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WALKING TOGETHER | EATING WITH DISCIPLES LUKE 24:28-49

Pastor Duane Smets

October 2nd, 2016

I. Spiritual Meals II. Relational Meals III. Missional Meals Welcome once again. If this is one of your first Sundays I want you to know we’re really glad you’ve come. We’re not a fancy church but what we hope to be is a real church.

Our hope and desire is that you encounter and connect with real people, people who are real and even more than that with a real God. One whom we truly believe does exist and does interact with us extending to us His love and care through worship, through His Word and through the kindness of His people.

If you are new, or were gone last week, you’ve come into the second week of our fall sermon series “Walking Together” where we are looking at various snapshots of Jesus’ life and time with the followers He called disciples.

We believe Jesus was a real person, who really lived and walked the face of the earth. We believe the four different accounts of His time on earth are factual accounts, accurately reporting what He actually said and did. And then, in looking in on these accounts we believe something truly phenomenal took place.

In part, because of the things He said and did with these disciples and the way He did them, we believe there was something supreme about Him. In the various scenes, we see of Jesus with people we see a perfection and purity in them. Something mysterious, something enticing, really something divine.

It’s very interesting. There are many people who are unsure about the Bible and all the stuff it says about Jesus and what He did. And I get that. I understand that. I even sympathize with it. Some of this stuff is crazy and is a lot to swallow.

And that may be where you are today and if so, I’m glad you’re here. There’s room for people with doubts and questions about the Bible and Jesus here.

But what’s interesting to me is the why behind the questions and the doubts. And what I mean by that is usually the real reason behind many of the questions and doubts isn’t so much the result of studying the various arguments surrounding the historical accuracy or validity of accounts. Most people have never heard of redaction criticism, demythologization, “Q” hypothesis, developmental theory, autograph authenticity and a host of other stuff.

Often the real reason behind the skepticism really is this…it just sounds too good to be true. It just sounds too good to be true. Jesus really couldn’t have been that good, could’ve He? Jesus really couldn’t have really done those miracles, could’ve He? Jesus really couldn’t have really had the answers for this life and really modeled it with these guys, could've He?

It just seems too good to be true. But deep down it’s what we long for and what we wish we had and know we need.

This week for our next installment in our “Walking Together” sermon series is looking in on Jesus’ time eating with people, the significance of a meal and having meals together.

So to start us off on this I’ve got a question for you. What is your most memorable meal? As you think back over your life what are the meals that really stand out? Can you think of a few?

Now let me ask you a second question. What made that meal memorable? If there was a meal or a few meals that came to mind, what made them so significant to you?

Was it the food? Well…yes and no right? You probably remember what you ate and that was a part of it. But I’m guessing, actually I’m pretty sure that what really made the meal memorable to you was who you were with. It was who you ate with and what happened in that meal. I’m sure none of you thought of a meal, where you just sat down, all by yourself and ate alone.

When I asked this question a couple meals came to mind right away. One, was about 19 years ago, just down the street at the little Donuts Yogurt hole in the wall where this sweet, fun, beautiful young college girl and I went on one of our very first dates. I remember sitting outside of Donuts Yogurt at their little two person circle table and chairs, eating a bran muffin and vanilla yogurt and just looking at Amy, listening to her, laughing, getting to know her, being enthralled with her and falling in love with her. I’ll never forget that meal. There was meaning in that meal. A lot of it for me.

Another significant meal that comes to mind is more recent. Just about two years ago now we discovered that my father in law, whom I’ve become very close with, was diagnosed with stomach cancer and would soon be starting chemotherapy. Some of you know Gary. What you may not know is that he is full-blooded German. I’m half, but he’s full and grew up knowing that and celebrating that, especially at Thanksgiving.

So for Thanksgiving two years ago, we put on a full German Thanksgiving. With legit kielbasa, I had to go out to Lakeside to get, and we made verinca and sweebach. It was amazing. When we had that dinner we didn’t know if it would be the last Thanksgiving with Gary or not. Before we started eating Gary had this speech and I don’t even remember what He said because I think we were all in tears. But then after He prayed for the food we lived it up, eating and telling stories and laughing and getting as fat as we could. It was such a special meal. There was meaning in that meal. A lot of it.

