It's sort of a joke, I'm sure, from
one of my students from the seminary.
I always come to class and I never
get an apple, I get a Diet Coke
because I'm sort of addicted to Diet Coke.
Thank you very much for that.
I don't know if I can have it
in the pulpit.
Let me add my thanks, too, for that
wonderful meal.
That was terrific, and the hospitality that went
with it.
And also, add my encouragement to check out
Christianity Explored.
Rico Teiss, whose brainchild that was, Rico and
I were roommates, basically, next door neighbors during
Oxford years, and became really good friends, and
it's been wonderful to see him over the
years develop this program, really, as a wonderful
opportunity to share the gospel, but with right
doctrine, not just kind of, you know, sometimes
with knowledge or zeal.
It's nice when that comes together, and he
really does that, it's a great way to
introduce your neighbors to Christ, and a great
program for churches to have.
For this final talk, I want to turn
our attention toward the health page, Feasting in
a Fast Food World, and I want to
begin with Isaiah 55, where God calls through
Isaiah, Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the
waters, and he who has no money, come,
buy and eat.
Come, buy wine and milk without money and
without price.
Why do you spend your money for that
which is not bread, and your labor for
that which is not satisfied?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is
good, and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear and come to me, here
that your soul may live.
See there it is, here that your soul
may live.
And I will make with you an everlasting
covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.
Behold, I make him a witness to the
peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples.
Behold, you shall call a nation that you
do not know, and a nation that did
not know you shall run to you because
of the Lord your God and of the
Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified
you.
According to Eric Schlosser's best-selling book, Fast
Food Nation, only a generation ago, the United
States consumed three-quarters of its food expenses
on home-cooked meals, while today half is
spent on restaurants and most of that fast
food.
And this has contributed to the general phenomenon
of what some have called the McDonaldization of
the world.
Malnutrition by choice, where we actually, and I
take my family and we go to McDonald's,
it's not like it's simple, but it really,
our whole culture, it's sort of a symbol
though of our whole culture.
One big happy meal for everybody that you
can drive through, remain anonymous, you don't have
to sit down and actually talk to people
and so forth.
Very different from places in Europe where you
walk into a restaurant and they seat you
with people.
Very, very feather ruffling.
I don't like to be seated with people
I don't know, and sometimes the people I
do.
And so, you know, we love to control
that environment with the air conditioning and the
station we're listening to and just have an
arm.
Two minutes later, up the window goes and
we're back home.
Yet in spite of our daily habits of
consumption, we still know the difference between that
and what happens when we sit down to
a good meal with family and friends.
David Brooks has pointed out that American boomers,
that's the post-war generation, those who were
born after World War II, the boomer generation,
lords of the suburbs, are part bourgeois and
part bohemian.
They're part leave it to beaver and part
woodstock.
And so they crave this sort of nostalgic
American values and a little bit of new
age, loopy spirituality, and they want to belong
to community, have more community, which is why
we live in suburbs where you can put
your garage door up and down very quickly.
We don't want to actually commit.
Which is what you have to have to
have community, but we want the idea of
community, we want the experience of community without
the commitment that community involves.
We want really priceless, important, wonderful experiences without
the process that it takes to have them.
If you could just bottle the end result,
we'd buy it.
But a lot of the boomers' children don't
even remember the Norman Rockwell moment.
A lot of their children can't even create
a nostalgic collage.
They don't necessarily want to be endless drifters.
You know, the tourists that I've been talking
about.
They don't necessarily want to transgress every boundary.
They just don't know what the boundaries are.
While their parents couldn't wait to leave home,
a lot of their children can't wait to
find one.
And one of the things that we're seeing
as a result now is that the number
one thing that young people, for instance, there
are a lot of studies that confirm this.
One that illustrates it was a Wall Street
Journal study of young people, 20-somethings, coming
to Wall Street to work.
What, if you went back to church, what
would you look for first?
What would you want?
Now, remember, their parents would have said anonymity,
a Starbucks, a, you know, definitely I would
want to have good entertainment and I'd want
to have a lot of stuff and activities
for the kids and so on and so
forth.
You know, a homeroom and sort of a
rec center with a fish.
But these, basically the next generation, the children
of those respondents said, number one, number one,
theological discussion groups.
I didn't invent that.
I'm not paraphrasing.
