Title:
Grace... The Ongoing Meal
Our ongoing living in grace with Christ and with one another.
Dramatic story-form retelling of David‘s grace actions towards Mephibosheth - from 2 Samuel 9:1-13. This story gives us an incredible picture of God's grace to us -- as indicated by the word 'kindness'. There are many lessons that we can learn about Grace from this story...
* God’s Grace will find you – it remembers, pursues and carries us.
* God’s Grace is where you abandon your crippled past and your crippled mentality.
* God’s Grace is where you discover who you were born to be – a new position of intimacy, an ongoing perpetual position.
What I want to focus on is another aspect of God's grace towards us: that we come into a continual experience of that grace as is illustrated by Mephibosheth leaving Lo-Debar (No pasture) for Jerusalem so that he could "always eat at the King's table" "like one of the King's sons."
Point 1: The Ongoing Meal....
We continue to live & stand in Grace.
“Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem because he always ate at the king’s table, and he was crippled in both feet.” (2 Samuel 9:13) Many people are aware that grace is required when we begin the Christian life (Eph 2:8) - but what is
not so well understood and appreciated is that God brings us into a lifelong experience of His grace.
NT pointers to this: 'Jesus Christ came full of grace and truth - of his grace we have received one blessing after another' (John 1:14-16) - or another translation has it as 'we have received grace upon grace.' Also Romans 5:2, Acts 13:43.
We are continually receiving and being strengthened by His grace - whether that is in our Christian walk, our sanctification, the spiritual gifts are designated as grace gifts, and our service. Even for church leadership - that is a work and role that has to operate from God's grace: Romans 15:15-16, 1 Corinthians 15:9-11, Ephesians 3:8.
So we have in the Mephibosheth story - a picture of the need to live in grace -- as seen as the place of the "ongoing meal" between David and his family and Mephibosheth – at the King’s table. Christ invites us to an ongoing meal. Revelation 3:20 tells us that He will come in to eat with us, and we with Him. So opening the door and receiving Christ into our lives means that we enter a
continual and ongoing ‚meal‘ of fellowship and friendship with the Lord. There is a restored relationship that is shown by "having a meal together." There can be continual feasting - our fellowship with Christ.
The basis of this is the Cross - where enemies are brought to peace and strangers are made into friends. The cross shows this through the two directions of the pieces of wood that comprise it: the vertical trunk - that shows us the reconciliation between God and Man - but also the horizontal trunk
that shows us the peace and reconciliation is made possible between people - but only through the cross. Ephesians 2:14-18.
In the OT, agreements or covenants were sealed by the eating of a meal - a symbol of that newly-found peace and harmony. Meals in the Bible are powerful images of intimacy and unity.In Kurdistan today, meals form a very important part of making agreements and covenants - it is the way that friendships are bonded together and deals are sealed. We have found the Kurds to be a
very hospitable people - they are always inviting us for meals -- so that it will demonstrate and deepen our friendship & fellowship together. One family wants to have us over for a meal monthly!
There is also an Arab custom that demonstrates this. After a meal with Arabs, they will often say, "Salt and Bread - we have shared salt and bread." This illustrates the concept that: we have eaten together - of the same salt and bread - so let there be no kind of emnity between us into the future.
So we have the idea of The Ongoing Meal.... we continue to live & stand in Grace. But in our own situation as a church, there is more to grasp here.
For we are ALL equally Mephibosheths that have been saved, restored and being blessed continually by the Lord. We ALL have weaknesses and failure (as illustrated by Mephibosheth ongoing disability and crippledness in both feet) but we have ALL come to continually enjoy the King's Table.
So what does it mean that we continually share the King's Table TOGETHER?
Point 2: The Ongoing Meal....
Developing and deepening grace relationships (friendships) within the body of Christ.
“They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.” (Acts 2:46) So this perpetual grace is ours, relationship and fellowship have been restored in Christ - there has to be peace, harmony and wholeness (Shalom) in eating together - but we must apply this to the relationships with our fellow-believers at the King's Table.
We must seek to develop and deepen relationships and friendships within the body of Christ. We see in the Book of Acts that the believers regularly met together both for spiritual purposes (being taught, prayer, communion, as well as regular worship at the temple) but they also gathered regularly for eating with one another - “They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad
and sincere hearts.”
In fact this pattern is seen frequently where "Meeting" and "Eating" are often seen synonymously in the NT - gathering in people's home (requires that the host provide some refreshments), and love feasts where the Lord's Supper was also celebrated as part of the love feast.
