Christ the King

Pentecost 26 year B 12 Sermon Christ the King

‘Christ the King?’ imagine some atheist asking...

What crazy people these Christians are...

followers of... this Jesus...

hanging up there on a cross...humiliated... ridiculed...bruised...bleeding... dying... dead...

Christ the King? Why he was powerless to prevent his own execution...his subjects...so few and so weak...
there was no one to fight for him

What sort of insanity... keeps these Christians faithful to Jesus Christ...when they can see with their own eyes he has no power at all. I mean, that’s the point of being a king isn’t it?  Power?

Aren’t kings supposed to be in complete control, possess absolute authority, the right to command armies and obedience, the privilege of punishing anyone who won’t comply? Don’t kings have palaces, wealth, vast empire, loyal subjects...Power!

These Christian’s don’t seem to understand power at all. [pause]

today is Christ the King Sunday...the last Sunday in the Church year...a day to celebrate... the rule and reign of Jesus our Lord.

over all things... in heaven and on earth.  

A day to celebrate the victory of God in Jesus...
over the powers of darkness...a day to rejoice...
in the glory of the kingdom of light...
to which we belong.

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Are we crazy...to proclaim that... in Jesus the kingdom of God has somehow already come...

though not yet complete...Are we foolish to believe... that in Jesus...the very power of almighty God...
is revealed and established...
right here in our human dimension.

I don’t think we’re crazy...not if the gospel is anything to go by. I just think our Christian understanding ...

of authority and kingdom and power...is mysteriously and utterly different...from of all those sneering cynics...
who watch Jesus die on the Cross... and who laugh at the apparent powerlessness... of Jesus’ followers and friends. [pause]

In his book Parables of the kingdom...

Robert Capon tells us... ‘if scripture has a single subject

at all...it’s the mystery of the kingdom of God...

not someplace else called heaven...not somebody at a distance called God, but [in] this place... right here...

and the Holy One who moves mysteriously... to make all creation true... both to itself… and to him.’

And how does God get the job done...the job of reconciling all creation to himself?  What does the Bible teach us… about the way God uses his power ...to achieve his purposes?

If we come to scripture... with a nice respectable notion of an omnipotent God... who has all the controlling and zapping power he needs to do anything he wants… any time he wants to...

we immediately have lots of questions don’t we...

like why is God taking so long to complete the project ...

‘why doesn’t God just knock some heads together,
put all the baddies under a large flat rock...
and get on with the job?’

Instead...when we read the Bible carefully...we see since the time of Noah... God’s had no interest...
in using direct power... to fix up the world.

Well, what do I mean by direct power... Well that’s something you and I use it everyday don’t we?

Direct power is mechanical power... it’s like force

...this morning at breakfast for example you probably used direct power to lift a steaming cup of tea or coffee to your lips...the cup didn’t have any say in it ...you used the power at your disposal to lift it...
and we use this direct kind of power all the time…
to mow the grass or arrange a bunch of flowers or type in a text message button by button.

This kind of direct power is ‘responsible for almost everything that happens in our human dimension of time and space. And one of the advantages of direct power... is that it works! From taking a splinter out of our finger...[pause]

to removing an enemy... with a hand grenade.

But you can already guess that using direct power... has one heck of a disadvantage...

Especially if you believe your purpose in life...

is to remain in loving relationships
with other people and with God. [pause]

Oh, sure you can drag your children out of the way of a moving car...but just try intervening...
 in their plans for the summer...
when they’re eighteen...
especially when their plans mess up your plans.

Let’s say your daughter sneaks out of the house at night without permission. You get angry and try to scare her out of doing it again...yelling and taking away privileges. But she does it again anyway...and again and again and again...

What do you do next...if you’re committed to using direct power as your parenting style...committed to using force?
Yell till your voice gives out?

Take away privileges till there’re no more to remove?

With nothing left...you beat her [if you’re stronger than she is]

until you’re exhausted... then you lock her in her room ...[pause]

Well, I hope you can see the logic… of why direct power is fruitless ...I hope you can see that
very early on in all this... your relationship with your daughter will be destroyed...

unless at some point...you simply refuse to use
the direct power you have at your disposal...


and instead of imposing the pain and punishment your rebellious daughter deserves... you
make yourself vulnerable...

and take onto yourself... all her sneering disrespect her haughty eyes and her pounding fists.