That was as it appeared in the Wall
Street Journal, theological discussion groups.
Number one.
Second.
Serious, somber architecture.
With a liturgy that takes God seriously.
Now for something completely different, as Monty Python
would say.
One characteristic that seems to unite all of
our generations today is the way we experience
the world as a shopping mall.
Everything is sort of a front for something
to sell.
We become anonymous voyeurs of other people's lives
and experiences, looking at other identities we might
wish to assume.
Bodies we imagine that we have or don't
have but would like to have.
Goods that we imagine that we could afford.
We long to be transported, even for a
moment, from our banal but very real existence
to a manufactured pseudo-reality.
Las Vegas, Las Vegas.
That has sort of become the homeland for
this kind of vagrancy.
And your secret stays with us.
Today, this anonymity has taken very extreme forms
in, for instance, the situation in George Barna
makes that in the coming decades, Christians, even
evangelical Christians, will stop coming to church and
instead will get all of their spiritual needs
met on the Internet.
This narcissism, just when you ask, can this
narcissism and individualism ever find its limit?
Something strange like that pops up and you
say, a new frontier we've just broken.
Something I never would have thought five minutes
ago was a possibility.
And George Barna is arguing for it, is
defending it.
This is the way we should go from
the mega church to the no church.
We've been unchurching a whole generation for the
last 30 years in the name of mission,
in the name of evangelism.
Our local symphony in San Diego advertises a
powerful music experience.
They usually just tell you when Mendelssohn was
playing or Bach or what was happening, what
was what was up on the menu.
And now they're promising a musical experience.
I'm not saying this is wrong, by the
way, in the secular culture.
I just think it's horrible in church when
it becomes when this moves over to the
church.
In spite of our rhetoric, our practice proves,
I think, that we believe that we are
the choosers, not only when it comes to
marketing and advertising in the world, but we're
the sovereign choosers, choice makers, when it comes
even to our relationship with God.
We pick and choose the God we want.
We pick and choose the doctrine we like.
We pick and choose the experiences we want
to have.
We pick and choose the aspects of a
lifestyle that we like and spit the rest
of it out.
We are sovereign choosers.
We're American.
We should be able to have our own
choice.
And here we are walking into a kingdom
we didn't create.
With a king we didn't who isn't king
because we made him king with all these
other people we didn't choose, never would have.
But God chose for us because like us.
There are sinners who have been snatched from
the fires and they have been made our
brothers and sisters so we didn't choose them
for friends.
It's hard to be an American and go
to church.
It's hard to be in the kingdom of
God when we think as rottenly as we
do.
When we're as corrupt as we are by
our culture of individualism and autonomy and personal
choice and preference.
And I think that comes out in the
way we talk about a worship experience.
What is a worship experience?
Well, the focus is no longer on the
content.
The focus is no longer on God.
The focus is on me as a consumer
of fun.
The experience itself becomes a form of entertainment,
a form of amusement.
When God appeared and spoke from the top
of Mount Sinai delivering his commands, the Israelites
were filled with terror.
They said, we read in Exodus chapter 19,
when the people saw the thunder and flashes
of lightning and the sound of the trumpet
in the mountain smoking, the people were afraid
and trembled and they stood far off and
said to Moses, you speak to God and
we will we will listen, but do not
let God speak to us or we will
die.
It's a little different than.
Hey, Pastor Mo.
You know, how you doing, buddy?
Hey, isn't God rad?
He's my dad, you know, OK, that's 20
years old, but.
See, that's the problem with this.
It gets old every you know, by the
time you look at your watch, it's old
again.
Not here, not in this time, not in
this place.
They stood far off and said, Moses.
You talk to us and we will listen,
but don't let him talk to us or
we'll die.
And we read in the New Testament that's
because they couldn't bear what was spoken.
So afraid of it, so terrified of it
was was Moses himself that he trembled with
fear.
The people stood far off.
While Moses drew near to the thick darkness
where God was.
Not up close and personal so much for,
you know, walking and talking in that garden.
This is pretty serious standing at a distance.
The God who is outside of you.
The God who comes to you, he isn't
domesticated inside of you and your own experience,
but he's who knows what he's going to
say, who knows what he's going to do.
He's alive.
He's moving toward us right now.
He's speaking, he's uttering his what will he
say?
It wasn't something that they choreographed, manufactured, produced
or package.