As we have seen, eating together provides the way that 'family relationship', and a sense of 'bondedness and covenant' between the different people can be cemented and deepened. It is a very important aspect of church that isn't always followed up on. The opposite is also true - that where relationships between church people are weak or non-existent, then the likelihood of destructive disagreement and conflict is increased dramatically. In addition, one study has shown that where church members have less than five friends in a
congregation then there is little incentive for the person to remain in the fellowship when minor traumas and disappointments come across their pathway from others in the church (or from leadership, or from church style and procedural issues etc.).
One friend once counselled us: “Where there are conflicts on a team, work on building up good relationships and friendships between each other.” This would be the way to ensure that personalissues are taken out of the equation and that subsequent conflicts can be handled in a constructive fashion rather than destructively.
So how do we build up these relationships together?
It requires that personal 'one-on-one' or 'couple-on-couple' time is taken to get to know each other better. So that there is an opportunity to discover the other people in the church.
- "Let's get together for a coffee."
- "Come over for your tea (evening meal)"
But the times have changed from then! We are preaching a 'social gospel' - a gospel that reminds us that Christians are brought into the Body of Christ and that there must be good social relationships between them without partiality! We are called to live in friendship and brotherly love with one another - this is the ministry of the Body to one another (and without regard for the Body of Christ,
the church members, there will come judgment from the Lord - 1 Corinthians 11:29-34).
Key to this is to regain an awareness of the practise of hospitality (Philoxenia - love of strangers). Cf. Matthew 25 "I was a stranger and you invited me in..."
"When did we see you a stranger and invite you in?"
"Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers (and sisters) of mine, you did for me."
The Bible teaches that we must practice hospitality and offer hospitality to one another (Romans 12:13, 1 Peter 4:9) and that it should be a normal characteristic of those in leadership (1 Timothy 3:2). How can we define hospitality: "a conscientious pursuit of welcoming strangers and friends into
our homes and lives, so as to make them feel truly loved and accepted."
Again, hospitality doesn't only mean food - it means taking time with people, having a welcoming attitude, and undertaking any shared activity where there is scope for truly meeting one another and discovering about one another.
Humourous slide: picture of two hamsters eating. The family that eats together ... stays together. Application: We should want to see that there is an aspect of having "an ongoing meal" with one another - that can only be strengthened by physically sitting down together over a tea/coffee or over a meal, or participating together in a shared physical-social activity (e.g. going for a forest walk together). This means that we each do this - both with people we already know in the church, but more importantly, with those that I/we don't know so well within the church family. This will mean young adults sitting with older church members - and 'established' church members sitting beside and engaging with newcomers etc.
Point 3: Our attitudes for the ongoing meal
"Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”
(Colossians 3:12-14)
How can we do this hospitality? How do we overcome our reserve and unwillingness?
It works both ways - young people can also be unwilling to lift their eyes from the various screens that they are looking at in order to engage with other people!
We do this by God's strength and grace. Colossians 3:12-17. "A significant measure of the Christian life is found in how we treat people and the quality of our relationships with them."
What does the Lord say to us? "Clothe yourselves" with certain qualities and attitudes. So what do we have to put on in the pursuit of good relationships with one another?
- Compassion - "I will be conscious of the other person's distress and have a concern for them and I will have a desire to alleviate this distress."
- Kindness - "I will respond to God's grace, kindness and mercy by showing you the same attitudes!"
- Humility - "I will consider our equal status before the Lord."
- Gentleness - "I will not dominate, manipulate or coerce you for my own ends."
- Patience - "I will persevere in my love response towards others."
- Bearing with each other - "I will not be filled with resentment towards the weakness and sins of others."
- Forgiving one another - "I will be ready to own my mistakes and faults to say, 'I want to apologise for...' or to say, 'I'm sorry that....'" and "I will also quick to say, 'You are forgiven' and 'I've forgotten about it already'"
- Love - "I will consider my neighbour's good - as dear as my own, and give all that it takes!"
God has called us to the "ongoing meal" of fellowship and peace within the 'House of Grace' - and we live out these attitudes of Grace in order to love, accept, help and encourage one another.
We must cultivate certain graces ...
- The grace of acceptance - cf Romans 14:1 - 15:7 (esp 15:7)
- The grace of listening - to understand and appreciate the other person.
- The grace of openness (open communication) - we should have the courage to speak openly about our personal beliefs, opinions, preferences, feelings and concerns ... to express one's hopes, fears and aspirations.
- Lastly, the grace of submission ... as an evidence of the filling of the Holy Spirit "submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ."
Application:
Rembrandt Picture of the Prodigal son – the son is received by the father into an ongoing grace relationship - but what is the response of the older brother?? We aren’t told how he responds to his father’s entreaties that he will join the party. But what will our response be to those ‚strangers‘ in the church and those new people coming into the church?
© Andrew Hyde December 2013
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