Eating Our Way into Kingdom
Surprise the World #2 — Eat
March 24, 2019
Commonwealth Bridge Worship
Habit #2
This week, the second habit we want to go over is: Eat.
I will eat with three people this week — at least one of whom is a member of our church.
A few Sundays ago, I explained how important the communal meal was for the early church. The idea of worshiping together went hand in hand with the idea of eating together. And rightfully so, for the table fellowship has this unique ability to bring people together no matter where they come from. When used responsibly, the table can be a great unifier. This is what Jesus exemplified throughout his ministry, as he even described himself, “the Son of Man has come eating and drinking” (Luke 7:34). Jesus often ate with the tax collectors and sinners. Jesus fed the hungry crowd. Jesus repeatedly ate with his disciples, and the last thing he did together with them before his death was to share the bread and cup.
And it makes sense why Jesus did so much eating and drinking, because sharing a meal together is relational. It builds relationship. And relationship builds community. And this was Jesus’ mission — to build a relationship with us and to establish a community called the kingdom of God.
As you know, we are in the process of creating a new church community. And our vision for this community is to be authentic, where different people — regardless of their age, gender, race, ethnicity, political view, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status — find a sense of belonging, a sense of connectedness, a sense of unity together in Christ. I believe this is the vision of God’s kingdom (Rev 7:9):
After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.
And what could be a better way to create such a community other than start eating together? Alan Hirsh and Lance Ford say in their book Right Here, Right Now:[1]
Sharing meals together on a regular basis is one of the most sacred practices we can engage in as believers… We can literally eat our way into the kingdom of God.
If you do not believe in the power of eating together, I want you to reflect on some of your most cherished relationships. How much was food involved in that relationship? If you haven’t already, I want you to check out shows like Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown or David Chang’s Ugly Delicious. In both shows, the table works as a great equalizer of relationships, understanding and appreciating each other’s culture and context through sharing a meal.
While the concept of eating together is simple, it’s not easy to put in practice. If you want to eat with others for the sake of building relationship, it requires a kind of courage and vulnerability that is often required when we asked someone out for a dinner date. It requires a courage to enter into a space of unknown. It requires a vulnerability to let go of what is normal to us. That’s why we tend to eat only with those whom we are comfortable with and familiar with.
But would you believe it if I told you that we are here today worshiping together because of someone else’s courage and vulnerability? We wouldn’t be here where we are right now without someone else’s desire to eat with us that probably violated a certain religious code and social norm at one point. And one of the earliest events of such an example is depicted in the Bible.
Peter’s Report to the Church
Let’s look at Acts 11:1–18.
My understanding is that most of us here, if not all, are so-called Gentiles, or non-Jewish people. What if I told you that we were once outsiders to the picture of God’s salvation? Jews were seen as part of an inner circle of people with a special relationship with God, while us Gentiles were simply side-characters in the Bible. The Old Testament is a story of the relationship between God and His chosen people called Israel. And circumcision represented the covenantal relationship between the two. Further, Jesus was a brown-skinned, Middle Eastern Jew, who was deemed as the promised Messiah whom Israel has been anticipating for, a fulfillment of the Jewish prophets, a Rabbi, and the king of the Jews. This means that when the church was established in the first century, it still upheld this Judeocentric worldview. Jewish Christians were considered the recipient of the good news of Christ, while Gentiles — the so-called uncircumcised — were viewed as unclean.
When sharing things, our preference is to keep our table kosher — meaning we don’t want unclean things to infect our bodies; we don’t want impure things to contaminate our lives; we don’t want unknown things to complicate our worldviews. Of course, it was no different for the Jews. It was “unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile” (Acts 10:28), for a Gentile represented something unclean, impure, and unknown. It’s the idea of purity. And Gentiles were the unsolved problems that could jeopardize the purity of the early church. Perhaps, the greatest question at the birth of the early church was whether even Gentiles could be saved.
I’m sure many of us hear this and think it sounds absurd — maybe it’s even a little hard to see where the Jews were coming from. Because it just doesn’t make sense or sound right that a person could be considered to represent something unclean, impure, and unknown.
But during this time, it made a whole lot of sense to the Jews. And who would be brave enough to overcome the religious code and social norm of the day if they thought elsewise? Who would be courageous enough to embrace one’s vulnerability by sitting with those whom the society calls “unclean”? And where do you find this courage?
According to today’s passage, it was Peter, one of the apostles, a Jew. In the previous chapter, Peter visited the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, a Gentile and a solider. And this visitation was not a spontaneous one; it was a visitation born out of prayers from both sides — Peter and Cornelius, directed and guided by the Holy Spirit.
At Cornelius’ house, Peter shared the good news of Jesus Christ. He shared (10:34–36):
I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ — he is Lord of all.