What kind of power is that... for heaven sake...

you might well ask? [pause]

Well disciples of Jesus… from Martin Luther to Martin Luther King… have said that kind of power
is the opposite to direct power. But it is power…
Some say it’s the difference between right and left handed power.

Just look at your right hand for a moment...make a fist ...Right handed power certainly looks forceful and strong and in control...

Now look at your left hand...and hold it out like this in a gesture of welcome or support...

left handed power might look weak – it may be difficult to tell the difference between intervention and nonintervention when you’re using left handed power...

and you certainly can’t guarantee left handed power
will stop evildoers at all.

Well it could soften their hearts but then again…
it might not.

In fact the only thing… left handed power does guarantee... [pause]

is that after you’ve been rejected and battered and hung out to dry or to die...

you won’t have closed any doors...
from your side of your relationship.

Now you might say...that’s not exercising power.

But when we turn our eyes to the Cross of Christ ...

we see... that left handed power is power...
so much power...that it’s the only thing in the world...

that evil can not touch. [pause]

Jesus died forgiving.

Robert Capon puts it this way ‘with the dead body of Jesus ...God wedges open the door between himself and the world and said. ‘there, just try to make me take that back!’ [pause]

At the beginning of his ministry...Jesus was tempted in the wilderness...tempted to use direct intervening power
to accomplish his mission
and establish the kingdom of God on earth.

His disciples hoped he would use force...
direct right-handed power... to overthrow the Roman’s and restore David’s holy city... to the Jews.

But even at the start of his work as a rabbi...
Jesus warns his followers to keep quiet…
about his use of right handed direct power...
When he feeds the five thousand... There’s no hocus pocus... no long prayers... no holy exhortations...
no dazzling sweeps of the cape...that would make great prime time TV…

Jesus simply asks ‘How much food have you got?’

And...Jesus just breaks up the loaves and fishes and passes them around. Jesus doesn’t want his followers to make a fuss about right handed power...he seems to realise the world isn’t going to be saved by miracles...

No the world’s going to be saved...
by a deeper more powerful left handed mystery...

at the centre of which… would be Jesus’ own death.

What saves the world...what saves us... is Jesus...

Because in the right handed realm of Caesar and Herod…
Jesus the King…feeds us with his own hands…washes our feet…heals our broken hearts…restores us to loving community…Jesus completely redefines what it means to be king.

and the way we lay hold of that salvation...

is through faith. And faith simply means...

trusting Jesus...saying yes to him rather than no ...

turning our faces toward him...modeling our lives on him. Modeling our church community on the values of mercy and forgiveness he preached.

What isn’t going to save us is turning our faces toward Caesar or the religious authorities in the Temple...
or any other power and principality… in existence today...

and if… as it was in first century Jewish culture...
if the title of king... is the highest rank we can think of…
if we understand the promise they held onto
that a descendant of David would indeed inherit his earthly throne...and rule over the kingdom of Israel…

as Paul wrote to the church at Philippi

slide words

Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.

Slide words

Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

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When we take up our cross and follow him...as individual disciples and as a community of faith…we commit ourselves to Jesus left handed power... proclaiming him to be the ruler of our hearts…and Lord of our Lives…

announcing to the world that through his rule
will come the salvation of the earth….

The Priesthood of Christ

Pentecost 25 year B 12 Sermon

A very good friend of mine, Jason Goroncy, who just happens to be an internationally respected theologian …became a Protestant around twenty five years ago …when he converted from the Catholicism of his childhood…

Jason says he ran into some really scary views of God when he converted…like the one that says God becoming human in Jesus…‘the incarnation…
was God’s attempt to get the reconciliation ball rolling …and that Jesus…
having laid the foundations for reconciliation …
went back to heaven to sit down next to God in the great lounge room in the sky to watch how everything pans out.

And just before his ascension, Jesus forms a little community …to work as kind of subcontractors to the big boss upstairs.

Jesus the foreman… trusts this community to carry on his work while he’s away…and promises to turn up again when the job’s nearly done…just to check everything’s been done … according to instructions.

The implications of this view seemed weird to Jason …
because it sounded like…if God’s costly work in Jesus is to make any real difference in the world… then we need to get off our bums and make sure we get everyone we know
into a home group, or along to church or at the very least, reading a book or watching a DVD…
that tells people in graphic terms…
just how warm their future existence is going to be
unless they pray some magic words.