What I want to look in and learn from Jesus today and His time eating with the disciples is the meaning of a meal. There is meaning in a meal and I believe God means for very special things to take place in a meal.

I’ve got three points for us to walk through together on this, “Spiritual Meals”, “Relational Meals”, and “Missional Meals” and the main passage from the Bible we’re going to be looking at is Luke 24:28-49. So why don’t you go ahead and stand with me to honor the Bible as God’s Word, I’ll read it, we’ll all thank Him for it together and then pray that God would work through it.

So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther, but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread. As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them. Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. 49 And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high. – Luke 24:28-49

• Pastoral Declaration: This is the Word of the Lord.

• Congregational Response: Thanks Be To God.

• Pastoral Prayer

I.

Spiritual Meals

First off, in this first point, “Spiritual Meals” is a general observation that what we just read in these two different stories of two different meals with Jesus and various people is that this was normal for Jesus to do with disciples.

These two stories occur after Jesus rose from the dead, so they are at the end of His time on earth before He ascends back to the Father and in both stories, Jesus’ eating with them holds great significance.

In the first one, verse 35 says, “he was known (or made known) to them in the breaking of the bread.” Now, I’m not sure why they didn’t recognize Jesus before. Whether it was because they were sad and downcast and not paying attention to Jesus’ facial features, perhaps hidden in a hood or because Jesus had intentionally cast a perceptive veil over himself so He could talk to them about the Bible in the way He did we don’t know.

What we do know however is that there was something about Jesus’ peculiar prayer and manner of breaking the bread that both physically and spiritually opened their eyes to see and recognize Jesus. The words, tone, and action of Jesus here triggered memories of the many times when Jesus had prayed and broken bread with them before, just like that.

I went back through just the Gospel of Luke and discovered that it records 12 different times when Jesus specially ate meals with people. Then there are another 12 times where He gives a teaching with an analogy related or connected to food and eating, which very likely were given in the context of a meal.

In the specific accounts of Jesus’ meals, every time something significant and something deeply spiritual takes place. After inviting the disciples to become His pupils they eat a meal together. A number of times they go fishing together and then eat afterward. Jesus takes His disciples along and eats meals at people who are skeptical about God and Him. They eat Levi’s house, Mary & Martha’s place, Jarius’ house, the house of religious leaders. He eats with a prostitute, drunk people and on one occasion makes food for 5,000 people to eat with Him. Jesus will eat with anyone anywhere.

Then He sums up His entire ministry with one special meal that gets called “the Last Supper” where He eats one last meal before the cross with just His 12 disciples who He spent three years day in and day out with. And in that dinner, He centers and connects His whole person and work to that meal saying the bread represents His whole life and the wine represents the blood He was gonna spill on the cross.

For Jesus, there was no separation between the physical thing of food and the spiritual work that is accomplished through the partaking of it and sharing of it with others.

One of the first meals recorded in Jesus’ ministry life is a meal He actually doesn’t eat. He’s alone and hungry and Satan comes along and suggests He use His power to turn some rocks into bread. But Jesus’ response was, “Man does not live by bread alone but by the Word of God (Matt. 4:4; Luke 4:4).”

Then later on one occasion, the disciples realized they didn’t really know how to pray. Not that they had never prayed but likely that there lacked the depth and intimacy of prayer they heard and experienced when they listened to Jesus pray, so they asked Him to teach them how to pray.

Jesus obliged and said to say something along the lines of, “Our Father, who is in heaven, Hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread…”

On the occasion when Jesus miraculously fed the 5,000 people after they were done eating He preaches this sermon and in it He is explaining what it means for people really to believe in Him and follow Him and become His disciples and He connects it to the food saying people must “eat His flesh and drink His blood” (John 6:1-58).

