Eschatological Feasting

Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus (Crossway, 2011) If you thought I was through with my passion to learn about the eschatological factor of feasting, especially how it is portrayed in the gospel of Luke, you are sadly mistaken. Interestingly, I can be the same way with my theology as I am with food. I seem to have a propensity to get hooked to the point where I begin weaving my new cravings into all kinds of recipes. It takes a long time for me to move on. Currently, I am in an avocado, asparagus, jalapeno, coconut, and peanut butter ice cream phase. Seriously, my Pinterest page will testify. For theology, it’s the aforementioned feasting, the Emmaus encounter, perseverance, and theological fitness. As you can see, some of these go together well. I hope you will show me the same grace that my family does at the dinner table (well, really just my husband) when I have found yet another way to sneak some asparagus into the dish. And speaking of meals, reading Tim Chester’s book made me hungry. It inspired me to enjoy mealtime even more and to spread that joy in hospitality. For those of you who enjoyed reading my reflections on The Ongoing Feast, by Arthur A. Just, but maybe weren’t ready to sink your teeth into such a meaty book, A Meal with Jesus may be what you’re looking for. This book is much more focused on practical application, and yet Chester is passionate about the theological indicatives. Like Just, he also teaches from the gospel of Luke to set out to prove his subtitle, Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table. Let me just say that this book has the best opening line ever: “I fell in love with my wife while she was making me cheese on toast” (9). This line alone made me love the author and commit to reading to the end. And the rest of his book is indicative to that first line—practical demonstrations of how meals are enacted grace, community, and mission.

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 anything to your schedule (92).

Do you often eat alone? By pointing us to Jesus’s ministry, Chester shows the reader how eating and drinking is much more than refueling. Sometimes when we are reading about Jesus eating with sinners we may be annoyed that the Pharisees just didn’t get it. But Chester explains just how radical it was for him to do. Food was like a boundary marker that kept the outsiders away. “Doing lunch was doing theology” (21). Jesus Christ has fulfilled all the purity laws of Leviticus. Therefore, “grace can’t be integrated with self-righteousness and self-importance. It’s radically different, radically new” (26). Chester challenges the reader. Just think of how uncomfortable you would be if a promiscuous woman were kissing Jesus and rubbing her hair all over his feet. “The grace of God turns out to be uncomfortable and embarrassing” (40). Christ’s interaction with sinners, especially around the table, creates a new kind of community. Chester also links hospitality with mission, and gives very practical ways to do this. I will let you read the book to glean from his own experiences and ideas. His passion for intimate hospitality really challenges the way we have institutionalized it, even in the church.

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…Don’t start a hospitality ministry in your church: open your home (91-92).

Good stuff. I do have one quibble with the book. Chester seems to blend the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper with the love feasts of the early church. Yes, they were often combined, but there is still an important distinction. The Lord’s Supper did have a “fence” around it for the confessing church. It is through this sacrament that the bread and wine become holy means of grace to convey Christ and the benefits of his death and resurrection. I would have liked to see more of a distinction in the book. Back to the eschatological factor of feasting. I will leave you with this great excerpt:

When the disparate people of God come together and express community around the table, united as we are in Christ, then the promised feast finds fulfillment. When we celebrate the goodness of creation as we enjoy our food, then the promised feast finds fulfillment, and we anticipate the renewal of creation. When we eat together in the presence of God by his Spirit, then the promised feast finds fulfillment. These are powerful declarations to the world of the coming feast of God to which all humanity is invited and the current presence of God with his people. Joel himself declares at the climax of his prophecy: “the Lord dwells in Zion” (3:21) (115).

 

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