It was not under their control.
When God spoke, he was in the driver's
seat.
And it was a situation they did not
like at all.
They were uncomfortable when God talked, but
it did create them in them a sense
for a need for a mediator.
You speak to us and we will listen,
but don't let God speak to us or
we will die.
They realized they needed a mediator because they
were in the presence of the holy God.
If people aren't in the presence of the
holy God, they don't sense any need for
a mediator.
And that's why people don't think they need
Christ in our culture, because they don't think
there's any danger.
God's not dangerous.
God, the God spirit, whatever it is, is
there to make me happy.
Couldn't possibly have any other intention than to
make me happy.
Contrast all of this.
This worship experience that they did manufacture.
And in which they were in control with
this episode that I've just mentioned, while Moses
was up on the top of the mountain,
it came in handy that God had a
mediator and they knew who that mediator was
because they needed it.
They were already sinning, breaking the commandments at
the bottom of the mountain that God was
giving Moses at the top of the mountain.
And we read and the people sat down
to eat and drink and they rose up
to play.
They sat down to eat and drink and
they rose up to play.
Not much time for eating and drinking.
We just sit down and get drunk and
get up and just have a whirl at
it and have a lot of fun.
Now that this talking God isn't bothering.
Let's make a golden calf that we can
see and control.
Well, it's still Yahweh.
We're not making we're not violating the first
commandment.
Another God.
We're just making a physical representation.
So we can have the Yahweh experience.
We're not having the Yahweh experience in our
worship here right now because Moses is gone.
We have no experience palpable experience of God
like the nation.
They see their God.
They have they have visual representations of their
God.
Why don't we just create a worship experience
here?
God tells Moses.
Moses, now leave me alone that my wrath
may burn hot against these people and I
may consume them in order that I may
make a great nation out of you.
Wow.
God takes worship very seriously.
But Moses was a good mediator.
He reminded God that he was the one
who brought them up out of Egypt.
But in those in those that narrative from
chapter 30 to 33 says, you know what
your people are doing down there below?
Moses.
Well, tell me.
And he tells him, he says, yeah, these
are your people are breaking my law.
I'm going to have to consume them in
my wrath.
And that's when Moses says, my people, they're
your people.
You know, I hear this all the time
throughout the week.
Go tell your son.
Why is he always my son?
Oh, but he's your son when he's when
he's acting splendidly.
And that kind of play goes back and
forth between God and Moses.
Not my children.
They're your children.
You brought them up out of Egypt.
Don't make me bear this responsibility.
You're the one who brought them up out
of Egypt.
You do something about it.
And the Lord relented from the disaster he
had spoken of bringing upon his people.
Do we need a mediator as Moses caught
up with Joshua on his way down the
hill?
Joshua thought he heard the sound of war
in the camp.
It was crazy.
People are attacking the camp.
Moses.
Said not the sound of shouting for victory
or the sound of the cry of defeat.
But the sound of singing that I hear.
And as soon as he came near the
camp and saw the calf and the dancing,
Moses anger burned hot and he threw the
tablets out of his hands and broke them
at the foot of the mountain.
He took the calf that he had made
that they had made and burned it with
fire and grounded in the powder and scattered
it in the water and made the people
of Israel drink it.
All that his derelict Lieutenant Aaron could say
to him.
Was, you know how the people are.
He'd read all the surveys, all the studies.
He'd been door to door asking people what
kind of church they'd like to have.
They went back to church.
He knew how the people are.
He didn't know how God is.
Moses was just God's servant and he kept
God from destroying Israel.
Jesus is God's son.
The one who pleads for us.
Pleads for us, not at the foot of
Mount Sinai, but at the top of Mount
Zion.
Bringing us peace and favor.
But we find ourselves sort of in an
analogous situation where our mediator has gone up
the mountain.
He has ascended to the right hand of
the father and much mischief is happening in
the meantime.
We can't wait for him to return and
so we make our golden calves.
We manufacture our worship experiences instead of living
in the tension of all of the already
that has happened and the not yet that
is still in the future.
Living in that tension is the most difficult
thing for us, especially in our culture where
living intention, living in the lack of resolution
is not something that we enjoy at all.
But we know not only do these experiences
for the moment generate the wrath of God.
If they are, in fact, idolatrous, if we
are projecting our images of God, but they
don't even last, they don't even do what
they are promised.