So you see in each of all these instances there is not a separation between the physical meal and the spiritual nature of it. They are connected. There is meaning in a meal. Deep meaning.

This happens to be the view of meals all over the Bible. There are tons of meals throughout all the stories and pages of the Bible and each one is significant.

Really, the whole Bible gets kicked off with a meal and then a meal gone wrong. After God creates everything He takes the man and shows Him at all and says, “You may surely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

The very next seen is God seeing that it wasn’t good for the man to be alone…eating all by himself. So God creates the woman and brings her to the man and he is overjoyed, saying “at last, at last, at last…I don’t have to eat alone.”

Things are good for awhile, but then Satan comes along, just like he did with Jesus and tries to corrupt and ruin the meal. With the man and woman, he is successful. He is successful in making them think the meal had a different meaning than the one God had said.

God said the meal was for their life and joy and relationship. The snake says the meal is a means to power.

Which is very interesting. It’s actually quite eerie to see how people can use a meal as a means to power in everything from who do or don’t invite to a dinner party to buying expensive plates at a banquet to raise funds for a political candidate.

Meals matter. They are spiritual. Deeply spiritual.

I think we have such a tendency to disconnect our bodies from our spirits. We tend to think they two operate disconnected and independent from each other. But it’s simply not true. Our souls are connected to our bodies. So then what we eat, how we eat, and who we eat with affects us spiritually.

When we eat food there are literally chemicals that are released in the brain and in the body which ends up making you feel the way you do. Then add into that scenario the way a discussion adds to the meal. If the conversation goes well, you may feel exhilaration, excitement, and joy connected to your experience. If the conversation goes bad, you may feel anger, frustration, and stress connect to your experience.

One of the books I’ve been reading lately is titled, The Body Keeps The Score written by a psychiatric doctor named, Bessel Van der Kolk. A lot of the cutting edge studies coming out on the physical human body is being discovered through the investigation of neurology. Right here in San Diego, USCD is one of the top schools for studying neurobiology and psychiatry.

The central tenant of Van der Kolk’s book is that the most significant events of our lives actually leave a kind of brand in our body in what we feel and how we store it and that can have either really positive or really negative results. Victims of trauma will store in their body a certain physical reaction so that if there’s ever an incident that consciously or subconsciously triggers that memory, they will react the same way with their body. Like looking down, biting one’s fingernails scratching one’s head or face when nervous.

On the positive side, and this is why I’m bringing this up, positive experiences with our bodies, with safe people, can bring healing, health, and wholeness. Eating a meal is something we do with our bodies and eating with the right person or persons can make it a saving experience. The meal can end up meaning a lot to you.

In our passage for today, look again at verse 32 and what they say about what happened after eating their meal with Jesus. “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us?”

In Luke’s Gospel, He records John the Baptist saying about Jesus at the beginning of His ministry is that Jesus would, “baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Luke 3:16).” This meal with Jesus at the end of Jesus’ earth ministry is an example of this when their hearts burned within.

One of the best explanations I’ve come across of what this experience is comes from Pastor John Calvin’s commentary on it from the 16th century. He says, “This inward warmth of the Spirit… stirs the affections, burns out impurities and kindles a truly fervent love for God.”

“This inward warmth of the Spirit… stirs the affections, burns out impurities and kindles a truly fervent love for God.”

So much can happen in a meal when we look at them not just as exercises to receive physical substance but also times to receives spiritual nourishment. Meals are meant to have meaning. They are times God means for His Spirit to work in us so that something which may seem just common becomes immensely meaningful.

In light of that, let me ask. Are you looking at eating as just an exercise or are you looking to them as times of spiritual grace for God to work through? Are your meals meaningful or meaningless?

In our family, when we gather around the dinner table we always pray before we eat. For us, that prayer isn’t some magical incantation with throw out to “bless the food to our bodies…in Jesus’ name.” Of course, the food is going to bless our bodies as long as there’s no e coli in it or something to make us sick. That prayer is really a prayer inviting God to our meal, to bless our conversation and our time together. That’s what we want. That’s what we need.