In other words…some protestants seemed to be saying… whereas God had once been personally invested in this little project called ‘creation’…
God has now taken a back seat to the whole project…

a bit like the founding director of a company
who still serves on the board of directors in a sort of honorary position but who’s really relinquished the right to call the shots. Now the shareholders do that.

What really worried my formerly orthodox friend
is that the church’s central claim about God being trinity …Father, Son and Holy Spirit…
and the belief that God has in Jesus…embraced a fully human existence

…well these core beliefs appeared to make no practical difference to how the protestant church went about its business.

For Jason, the view of a disengaged God…
created profound problems. There was nothing to explain what God expects from human beings…that God doesn’t expect from a kangaroo, or a pine tree, or a cancer cell. [Fortunately Jason found not all Protestants share such a shallow view]…

to his relief…Jason discovered a different protestant perspective in a remarkable explanation of humanity’s role in God’s creation
written by Scottish theologian James Torrance…[i]

Earth slide

Torrance suggests God made creation… to be something like an orchestra for God’s glory…and that human beings were created to be the conductor of that orchestra, to lead the orchestra in divine praise… as the priests of creation
And now the reason the whole creation is groaning in universal travail…is because creation’s priests have miserably failed… to fulfil their vocation.

Torrance suggests...rather than abandon God’s purposes for humanity and creation…

Jesus slide

God comes in Jesus Christ…
as a second Adam to be the Priest of Creation…
to do for humanity what humanity failed to do…

to offer to God… the worship and praise
the sons and daughters of [Adam and Eve] failed to offer…
[in other words God comes in Jesus]…
to be creation’s worship leader…
and to carry in his loving heart…the joys and sorrows and prayers and conflicts…of all God’s creatures

And the reason for this…
so he might reconcile all things to God.
And only in Jesus’ life and priesthood do we truly discover
what it means to be human.

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[For my friend Jason]…this presentation of the good news was nothing short of an epiphany…[he’d] been in the church [his] entire life… but never ever realised until that moment…how deeply God’s grace penetrates into our broken humanity; [never understood before] how God assumed our humanity in all its falleness and refused to be fallen in it. Never appreciated how Jesus’ offering of praise and obedience…carries all creation
into the healing freedom of God.
Coming from a denomination full of priests…
reading a protestant essay… Jason suddenly discovers what Jesus priesthood means: In his words, ‘here at last, is a true human being, given by God, who sets up shop inside the perversion and disorder of a diseased creation… and who step-by-step, blow-by-blow, moment-by-moment…loves God with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength…

and in doing so leads creation itself… in fitting worship which transforms the human condition from the inside out.’

[Now you probably know that traditionally the church talks about the three offices of Christ…not only the priestly office expressed in the passage from Hebrews we just heard but also the prophetic and kingly offices.
You’ve probably heard it…prophet, priest and king.

And today we’re looking closely at Christ’s priestly office …next week on Christ the King Sunday…
we’ll look at Jesus kingly office…and closer to Christmas
I’ll try to knock your socks off…
with my sermon on Jesus prophetic office.

But for today what does the priestly office of Christ mean for our life together, and for our worship?
[what is the good news in it…for us?

Well for one thing, Jason points out…it means we’re never abandoned…to work out life on our own…something that could lead only to despair. Christ’s priesthood means our life and worship [are led by Jesus…and by no other priest.]

And it means…our life and our worship…
are always about participation in the life of another.
It [most certainly] does not mean that each of us can be our own private priest...exercising our own private arrangements with God.

It means our worship…is our joyful ‘Amen’ as we share in Jesus’ own worship… As the writer of Hebrews puts it

Slide words

Jesus is our Leitourgos, Leitourgos,  our worship leader… who takes the painful groans of our hearts and our fumbling words and our tormented efforts at prayer and praise and places them into his own mouth and offers them up to God in the freedom of the Spirit...this is the worship God provides.

[And remember] Israel’s job description was to ‘be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation’ a commission grounded in God’s own concern for the nations.

Israel represents those elected by God to be the light to the world, the city on the hill, the salt of the earth…and when they were they were carrying out God’s holy purposes…so what we are dealing with here…is the concept of holiness.[ii]

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The ancient Hebrew notion of prophet, priest and king…

saw the priest as the ‘caretaker of holy spaces and holy

times’…distinguishing for the community…between what has been set apart by God for some purpose…and what was ‘common’ or ‘ordinary’ [or secular]. The task of the priest or priestly community…was to ‘keep the divine Presence’ in the community’s heart.