I can't remember most of the movies that
I've seen, even a lot of them that
I really like.
Some of the roller coasters that I really
like being on are really, really fun for
about a minute and a half.
And that experience is over and I walk
away and I'm just as exactly bored as
I was before.
But reports about objective facts that don't change
with my experience, anchor me outside of myself.
Reports grounded in objective facts are the most
significant experience generators in our lives.
Real experience, real experience can't be taken off
of the surface like cream.
Real experience comes from the depth of historical
events, of occurrences of objective states of affairs.
I'll never forget hearing the minister say, I
now pronounce you husband and wife.
If you've had cancer, you'll never forget the
doctor saying two things.
You have cancer.
And you're clean.
No sign of cancer.
Or do you remember when the doctor or
a nurse came in to the room?
If your husband and said, it's a boy.
Or if the girl started started bawling.
Remember, we had triplets who barely made it,
especially one of them in delivery.
And I was there in the delivery delivery
room watching them take out each of the
kids.
And we didn't know if the last one
they were going to take out was actually
still alive.
And when the doctors all said in unison
and then the nurses started chiming in, he's
fine.
He's alive.
He's fine.
I nearly fainted.
I didn't faint watching all the blood, everything.
I nearly fainted when when she told me
that my whole life changed.
Maybe you've seen a picture of that Life
magazine cover where you have the announcement of
victory in Europe.
They have total strangers in Times Square embracing
each other and dancing in the street.
Nobody said you want to dance.
It has happened.
They became uninhibited.
They embraced each other because the news was
so good.
And it concerns them both, even though they
didn't know each other.
That is the cross cultural community that Christ's
gospel creates.
And it creates it around him, not around
me and my choices, whether I like country
or I like rock, whether I like classical
or I like jazz, whether I like this
particular niche demographic and I'm going to build
my church around that.
Or a different kind of niche demographic, the
only niche demographic there is in the world
that are two in Adam and in Christ.
From the perspective of the kingdom of God,
those are the two niche demographics.
And Christ is creating his cross cultural community
around himself.
News can do that.
News can pull total strangers into a family
and make them embrace because, again, this is
not the family that you chose.
You didn't choose.
You're not saved because you chose Christ.
You're saved because he chose you.
That's what he says in John 15.
You didn't choose me.
I chose you and I appointed you to
go out and bear fruit that would remain.
And if that's true, brothers and sisters, you
didn't choose the people sitting next to you
in church.
You can't go to a church with people
who are just like you don't have a
right to that choice.
God elected the others just as he elected
you to be your brothers and sisters, regardless
of their race, regardless of their heritage, regardless
of their age.
Regardless of their breath, regardless of whether they
sing off key, regardless of whether they're nerdy
or they're slick in Christ, there is neither
male nor female Greek.
Nor do bond servants nor free for all
are one in Christ.
It's easy for us to settle for a
drive-thru meal because we can choose it.
We can be in control of the environment.
We can be in control of the experience
that we have.
We can settle for a drive-thru meal
because the autonomy that that experience gives us
is more important than the satisfaction derived from
a meal that took a long time to
prepare with a lot of friends and family.
I'm not saying, I mean, we live in
a busier culture.
I'm not saying let's go back to let's
all live on the farm.
What I am saying is these cultural patterns
have changed the way we come to church.
Maybe some of you have seen Babette's Feast.
It's a great movie.
I highly recommend it.
These are very pietistic.
It's a pietistic Lutheran enclave on a Danish
island, and their father has died, and their
father was the leader of this sect on
this island.
Very closed sect.
They have their own community, and everyone talked
about Papa as though he were this great
messianic figure, and they just repeated his sermons,
and there was sadness.
People knew each other but didn't really know
each other.
They didn't really talk and interact, and Babette
was a woman who had arrived on the
island from Paris.
Nobody knew Babette very much.
All they knew was that she wanted to
work for the two daughters of Papa.
These two spinsters who sat at home talking
about Papa's work and labors.
They said, oh no, we can't have a
servant.
She said, I won't be your servant.
I'll just be your cook.
I just want to live here and prepare
food for you.
And one day, to make a long story
short, she made this beautiful meal because she
won a lottery in Paris.
A ticket that she had forgotten about.