Meaningful meals happen when relationships are formed and fostered. To look into that more let’s move into our second point for today, “Relational Meals.”

II. Relational Meals First, let’s go back to our passage. In the first story, Jesus’ meal is with two people. The passage doesn’t name who it’s with, though because of the details there many people think one of them was Luke, Dr. Luke, the humble guy who wrote all of this stuff down. In the second story, Jesus’ meal is with this small group of His special disciples.

In each of these instances sharing the meal was a very intimate thing and in each very profound discoveries were made relationally. Many have said that eating a meal with another person is one of the most intimate encounters of human experience. That is, the most intimate encounter you can have with your clothes on.

In our last point, we talked about how meals are meant to be spiritual. So much so that even if you are eating alone, you can pray and invite the presence of God to be with you. One of my favorite things to do is to occasionally eat breakfast by myself and to read the Bible and just sort of pray while I’m eating and enjoy the presence of God. If that’s a real thing, what’s really happening then truly there’s no meal that you ever have to eat alone. Even when you’re alone you can be with God.

It’s interesting. Even when you people do eat alone. If you’re not thinking about God during that time, what do you think consumes most of people’s thoughts during that time? Usually, it’s about other people. Thinking about a love relationship, or something going on with other people at work, or a client or a job. People and relationships almost always come to mind.

What this points to is the reality that we as human beings are made by relationship for relationship. None of us would be here if a man and woman somewhere along the way had some kind of relationship together. Because of that, we are at our core relational beings. And one of the chief ways we experience and do relationship with other people is through meals.

There’s a great book written by a guy named Tim Chester titled, A Meal With Jesus. He writes,

“Food matters. Meals matter. Meals are full of significance. Few acts are more expressive of companionship than the shared meal…Someone with whom we share food is likely to be our friend, or well on the way to becoming one. The word ‘companion’ comes from the Latin ‘cum’ (“together”) and ‘panis’ (“bread”).

We all have favorite images of good hospitality. I think of my friends Andy and Josie and their farmhouse kitchen: vegetables fresh with garden mud, hot buns with a shiny glaze, warmth from the old stove, and the gentile flow of conversation from which talk of God is never absent for long.

Think about your dining room table or kitchen table. What dramas have been played out over this simple piece of furniture? Day by day you’ve chatted with your family, sharing news, telling stories, and poking fun. Values have been imbibed. Guests have been welcomed. People have found a home. Love has blossomed. Perhaps you reached across the table to take the hand of your beloved for the first time. Perhaps you remember important decisions made around the table. Perhaps you were reconciled with another over a meal. Perhaps your family still bonds by laughing at the time you forgot to add sugar to the cake.

Food connects. It connects us with family. It turns strangers into friends. It connects us to people.”

In the passages we are looking at today, this is the whole goal of each of Jesus’ meals. He’s looking to connect. Not only to connect them with each other but ultimately to connect people to Him.

Verse 27, which we didn’t read earlier, says he took the two guys he had dinner with in the first story, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”

His goal in that, yes in part was to teach them how to read the Bible well, that all the Bible and for that matter, all good stories, point to a superhero savior but really, the even greater goal was that they might relationally connect to Him as that man.

In the second story with the second meal, this becomes even clearer. Look at verse 46 and 47 with me. “It is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations.”

He has already revealed Himself as actually being Jesus Christ, He is the Christ. Now here He says that His goal and hope is that people, all “nations”, which is actually the word “ethnos” in Greek it’s translated from, so the goal and hope is that all ethnicities or all peoples might find repentance and forgiveness IN HIS NAME. In Jesus’ name. Jesus goal is to connect people relationally to Himself.

I want us to look at this line and unpack it more. What is this repentance He calls for and how does this forgiveness work and why is it in His name?

Here’s the first thing I’d say. If this relational reality is really the thing going on here then this repentance first and foremost is a turning to God and looking for a relationship with Him when there really hasn’t been one.