While Peter was sharing the good news of Jesus, the Holy Spirit fell upon Cornelius and his household, the Gentiles, in the same way it did for the Jewish Christians in Acts 2 — where people spoke in languages other than their own. Then Peter said (10:47),
Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?
So, he decided to go even further — entering a house of Gentiles was scandalous enough — but now he decided to baptize them in the name of Jesus Christ. And after several days, Peter returned to his base camp, and what welcomed him was criticism:
[T]he circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?”
And today’s passage is basically Peter’s defense to the church: why he did what he did. And much of his defense consists of his experience; he didn’t use the Hebrew Bible or the question “What would Jesus do” to defend his actions. But rather, Peter solely shared his experience. He had visions — three times — where he heard the voice, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean’ (v.9). And he was led by the Holy Spirit to meet with these Gentiles. There, he shared the word of God. And there, the Gentiles exhibited the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
What Peter shared was not a theological argument of what ifs, but simply his experience led by the Holy Spirit. His argument wasn’t even an argument at all — it was simply a sharing of the story of his relationship with God and his relationship with people other than his own.
Eating Together
Without Peter’s story and experience, would we have a scripture verse like this in our hands (Gal 3:28)?
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
Without Peter’s story, would we have a seat at the Lord’s table?
Who knows?
What we know for sure is that we are recipients of Peter’s courageous act of inviting Gentiles to the table to eat together. And that courage is rooted in his relationship with Christ; for the Holy Spirit guided each of his steps into the house of a so-called unclean people. And the result of such a courageous act was the birth of a community where there is no partiality — affirming the sacred worth of every one of us, that we are indeed beloved children of God. And for this early church, habitual practice of sharing meals became an incubator where Christians learned to accept the outsider, offer generosity to the poor, and have fellowship with those who are considered different.[2]
And this is a kind of community that we truly desire to become here at Commonwealth. A community that extends the invitation to the table. A community that exemplifies courage and embraces vulnerability. A community that not only talks about the story, but also lives out and experiences the story. A community that is inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit, through our intimate relationship with Christ, through our faith, our humility, and our love. A community that eats together.
I often wonder about today’s society — where everyone seems to be overtly connected and still individually, we feel so isolated. Everyone seems to know each other’s business, but no one knows each other’s stories. And sometimes I wonder if it has anything to do with our eating habits.
Five years ago, there was an article that grabbed my attention. It says that Americans rarely eat together anymore.[3]
The average American eats one in every five meals in his/her car, one in four Americans eats at least one fast food meal every single day, and the majority of American families report eating a single meal together less than five days a week.
Eating together is often set aside for the sake of productivity. We eat at our work desk, we nibble while commuting, we consume separately at our own convenience perhaps while binge-watching on our favorite shows. This multitasking has to do with this perpetual anxiety to do more — for what we have and what we do are not enough (#mammon). It’s true in my personal life as well. If my wife and I don’t put in an effort, it’s hard to find time to eat together during the weekdays.
As I shared last Sunday, we often neglect the idea of enjoying and sharing (#manna). This is what God desires us to do as a community — to enjoy and share — and the table is a great place for that. I wonder if neglecting such a beautiful place of enjoyment and sharing has caused a greater division and isolation in our society. We have removed the place of community in our lives — which also removes opportunities to invite others to the table as Jesus did and as his disciple Peter did in today’s story.
And I also wonder if we could literally eat our way to fixing some of our societal problems: division, isolation, and depression.
I read an essay this week from Quartz which I’d love for you to read as well — I’ll share with you through the weekly newsletter. Here’s what the author writes about community.[4]
And what I would come to learn, slowly, is that community is about a series of small choices and everyday actions: how to spend a Saturday, what to do when a neighbor falls ill, how to make time when there is none. Knowing others and being known; investing in somewhere instead of trying to be everywhere. Communities are built, like Legos, one brick at a time. There’s no hack.
These words perfectly define the mission we want to accomplish through building these seemingly small habits. Last week, I asked you to bless three persons a week. This week, we are adding on a second habit, which is to eat with three persons a week — one of whom is a member of this church plant. This may sound daunting because we are so new and so small.
I have an idea for you; why don’t you count your small group as one of your three meals — because in that space you are consuming something together, whether snacks, supper, or the word of God. This is also a plug to please consider joining a small group if you are not part of one yet.
My prayer is that eventually we become mature in this habit and learn how to invite others as Jesus invited sinners and as Peter invited us, the Gentiles; a kind of invitation that requires a spiritual maturity, courage, and humility — inviting those who challenge our comfort level, our worldview, and our norms. So that our table may become a great unifier for us and our neighbors, so that we may build a true community that resembles the kingdom of God here in our midst. Let us pray.
[1–2] Michael Frost, Surprise the World
[3] Cody C. Delistraty, “Why families need to sit down and eat dinner together,” Quartz, 20 July 2014.
[4] Jenny Anderson, “The only metric of success that really matters is the one we ignore,” Quartz, 12 March 2019.