Everything came through, and what she wanted to
do for it was have all of this
food shipped from Paris because it turned out
she was a great chef in Paris and
had left for personal reasons.
So all of this great food came across
in a boat, and she prepared this enormous
meal to the great displeasure of the people
because they said, we'll enjoy it too much.
Well, let's just tell her we won't enjoy
it.
The Lord doesn't want us to indulge our
senses like that.
And they couldn't help themselves.
They started eating each course with greater and
greater relish, drinking the fine wine with greater
and greater delight.
And then they started taking delight in each
other.
By the time it was over, they all
were laughing and crying and holding each other,
embracing each other, hearing each other's stories that
they'd never heard for 40, 50 years of
living together.
It's a great meal.
It was a great feast that brought them
together.
If things can happen like that simply in
the realm of creation and common grace, how
about the feast that God prepares when he
spreads open his word and gives a morsel
from his heavenly table to the Lord's supper?
Snacking is for tourists.
It's not because we're fundamentalists and we just
want to batten down the hatches and not
let our emotions have any place and not
be touched at all by anything sensual or
worldly.
It's because we want the feast.
We want the real deal, not the happy
meal.
We're not going to settle for the things
that this present evil age is willing to
settle for.
We want to go to the feast.
And at this feast, God is the one
who prepares the table.
God is the one who comes up with
the menu.
We don't order a la carte.
We are neither masters nor tourists, but those
whom God has chosen, whom the Son has
redeemed, whom the Spirit has called to this
festive banquet by his marvelous grace, transferring us
from death to life.
Psalm 78 recounts the whole history of God's
relationship with Israel.
I'm not going to read the whole passage,
but we read about the rebellion of the
people in the wilderness.
They tested God in their hearts by demanding
the food they crave.
They spoke against God, saying, Can he spread
a table in the wilderness?
Indeed, he can.
And he did.
But they're asking, Can he spread a table
in the wilderness?
He struck the rock, so the water gushed
out and streams overflowed.
Can he also give us bread or provide
meat for his people?
Kept pushing.
Yeah, OK, this is fine.
But what about the garlic butter?
He even gave these gifts to sustain them,
gave them the meat, gave them the bread.
Like God keeps.
Here you go.
But his anger rose against Israel because they
did not believe in God and did not
trust his saving power.
Yet he commanded the skies above and opened
the doors of heaven and rained down on
them manna to eat and gave them the
grain of heaven.
Men ate of the bread of angels.
He sent them food in abundance, even when
they refused to trust in him and in
his provision.
And in John six, Jesus says, basically, we're
back in the same spot right now.
I am the bread from heaven.
Your fathers ate that manna in the wilderness
and they died.
But if you eat me, if you eat
my flesh and drink my blood, you have
eternal life.
I am the bread that came down out
of heaven.
Now you better believe in me.
You better trust in this provision.
And Paul said that the Israelites in the
wilderness drank from the spiritual rock that followed
them, and the rock was Christ.
What Paul says about that rock in the
wilderness, that rock that was gushing out with
life, giving something as Jesus taught.
There's a time for fasting and there's a
time for feasting.
John the Baptist came.
We read neither eating nor drinking.
And they said, behold, a crazy man.
He must have a demon because John the
Baptist ministry was one of judgment, warning them
of imminent disaster.
The king was coming to his house to
divide brother against brother and sister against sister,
and that moment is just around the corner.
Repent.
And so he was in a phase of
fasting.
And he exhibited that in his whole demeanor.
But Jesus came and when Jesus came, it
was time for feasting, not a time for
fasting.
He said, when the bridegroom is here, can
the guests fast?
Fast.
The son of man came eating and drinking
and they call him a glutton and a
drunkard, friend of tax gatherers and sinners.
There are some great stories of this eating
and drinking that we find in Scripture, and
I'm going to focus on one as I
as I close here.
The main event, eating and drinking with God.
You can find all kinds of examples of
eating and drinking with God as a theme
in the Bible.
You can trace it all the way from
the Garden of Eden, where.
The great feast was promised at the end.
And instead, Adam and Eve decided to do
a drive through meal.
Have it their way.
Eat before go ahead and eat before their
host showed up.
And then you have it at Mount Sinai,
where the elders go up to mediate and
Moses and the elders eat and drink with
the Lord.
