Holy Habits Session 6 - Eating together, gladness and generosity

Holy Habits Session 6: Eating Together, Gladness and Generosity

Opening Exercise:

When did you last eat a meal with other people or another person? What did you eat?  Talk about it.  What else happened at the meal?

What are you glad about right now?

When was someone last generous to you and when were you to someone else?

Two habits to explore together: One is eating together, and the second is an attitude – with glad and generous hearts. Not just about food that one, but about life.

“Tables are one of the most important places of human connection. We’re often most fully alive to life when sharing a meal around a table. We shouldn’t be surprised, then, to find that throughout the Bible God has a way of showing up at tables.

In fact, it’s worth noting that at the centre of the spiritual lives of God’s people in both the Old and New Testaments, we find a table: the table of Passover and the table of Communion. New Testament scholar N. T. Wright captured something of this sentiment when he wrote, “When Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn’t give them a theory, he gave them a meal.”

I’m convinced that one of the most important spiritual disciplines for us to recover in the kind of world in which we live is the discipline of table fellowship. In the fast-paced, tech-saturated, attention-deficit-disordered culture in which we find ourselves, Christians need to recover the art of a slow meal around a table with people we care about. “Table fellowship” doesn’t often make the list of the classical spiritual disciplines. But in the midst of a world that increasingly seems to have lost its way with regard to matters of both food and the soul, Christian spirituality has something important to say about the way that sharing tables nourishes us both physically and spiritually. We need a recovery of the spiritual significance of what we eat, where we eat, and with whom we eat.”

Jesus himself says ‘The Son of Man came eating and drinking’ (Luke 7:34). Eating and drinking – a lot. New Testament scholar Robert Karris says: ‘In Luke’s Gospel Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal.’

So much so that his enemies accuse him of being ‘a glutton and a drunkard’ – someone who eats too much and drinks too much. The Jews expected him to come with a bang, defeating God’s enemies and vindicating his people. Instead he shares a meal.

Meals are a powerful of expression of welcome and friendship in every culture. This is why Jesus’ meals are so significant – they embody God’s grace and enact God’s mission. Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors were traitors not only to the nation, but also traitors towards God for they were collaborators with the Gentile occupiers who had defiled God’s holy land. So the table companions of Jesus led the Pharisees to conclude that he couldn't be from God (Luke 5:30; 7:39; 15:1–2). A reasonable conclusion – unless God’s grace is so amazing that it allows him to eat with his enemies and unless God’s grace explodes all our expectations (Luke 5:27–39). Meals are central to the mission of Jesus because they embody and enact the grace of God.

Isaiah 25:6–8: On this occasion death itself will be on the menu and God will swallow it up. This is an eternal feast that no one need ever leave. Jesus provides a foretaste of this feast when he feeds the five thousand. Here is a feast which need never end. Indeed there’s more food at the end than there was at the beginning. It’s a pointer to the fulfilment of God’s promise: that one day we will feast forever in his presence.

“Eating together can create safe space in which to share and deepen faith and offer the invitation to explore the adventure of discipleship.  At the meal table we can ask questions and share our stories, needs and struggles.  We can celebrate life’s joys and rejoice together when we have seen prayers answered through our following of Jesus. Eating together also creates a place of belonging where koinonia (fellowship) can really flourish.”  

If you visit Shetland during the summer months, you’ll quickly become aware of signs advertising Sunday teas in village halls around the islands. Usually, two or three halls will be offering them on any given Sunday and, if the opportunity arises, they’re not to be missed. Local people pull out all the stops to produce a tremendous spread of cakes, teabreads, biscuits, sandwiches, quiches and all sorts of other treats, accompanied by unlimited tea and coffee. It’s all done by volunteers in an effort to raise funds for charity and the experience is highly recommended.

How could eating together be missional/enhance our church life?

How might we make use of the opportunities presented by the major festivals and develop them as times of community feasting?

What does Luke 14: 15 – 23 say to you?

Then let’s explore glad and generous hearts. 

What is gladness? Play with the word and put it in a sentence: 

Feeling joy or pleasure; delighted; pleased:

Glad about the good news; glad that you are here.

Accompanied by or causing joy or pleasure:

A glad occasion; glad tidings.

Characterized by or showing cheerfulness, joy, or pleasure, as looks or utterances

Very willing:

I'll be glad to give him your message.

GLAD'NESS, n. See Glad. Joy, or a moderate degree of joy and exhilaration; pleasure of mind; cheerfulness.

They--did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart. Act.2.

Gladness is rarely or never equivalent to mirth, merriment, gayety and triumph, and it usually expresses less than delight. It sometimes expresses great joy. Esther 8.9.

Read some stories about gladness in the book  - pages 201/2

Take some time to reflect on your practising of gladness. If life is hard at the moment and gladness seems elusive, spend some time with someone who is in a tough place at the moment and maybe give them a simple gift like a cake or flowers. Often a good way to regain gladness is to give gladness.   

“The church was born in gladness. Gladness for what God had done, through  the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of  the Spirit as promised long ago by the prophets  and explained by Peter in  his Pentecost  address. There was gladness in the home, gladness in the temple and gladness out on the streets.”     

And what about generosity?

 Paul writes in Romans 12:1, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.” This is notable for what comes before it and for what it leads on to. Paul’s ‘therefore’ follows from his outburst of praise at the end of Romans 11 in which he asks, “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?” And Paul ends verse 1 of Romans 12 by telling us that giving ourselves is, as the NIV translation puts it, “your true and proper worship”.

Paul goes on in the rest of Romans 12 to spell out what this self-giving worship means in practice. There are nine things to make us a glad and generous community being counter cultural to a world of avarice and greed.   We are to:

• honour others more highly than ourselves

• use our gifts for the benefit of the church as the body of Christ

• be patient in affliction

• be faithful in prayer

• share what we have with needy sisters and brothers in Christ

• practise hospitality

• bless those who treat us badly

• associate with people of lowly status

• do good to our enemies.

Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? (James 2:15-16)

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. (1 John 3:16-18)

A generous man will himself be blessed, for he shares his food with the poor. (Proverbs 22:9)

How would living these passages make us a more effective community?

We need to remember the call to be inclusive, to share bread, to be companions, to live in gladness and generously every day. We need to be community in its richest sense.