It is the logic behind the daily service in the tabernacle and keeping the Sabbath…holy times…where God becomes vivid…even tangible…where God’s presence is manifest… where infinity enters space and eternity enters time and [and where God makes space for humankind.][iii]

And my friend Jason sees tremendous implications for us as a priestly community…in a world that’s forgotten
God is truly living in our midst…and cares deeply about all creation…

[But Jason suggests] our Christian understanding of holiness must go further than ancient Israel…because for us…God making space for creation and creation making of space for God…all comes together…
in a particular life called Jesus of Nazareth. [pause]

Yes it’s true that for many religions…human priesthood is about marking out and maintaining certain boundaries
of predetermined notions of holiness…But for Christians …holiness is radically re-defined… by a particular life …which takes shape in our world. The life of Jesus Christ For Christians…incarnation defines holiness…

So viewing holiness through the lens of Christ’s incarnation…what does holiness look like?

Well, the first thing we might say is
Jesus’ life and particularly his resurrection…
reveal there’s no place in creation
where Christ is not Lord. The idea there are ‘God spaces’ and ‘not God’ spaces…is fundamentally inappropriate
for a Christian understanding of God and Creation.

Like the story in in Mark’s gospel where after freeing a demon-possessed man and causing 2,000 pigs to commit suicide…Jesus is immediately accosted by…
the father of a dying girl.

On his way to see the girl…Jesus is almost crushed by a crowd…in which is a woman who’s been haemorrhaging for 12 years. According to the Law she’s ceremonially unclean, and so is everyone and everything she touches. This means whoever comes in contact with her
is excluded from the temple and its worship.

Jesus represents hope in a long line of doctors and miracle workers she spent all her money on for over a decade.
For twelve years this woman’s been treated like a leper in her community…for twelve years she’s been untouched … and untouchable…unable to hug her kids…unable to pour a drink for a friend. No one’s invited her to their home.

Now this woman doesn’t want to know Jesus. She’s not seeking a relationship with him…she wants to be healed. She wants to be restored to her community. She wants to be able to go to her kids’ birthday party and make love with her husband. She wants to be able to prepare a meal for her family and enjoy a day out with her friends.

And she hears reports of this guy in town who heals people and so, at the absolute end of her tether, she goes along to check him out…and she moves in on Jesus from behind... anonymously in the crowd.

This is the man who deliberately touches unclean lepers and corpses. The man who made a point of eating with prostitutes and calling ‘sinners’ his ‘friends’…
who deliberately goes out of his way to do almost everything that the Hebrew Scriptures prohibits us – and especially priests – from doing.

But will he allow this woman to touch him, to pollute him, to make him ceremonially unclean? Because that’s precisely what she does when she touches him. Yes he will…

And in that action, Jesus restores this woman to her family, to her community, and to God. And the same thing happens again when Jesus takes Jairus’ dead daughter’s hand… something Leviticus is clear priests shouldn’t do.

So what is this priest of God doing touching a dead girl?
Like the woman with the issue of blood He is restoring

her to her community…and by so doing so…reminding Israel that priestly ministry…is not only radically restorative but risky. Like offering bread to everyone…

Viewed this way the good news of the gospel is about reconciliation to the table…about restoring all creation to the community of God manifest in Jesus Christ.

Clearly with Christ leading our mission and our worship …God isn’t just sitting around waiting for the church to get its act together, to enlarge the family business and extend its share in the marketplace.

Rather, in this liberating invasion of the cosmos we call incarnation… in Jesus God invites the priestly community to participate in God’s own movement towards the world… summoning all creation into the life of God’s reign...to reconciliation and wholeness.

So what does this mean for us…for the community which shares in Jesus’ priestly ministry?  It means we’re not distinguished by our political views, moral decisions, our conduct or piety...but by our radical esteem for the Incarnation of God in time and space in Jesus Christ…
the one who continually corrects our understanding
of what it means to be human

In light of this… my friend Jason suggests…
Christ’s priestly community is constituted by and for a love so radically centred on others…
that it refuses to imagine life apart…
from blessing its enemies…and forgiving those who would crucify it…A community which risks even its life to ‘become contemporary with Christ’.[iv]

As I said last week… Jesus likened the Kingdom of God to a feast…and Jesus priestly ministry reveals the great extravagance…the reckless, scandalous expenditure of His life for the sake of the world’s life.