And then you also have it in the
promise throughout Deuteronomy of entering into the land
of Canaan, the land flowing with milk and
honey to eat and drink in the presence
of the Lord.
So this theme is really large throughout the
Old Testament and especially the book of Deuteronomy.
And especially in Luke's Gospel, there is an
explicit intention to take the eating and drinking
in the presence of the Lord theme from
Deuteronomy and apply it to Christ in the
New Testament.
In fact, he explicitly uses that phrase in
Luke 13, 25, eating and drinking in the
presence of the Lord as invoking the covenant
meals of the Old Testament.
Jesus came so that his alienated enemy, the
offenders of his father's glory, could join him
at the feast and eat and drink in
the presence of the Lord.
Only now it's the insiders who refusing the
invitation are made outsiders and the outsiders who
embracing the invitation are made inside.
Another reversal in this unfolding plot, John the
Baptist, neither eating nor drinking, Jesus comes and
it's a party.
Why?
Because it is the new wine of the
kingdom.
It is a time for joy.
It is a time for exultation.
Jesus moves toward Jerusalem, and as he does
so, he teaches the disciples to invite to
the banquet those who cannot repay them.
Isn't that amazing?
The one thing that you have to be
sure of when you're writing up the invitation
list, when you're going out and you're talking
to people and bringing them to this feast,
just make sure that it's people who can't
repay you.
People were, as today, very willing to invite
people to feasts, hoping that they would invite
you to a bigger one.
Now, invite people to a feast who cannot
invite you to one, who can't return the
favor because that's what I do to you.
The disciples think that it's a victory celebration
when they get to Jerusalem.
A feast.
Oh, that'll be great.
An inaugural ball.
Sounds wonderful.
I'm there.
Count me in.
In fact, James and John say to Jesus,
how about one of us being on your
right hand, the other being on your left
hand?
When you come in your glory, can we
be seated next to you?
Be really great.
And their mother chimes in being a good
good mother.
You know, how about my boy?
And Jesus says, ma'am, you do not
know what you're asking.
Do you really do you really want them
to be seated and thrown next to me?
One on my right and one on my
left.
Oh, yes, I would like that very much
in terms of James and John.
How about you guys?
Oh, yes.
Can you bear that?
Are you sure you can bear that?
Oh, yes, of course we can bear that.
Now, it's going to be hard.
I realize we've got a lot to do
to transform the empire.
You know, Caesar is still in charge.
We've got to throw him out.
And then we've got to start with Palestine
and then move out from there.
We have a big job.
Even the Herod and the high priests are
corrupt.
Everybody's corrupt.
We're just going to have to start from
the bottom up.
But I think that we can do it.
Yeah, I'm in it for the long haul.
And Jesus was thinking one crucified on his
right and one crucified on his left.
And he told him, no, neither one of
you are going to have to do that.
He knew he wasn't going to a victory
celebration.
He knew he was going to his death.
He knew that he was going to have
to fast his whole life so that we
could be.
And so finally, Jesus appears after his resurrection
in Luke 24.
He appears in his resurrection to the women
who now go ecstatic, having met Jesus and
heard of his resurrection, go to tell the
men.
The men didn't believe the women.
And that very day, we read two disciples
were on their way to Emmaus, about seven
miles from Jerusalem, discussing the momentous events that
had just transpired over the weekend.
And this time it's not an angel, but
Jesus himself who appears on the road.
But their eyes were kept from recognizing him,
we read.
And they stood still, Luke says, looking sad.
Then one of them named Cleopas answered him.
Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who
doesn't know what has happened in these days?
What thing, Jesus asked.
There's a little comedy here.
What thing?
And they said to him concerning Jesus of
Nazareth, a man who was a prophet, mighty
indeed and word before God and all the
people.
And how our chief priests and rulers delivered
him up to be condemned to death and
crucified him.
But we had hoped that he was the
one to redeem us.
Besides all this, it's now the third day
since all these things happened.
Some women of our company amazed us.
They were at the tomb early in the
morning and when they didn't find his body,
they came back saying that they had even
seen a vision of angels that said that
he was alive.
Some of those who were with us went
to the tomb and found it just as
the women had said, but him they didn't
see.
Night is falling and in good ancient Near
Eastern custom, the strangers invite or the two
disciples invite the stranger to come home to
dinner with them.
Getting dark, no need to be on the
road.
Find some refreshment.
Come to our house.