Most everyone, whether we mentally or verbally acknowledge it or not, deep down knows there’s a God, or must be a God or want there to be a God. We’re just not sure whether He’s really there or what He’s really like. Because of our fear, pride, hurt, whatever it is, we start looking for that relationship in other people.

But sooner or later we run into problems because we discover that people, no matter who they are, are not perfect and they end up hurting us. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a boyfriend, girlfriend, a spouse, even our kids. People hurt us. It’s because no human person can fill the biggest need for relationship that we have.

So this repentance, I believe, really is a turning to God and opening ourselves up to a relationship with Him.

The forgiveness thing is a relational thing. Forgiveness is only needed in relational contexts. I don’t need forgiveness from the piece of wood I took a saw to in order to make the new bed frame for our room the other day. I don’t need forgiveness from the wood because it’s not a person I hurt with my saw.

Now if I hurt another person with my saw that’s a different story. Which by the way, the saw is our words. Words cut much deeper than any other instrument. Even those who have suffered abuse will say it’s the things that were said along with the action that have left deep, deep wounds and scars.

Ultimately, whenever there is a need for forgiveness it’s because there has been some kind of relational breach. There was a disruption in the goodness, hope, and joy of what the relationship was supposed to be.

So the forgiveness is a relational thing. And here’s the kicker with what Jesus says, He says He gives that forgiveness, that the relational breech between us and God gets healed and forgiven, “in His name.”

How? How’s that work? It works like this. Remember, this is Jesus right after He died on the cross and rose again. So somewhere in the forty days between when He rose and when He ascended, going back to the Father.

In verse 46, He says He suffered and died and now rose so that the repentance and forgiveness could take place. So Jesus points to His work on the cross as being the means for those things to take place so the relationship with God can be restored.

In the Last Supper meal we talked about earlier, Jesus said His blood spilled on the cross was covenant sacrifice, meaning in it He was paying a price, a blood price for the wrongdoing. What was the great wrongdoing? Rejecting relationship with God. That’s a big offense… rejecting the person who ultimately made us, whom we owe our lives to.

So Jesus absorbs the cost that must be paid so relationship can be restored. There’s always a cost to restoration. In every car accident, someone’s insurance pays. So Jesus uses His perfect life to pay the cost.

When He rises from the dead, it’s an announcement that His work, His work on the cross, worked! Now all who look to Him in His name can receive forgiveness and be in relationship with God through Him, the divine Son of God.

That’s what this whole scene is about. Jesus shows Himself to the disciples in order to convince them that He really was God and what He did really worked, and that now because of that there is reason for joy and hope to move forward with the mission of telling others about it.

And that’s the third piece. The first piece is the breech in relationship with God. The second piece is restoration of relationship with God. The third piece is that then, because of that, we can be in healthy, good, relationships with others.

Deep down I really believe this is what we long for. To actually connect with God and to connect with other people. We are living in a time where there is an increasing dilemma and paradox growing among us.

In a time where we are more connected than we ever have been through this thing, the phone, we are becoming increasingly disconnected relationally and are suffering and longing for it.

Another really good book I’ve been reading lately is, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sheryl Turkle Here’s what she says,

“These days we want to be with each other but also elsewhere, connected to wherever else we want to be, because what we value most is control over where we put our attention. Our manners have evolved to accommodate our new priorities. When you’re out to dinner with friends, you can’t assume that you have their undivided attention. Cameron, a college junior in New Hampshire, says that when his friends have dinner, ‘and I hate this, everyone puts their phones next to them when they eat. And then, they’re always checking them.’

Keeping talking light when phones are on the landscape [has] become a new social grace. Studies show that the mere presence of a phone on the table (even a phone turned off) changes what people talk about. If ew think we might be interrupted, we keep conversations light, on topics of little controversy or consequence.

Why does the presence of digital communication end up making us feel less connect to each other? In short, online communication makes us feel more in charge of our time and self-presentation. If we text rather than talk, we can have each other in amounts we can control. And texting and email and posting let us present the self we want to be we can edit and retouch.