He gives away His life and the world finds new life in His life and in His gift of His life to the world. My friend Jason suggests that the church must be a priestly community or it isn’t the church at all.

The Rev Dr. Jason A. Goroncy delivered this address to the elders of the Southern Presbytery, Windsor Community Church, Invercargill, 17 August 2012, with his permission I have adapted it as Part One of a three part series on the offices of Christ. The resources Jason used are represented as endnotes.

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[i] James B. Torrance, 'The Place of Jesus Christ in Worship' in Theological Foundations for Ministry (ed. Ray S. Anderson; Edinburgh/Grand Rapids: T&T Clark/Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979), 348–69.

[ii] Jonathan Sacks, Kehunah and Kedushah: The Priestly Role [2012]; Online:

http://www.chiefrabbi.org/2012/07/11/kehunah-and-kedushah-the-priestly-role/. This and the following citations from Sacks are taken from this article.

[iii] Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964), 363–85. See Jason A. Goroncy, 'The Elusiveness, Loss, and Cruciality of Recovered Holiness: Some Biblical and Theological Observations', International Journal of Systematic Theology 10, no. 2 (2008), 195–209.

[iv] William Stringfellow, A Private and Public Faith (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 19.

Murray Rae, Kierkegaard and Theology (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 180.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (ed. Eberhard Bethge, et al.; trans. Isabel Best, et al.; Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works; vol. 8; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 56. See Stringfellow, Private and Public Faith 80–81. Also William Stringfellow, Instead of Death (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2004), 101: ‘The biblical witness is always a witness of resistance to the status quo in politics, economics, and all society. It is a witness of resurrection from death. Paradoxically, those who embark on the biblical witness constantly

Risky Business

        Pentecost 24 year B
        Mt 25:31-40

Where ever Jesus was...people were fed. Only his disciples

hadn't really noticed. They just took it for granted

or ignored it because there was so much going on.

And that's probably why they didn't understand...

when Jesus told the parable of the kingdom you just heard

and it sounds like he didn’t expect them to understand.

But you heard it didn't you…

where people are being fed...

that's where Jesus is going to be.

Where the Kingdom of God is going to be.

And to help Jesus bring it in...it's crystal clear

he expected his followers to feed people too.

To feed people with food yes …feed people with love…

with teaching... with guidance…but always food…

the breaking of bread, picking corn on the Sabbath,

party time at Matthew’s house, the crumbs from under the table,
the kingly banquet, the loaves and the fishes…

Jesus...the people are hungry... let them go home…

no answers Jesus…......you give them something to eat!

there was food at the last supper...

barbequed fish on the beach at sunrise...

and Jesus telling Peter… 'feed my sheep'…

The kingdom of God is a feast…Jesus is saying...don’t you get it…didn't Isaiah foretell it… Come all who are hungry and eat without price…

And in today's parable… Put two and two together Jesus is telling them…offer bread to everyone…and just in case
you’re resistant to this level of generosity…I'll tell you
something…Jesus says...feed everyone…because you
never know when it's me…

[pause]

offer bread to everyone... because everyone’s invited to the
banquet...especially the widow, the orphan and the stranger…
the people you don’t know…

According to Jesus…the kingdom of God is synonymous with
lavish hospitality to people you don’t even know...

unholy people...unclean people...sinners...

and the Pharisee’s objected didn't they…

holiness they maintain...holiness...

is about keeping yourself apart…

refusing to touch the impure...keeping yourself clean...

our movement should remain pure

our race should remain pure...our religion... our temple

must keep the unclean out…

and this Jesus fellow is acting like it doesn't matter.

But Jesus' spiritual home wasn't in the Temple...

in fact the son of God had no place to lay his head

and everywhere he went…people were fed.

Jesus has no house …from which the unclean can be excluded…

he has a people of the new covenant...a movement... his church... his body... a people called out ...to feed others…with good news.

You give them something to eat ...Jesus tells his disciples.

You go out and invite everyone to the banquet…

How do you tell where Jesus is…well it's where people
are being fed…one way or another…body…mind and
spirit…

[pause]

you know I have spiritual visions occasionally…not very often…

I’ve shared a few with you…

a couple of weeks ago…

I saw a vision of the kingdom of God... embodied… incarnate…

in the women who share themselves like bread...

with the hundreds of mothers and fathers and children who come
to mainly music…in Wanaka and Hawea

Week after week... month after month… they offer hospitality
and  a place of nourishment ...for people in our community…

they set a welcome table …where no one is turned away.

