Raise a Glass

​The food and drink of Christian worship started out as a dinner party.
 
It wasn’t a sip of juice and a teeny-tiny biscuit where we thought hard about Jesus. It began as a full meal where the presence of Christ was mysteriously and wonderfully present.
 
The meal called Jesus’ followers to know right then – in their minds and in their stomachs – that God was someone who unlocked the chains of slaves, broke down the gates separating rich and poor, and bull-dozed the walls between people from different lands and cultures. God was someone who forgave sinners, strengthened the righteous, and even raised the dead.
 
It was a powerful meal, but a joyous meal, a holy pot-luck filled with prayers and stories and laughter. And in it we were called to see all meals connected to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
 
Why? Because God was renewing all life through Christ, not just a few crackers and minutes on a Sunday.
 
What do our meals represent? The churchy one on Sunday morning? The dinner out on Wednesday night? Sometimes we need to step back and decide. Because our meals – like our lives – always mean something.
 
On a Wednesday night in Kansas in 2017 Adam Purinton went into a restaurant where people were eating, drinking, and having a good time. Adam went in and shot two men because of how they looked and one man because he tried to intervene. 
 
So, for the foreseeable future, in Austin’s Restaurant meals represent fear, rage, death, cruel hatreds, and ethnic divisions. In other words, meals represent the very opposite of what the meals of Jesus are to be.
 
What do your meals represent? Your life? How does that fit with Jesus, if you are brave enough to call him Lord?