But human relationships are rich, messy, and demanding. When we we clean them up with technology….we end up with lives of less.

Studies show that when children hear less adult talk, they talk less. If we turn toward our phones and away from our children, we will start them off with a deficit of which they will be unaware.

We must remember who we are - creatures of history, of deep psychology, of complex relationships. Of conversations artless, risky, and face-to-face.”

That’s good. Really good. Interestingly one of the things she suggests as a helpful corrective practice is to have dinners with people and to do it without phones. She tells a story about a group that would go out to dinner, throw all their phones in the middle of the table and if anyone picked up their phone before dinner was over, they had to pay then entire tab for the whole group.

At our home, we don’t allow phones at the table or the tv on. We eat dinner together, as a family, pretty much every night at 6pm.

Studies show that only 40% of American families regularly eat dinner together. And kids who eat dinner with their families have something like an 80% higher change of doing well in school, avoiding substance abuse and getting involved in pre-marital sex. Just sayin'. Have dinner together.

We are relational beings who are designed to connect relationally. First and foremost we’re meant to relationally connect with God. And a close second, is that we have been designed by God to relationally connect with other people... with family and with friends. And a meal is something God has just made to be a natural place for those conversations to take place.

Some of you need to have conversation with God. Maybe it’s been a long time or maybe you’ve never had that conversation, but your soul is longing for it.

Some you probably need to have conversation with another person about God to help you have that conversation with God.

And some of you really need to have a real conversation with someone, where you get past the surface and get to whats really going on.

Jesus reveals Himself in and through conversations and often in conjunction with a meal. So have a meal. And don’t just talk, have real conversation. Meals end up being huge. Meal can matter a lot. And God can do great things through them.

Well, for our last point I want to dig in just a little bit more on using meals as a way to reach out to others who deep down are looking for and longing for relationship with God. So let’s wrap up today with our final point, “Missional Meals.”

III. Missional Meals Mission is not only how these two meal stories end but it’s where the entire book of Luke ends, in Jesus sending the disciples out on a mission do what He did and tell other people about Him.

We see it here clearly in verse 48 and 49. “You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

What they’ve witnessed they are supposed to tell other people about. And when they go out to do that, Jesus is going to help them, following through on His promise to give them super natural power or courage and ability to do what He’s asked of them.

So let’s review what’s happened here in these two meals.

In the first meal, they talked about the Bible and how it points to Jesus and then had a meal together discussing it, where at one point they realize it’s Jesus. He’s made known to them during that meal and they are filled with great joy.

In the second meal, Jesus shows up, they doubt that it’s really Him until He entertains some of their questions, offers His body for inspection, eats some food with them and then brings up why He had to die on the cross and rise. Which was for repentance and forgiveness so people could be in relationship with God and one another.

Alright. So if after that Jesus then says, you’ve been witnesses and am going to send you out with my power, what do you think is coming to the minds of the disciples? What do you think they are supposed to go out and do and what do you think they think is going to happen?

Probably go out and do with other people what Jesus did with them right? So they’re supposed to go out with people, have meals with them, talk about the Bible and talk about Jesus and in that see God’s power at work as people find relationship with God and godly relationships with others.

And that’s exactly what they go out and do. Luke wrote a second book, which is called Acts in our Bibles, standing for “Acts of the Holy Spirit” who brings many people into relationship with God through these disciples going out and telling other people about Jesus.

At the beginning of Acts there’s this line where Luke records what they’re strategy was for accomplishing the mission. Here it is, Acts 2:42, “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

Sound familiar? Isn’t that what Jesus had been doing with them for three years and with so many different people and then for one final special time with them after He rose? Just talking about the Bible, talking about Jesus, having a meal and praying. Pretty simple.

In both the story of Acts and the story of Jesus’ ministry in Luke we see times where there are these huge crowds that gather, which is wonderful. But the truth is those gatherings were built on the back of the small get togethers, most often around a meal. That’s how the Gospel spread and how the mission moved forward.