I saw... that these women are bread…their identity is bread...

broken and shared...with young mothers and fathers...with screaming toddlers and babies with dirty nappies…

they give themselves…in obedience to Christ

In this vision I could see what they were doing was a form of
Holy Communion...with our women as the bread...
and mainly music as a  table around which anyone may gather…
and at which the very Word of God is shared…
I could see our mainly music teams...were a manifestation of the Body of Christ…broken and shared

But setting up this kind of hospitality was a risky business...there was opposition...at first...some people in our church just couldn’t get it...it didn't make sense to them...

why put ourselves out...why pay for all that heating…

and go to all that work... why feed all those people who don't
come to church?

…and at Hawea…the very idea of using our place of worship

as a space for dancing and singing and eating and playing…
and noise...offering hospitality without strings…

the very idea of children yelling and running around and eating in the church ...just drove some people to distraction...

Until they saw how beautiful the work really was...

the friendships formed...the generous feeding of bodies

minds and spirits.

And I think some were at first reluctant... because they’d never
quite caught Jesus vision of the kingdom of God as a feast...

as a banquet table to whom all are invited.

They’d never heard him saying…

You give them something to eat...

It never occurred to them Jesus was speaking directly to them.

[pause]

But that was almost ten years ago…

a lot of water has flowed under the bridge…

since then our church has embraced the hospitality of Christ 

as one of the cornerstones of who we are...

When we marched across the road and into the Hall

back in May...how many of you were part of that...

do you remember what we did once we gathered over here?

Ask?

Right...we shared bread and wine around this table...we
shared food...for body mind and spirit...we allowed the
Christ to feed us...with his very Body... we knew right then

that the Church was not a building... but a people...gathered
around his table... [pause]

That's why I asked in this months newsletter...what kind of image do we project of ourselves... as a church to this community...

Do people see us as a castle surrounded by a deep moat...

with the drawbridge up and locked up tight against the outside
world? Unwelcoming and impossible to get in. Does the
community think to be a part of it you have to be inside already ..and is what goes on inside the castle walls... a complete mystery.

Or maybe our community sees us as another kind of castle ...
maybe with the drawbridge down...and the big doors open.

Imposing and grand... towering above the surrounding village

And yes, you could summon up all your courage... to walk across the bridge...ready to run at moment’s notice...
in case your not welcome...especially since you haven't
been invited. Another image we could have...not only with our community ...but with other churches too...might look like a big shiny apple... being constantly washed and
polished...to create better music...better messages...
better us...

If we are a shiny apple congregation ...people might be shy about coming in...because they're afraid they might not be shiny enough... or talented enough...or wealthy enough...or smart enough...or
wearing the right clothes...

maybe people stay away because they think they'll be
embarrassed by not knowing enough or rejected because they're
 not good enough...or spiritual enough.

But there is a fourth kind of church…whenever the community
thinks about this kind of church... the first thing that pops into
their minds ...is a big cup of steaming coffee ...

or the smell of freshly baked bread.

In this fourth kind of church... people know they're welcome

 because the whole community has already been invited. They

 know that in some way... through the hospitality of the

community of faith...in some way... they will be fed...

because they know those who welcome them see their very

identity as Christ's Body... bread and wine broken and poured out.... for the salvation of the world.

I really really ...really pray... that we will continue to be a

cup of coffee or fresh loaf of bread...kind of church...

offering the hospitality of Christ to the stranger... because Jesus

had divine insight about the place of outsiders in God's purposes.

And of course Jesus' generosity was a risky business… 
wasn’t it? His vision of the kingdom of God...as an open
banquet table...got him crucified…

but that wasn't the end of the story...was it. It's after the
resurrection at that early morning barbeque on the beach ...that Jesus tells Peter to feed his sheep...

and here we are ... at the ends of the earth…

getting ready to obey...preparing to offer ourselves to our

community…

breaking open our resources like freshly baked bread...

opening our doors to strangers... with signs of welcome and

hospitality...and smells of  the best coffee in town...who knows? 

What I do know... is that everywhere Jesus is people are fed

 ...and that he told his followers to give them something to eat.

And of course we remember that he promised...

whatever you do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters

of mine, you do for me.