mission sound like specialised
activities that belong to experts. Some
people have a vested interest in doing this, because if makes them
'extra-ordinary'. Or we focus on dynamic
personalities who can hold an audience and lead a movement. Some push mission beyond the scope of
'ordinary' Christians. But the Son of
Man came eating and drinking. It's not complicated. True, it's not always easy -- it involves
people invading your space or going to places where you don't feel
comfortable. But it's not
complicated. If you share a meal three
or four times a week and you have a passion for Jesus, then you will be
building up the Christian community and reaching out in mission.
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