Michael Green, a church historian and theologian says this is exactly what happened in the era following the apostles when Christianity spread so far and wide so fast. He says it was because of the Christians open willingness to invite people into their homes for table fellowship where they would have real conversations about the realness of God and what He did in Jesus Christ.

In last week’s sermon I told you about a favorite book of mine written by my friend, Harvey Turner called Friend of Sinners. So if you didn’t pick it up at our bookstore last week, get it this week. It’s an easy read and really really helpful. Anyway I want to read from it again from a different section.

And by the way, when he says “Friends of Sinners” he doesn’t mean everyone outside the church are the sinners and here inside we’re all saints who don’t sin. We’re all sinners here, that’s how we see ourselves and that’s why we like Jesus because even though we’re sinners He has befriended us. Okay? Alright, listen to Harvey on this…

“In the gospel accounts, the religious crowd accused Jesus of being "a friend of sinners" (Matt. 11:19). He was known to hang out with people who lived overtly sinful lifestyles. As the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day, said, "This man receives sinners and eats with them" (Luke 15:2). Jesus was seen with sinners, spent time with sinners, and knew sinners to the extent that the Pharisees thought he was a sinner as well. Consider Matthew 9:10, ‘As Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.’

In the first century, eating with someone meant welcoming them as a friend. Jesus once attended a dinner at a Pharisee’s house where he welcomed the love of a notoriously sinful woman. It would cost him his reputation among some people. Jesus, however, didn’t care that people were against his spending time with sinner—in fact, he made a point to clearly contradict what everyone would say about his reputation.

To the surprise of the Pharisees, he proclaimed the sinful woman to be a model of faith and forgiveness (Luke 7:36-50).

Jesus would go on to be accused of being the friend of everyone from tax collectors to prostitutes, categories of people that cover the entire social spectrum of rich and poor. You see, Jesus was an equal opportunity sinner lover. Jesus even loved the worst kind of sinners—the religious kind. He ate with them and pursued them even though they would eventually kill him. Now that’s commitment to befriending sinners!"

So this is what we’re asking you to do. Strangers and Stories. We’re cancelling all community groups this week solely for purpose that you might have someone over for dinner or go out to dinner with someone you don’t know. We want you to go eat a meal with some sinners.

But do it this way. Do it remember you yourself are a sinner. The goal is just to get to know someone’s story. The goal isn’t to give some presentation about Jesus. Just be open. If people ask, like the guys asked questions of Jesus doubting whether or not He was a ghost…just go with it. That could be kind of fun. It’s Halloween, so it’s a good time to talk about ghosts and you could bring up this passage.

We don’t have a Jesus axe to grind with people. We are simply opening ourselves up to relationship with them so that they might get a taste of the relationship with God we share.

There is meaning in a meal, so let it be a meaningful meaning. Get to know someone’s story, what they’ve gone through, what’s made them who they are. Listen for where there’s been hurt and broken relationship. And listen for where and what they are looking to for hope and healing.

If you go online and read the Strangers & Stories blog I wrote I listed out some good questions to ask just to get to know someone’s stories. Don’t be afraid. Remember Jesus promises His power to help you. Just love people and you’ll be surprised at what God does.

Meals create a platform for relationship and I’m excited to hear about what God does in these meals. So go make some memories.

Conclusion Alright, let’s conclude. We’ve said that in Walking Together part of what we do is eat together like Jesus ate with the disciples. We’ve said that meals are by nature spiritual. We’ve said that relationships are formed and fostered through meals. And we’ve said meals are platforms through which the good news of relationship with God through Jesus Christ might be shared and applied.

One of the things I love about our church is that we have a little meal in every service. It’s not much in what it provides for our physical bodies but it’s a lot in what it provides for our spiritual souls.

Each week we take a piece of bread as Jesus life and dip in the wine or the juice as His blood not only to remember what He did but to receive forgiveness and the special power He communicates through it for us to be His witnesses.

So let’s pray and eat this meal together.