It's just over here and join us for
dinner.
One thing that was a little odd, though,
was that the guest started taking over the
meal.
He got behind the table and he took
the bread and broke it and gave thanks.
Do those verbs sound familiar?
They're the exact verbs that are used in
the institution of the Lord's Supper on the
night he was betrayed.
And they said, did not our hearts burn
within us as he opened up the scriptures
to us?
But now they recognized him in the breaking
of the bread as Jesus and their eyes
were open.
Now everybody was on the road back to
Jerusalem, back to the upper room where they
were waiting since the crucifixion.
But this time to get everybody on board
to go spread the word to the world.
The preacher became the content of what is
preached, the stranger became the host, and now
the hosts are the strangers.
And yet they too become recognized as witnesses
and friends of the host.
These two disciples run and tell the others.
And then we don't see Jesus in the
picture again until everyone is gathered in the
upper room.
And we read that Jesus appeared in the
midst of them saying, peace be unto you.
Wow.
The hopes and fears of all the years
in that room.
God finally can dwell not on the outskirts
to keep from singeing us with his holy
power and his fierce anger, but he can
dwell in the midst of us and say,
peace be unto you with his nail scarred
wrists.
And they too see and recognize.
We read in the breaking of the bread
here.
Jesus goes preaching himself.
He showed them how all this had to
be true from all the scriptures.
And then there's the breaking of the bread,
the preaching of the gospel and ratifying it.
With a sacrament, that's how God works, as
we saw with Abram in his vision.
He not only provided our redemption, he gives
us the faith and he confirms and he
seals that weak faith so that it grows
and grows and clings more and more to
his promise.
The proclamation of Christ in scripture in terms
of promise and fulfillment becomes the substance of
apostolic preaching in Acts, as Jesus Christ stood
in the midst of his people every time
the word was preached in the sacraments were
administered.
And that's why we read in Acts 2,
42, that they gathered regularly for the apostles
teaching, for the fellowship, for the breaking of
the bread and for the prayers.
Not for a worship experience, but where God
is in the midst of us saying, Peace
be unto you.
That, brothers and sisters, can't be packaged.
It can't be manufactured.
It can't be handled.
It can't be put in a crate.
It can't be skimmed off the top.
It can't be bottled.
And even now, a great feast is being
prepared.
This is the developing story right now.
Not the swine flu.
Not all the other stuff that we keep
seeing as developing stories.
Those are important.
Those are not unimportant stories.
But the developing story right now, more important
than all those other stories, is that guests
are now arriving from all over the world
for the feast that never ends.
For now, Christ is the meal.
I'm not going to eat and drink with
you of this feast until I come again
in my father's kingdom, which I take to
be a reference to his second coming.
But this is my body and this is
my blood shed for you.
Paul says the bread that we break is
a participation in the body of Christ.
The cup that we bless is a participation
in the blood of Christ.
For now, Jesus is the meal.
Through word and sacrament, Jesus is the meal.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood
has eternal life.
On that day, he will join us at
the table for the feast.
We close with a great line from Frederick
Buechner, who nicely summarizes.
There is little that we can point to
in our lives as deserving anything but God's
wrath.
Our best moments have been mostly grotesque parodies.
Our best loves have been almost always blurred
with selfishness and deceit.
But there is something to which we can
point.
Not anything that we ever did or were,
but something that was done for us by
someone else.
Not our own lives, but the life of
one who died in our behalf and yet
is still alive.
And that is our only glory and our
only hope.
And the sound that it makes is the
sound of excitement and gladness and laughter that
floats through the night air from a great
thing.
Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You that even
now there is a sense of the full
wedding supper of the Lamb from the age
to come invading this present evil age.
People may not know where it comes from.
They might not be able to place it.
They may not be able to find analogies
for what it might be.
And yet, Father, we're able to come to
them and tell them what it is.
To identify what this feast is and to
call them to it.
Help us, Father, to set that table.
Help us to invite the outsiders who cannot
repay us to join us, even as we
were outsiders who could not repay You.
Help us, Father, to go into the highways
and the byways.
Help us during this interim period, in this
day of grace, to call people to the
festival and help us, Father, never ever to
settle anymore for our own taste, our own
convenience, our own delight, our own happy meal
and our own experience that do not really
mediate the Kingdom to come.
In Jesus' name, amen.