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CHAPTER 1

Meals as Enacted Grace

Luke 5

It was midnight, and I was sitting down to the biggest plate of meat I'd ever attempted to consume. Unfortunately, I'd just eaten the equivalent of a full meal.

I'd spent the day with Daniel and Marie Elena Ruffinatti, who work in Argentina with prisoners and people in psychiatric institutions, as well as their families.

On my first day with the Ruffinattis we visited the largest psychiatric hospital in Argentina, which had over 1,300 men living in large, plain wards with nothing to do. The first man we met had been in the institution since he was eight. He was now in his midfifties. Most had received little love throughout their lives. They had usually been abandoned by their families, and the director conceded that most of his staff didn't really care for the patients. But Daniel and Marie Elena greeted everyone with great affection, and people's faces lit up when they saw them.

We then went to Daniel and Marie Elena's home, where we met Nico, their eight-year-old adopted son who had been abandoned by one of the prisoners. Nico had HIV. He spoke no English and I spoke no Spanish, but he proudly showed me his magnificent tree house. Daniel told me he'd built it in style to teach Nico that God was preparing a home for him when he died.

By 5:30 p.m. I was ready for a quiet evening and an early night. But instead we headed off again into the city to a high-security jail to visit prisoners who were dying of AIDS. It was a horrible place. The smell was awful and the people were in a terrible state — weak, bedridden, dying. Yet Daniel and Maria Elena embraced these people, bringing sweets and shampoo, praying with them, and showing love.

We finally left the jail at 10:30 p.m. This is what Daniel and Marie Elena do week in, week out. We hadn't eaten, so we went to a restaurant. Argentineans eat lots of meat. I thought the salads served as a starter were the main meal because they included so much meat. After working my way through a plate of meat and salad, I was presented with the main course. And so it was that at midnight I faced two cuts of meat, either of which would have equaled a family Sunday roast. Daniel and Marie Elena's story demonstrates the radical power of God's grace, grace that Jesus embodied in his meals.

Luke 5:27–32

After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, "Follow me." And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.

And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" And Jesus answered them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."

The problem here is not the party. The Pharisees knew God's kingdom was going to be a party. Their objection is with the guest list.

Tax collectors were social outcasts who commonly used their position to cheat people. But there is more to their story. They were collaborators. They were working for the enemy. But there's more to it even than that. The Jews were looking for the day when God would defeat the Romans and re-establish his kingdom. So it wasn't just Jews versus Romans, it was God versus Romans. And the tax collectors had opted for the Romans. They were traitors to the nation and they were traitors to God. They were God's enemies.

And here they are partying with God's Messiah. God is sitting down and eating with his enemies.

To see how scandalous this is we need to appreciate the role meals played in the culture of the day. New Testament scholar Scott Bartchy says:

It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of table fellowship for the cultures of the Mediterranean basin in the first century of our era. Mealtimes were far more than occasions for individuals to consume nourishment. Being welcomed at a table for the purpose of eating food with another person had become a ceremony richly symbolic of friendship, intimacy and unity. Thus betrayal or unfaithfulness toward anyone with whom one had shared the table was viewed as particularly reprehensible. On the other hand, when persons were estranged, a meal invitation opened the way to reconciliation.

In a famous essay, anthropologist Mary Douglas showed that in all cultures meals represent "boundary markers." They mark the boundaries between different levels of intimacy and acceptance. Douglas also outlined an influential analysis of the laws in Leviticus about food and sexual purity. She argued that they weren't primitive health regulations, but they concerned boundary maintenance. "It would seem that whenever a people are aware of encroachment and danger, dietary rules controlling what goes into the body would serve as a vivid analogy of the corpus of their cultural categories at risk." Policing the human body was a way of policing the social body by maintaining a common identity.

Jewish food laws not only symbolized cultural boundaries, they also created them. It wasn't easy for Jews to eat with Gentiles — it still isn't today. You couldn't be sure you were being offered kosher food prepared in a kosher way (different utensils had to be used for meat and dairy, the blood had to be properly drained, and so on). If followed faithfully, dietary regulations inevitably meant Israelites couldn't enter into the intimate relationships that shared meals create. Scholars believe that Jews rarely ate with Gentiles in Jesus's day. When Isaiah promised a great banquet, it included "all peoples," "all nations," "all faces," and "all the earth" (Isa. 25:6–8). But in the years before Jesus, the Gentiles had dropped off the guest list in Jewish hopes for the coming banquet.

By the time we get to first-century Judaism, dietary laws had become still more detailed and created even stronger boundaries — within Judaism as well as outside. The wound at the heart of Judaism was Gentile occupation of the Promised Land. The Pharisees believed Israel had to be pure before she could be restored. Pharisaism was a lay movement that, while not completely rejecting the temple system, sought to extend its purity laws into one's own home. So they exhorted all Jews to observe voluntarily the purity code that the Torah required only of priests — and to do so all year round. "The Pharisees regarded their tables at home as surrogates for the Lord's altar in the Temple in Jerusalem and therefore strove to maintain in their households and among their eating companions the state of ritual purity required of priests in Temple service. ... The Pharisees longed for the time when all of Israel would live in such a state of holiness. They believed that Israel's identity and blessed future depended on it."

Luke describes Jesus's table companions as "tax collectors and others" (5:29). It's the Pharisees who call them "tax collectors and sinners" (v. 30). The message is clear: these "others" don't measure up to the standards of purity expected by the Pharisees.

Even these standards weren't enough for another Jewish sect, the Essenes. The Essenes inhabited the Qumran community where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. They felt the nation was so contaminated that the only way forward was to live as an isolated community in the desert.

A central question in the Judaism of Jesus's day was: With whom can I eat? Present holiness and future expectation were bound up in this question. "Doing lunch was doing theology." Jesus doesn't so much provide a new answer to the question as completely undermine its premise. He renders the question irrelevant.

Inclusion was the issue at another meal Jesus attended.

Luke 11:37–41

While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him, so he went in and reclined at table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that he did not first wash before dinner. And the Lord said to him, "Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything is clean for you."

Jesus doesn't wash before the meal. It's a provocative act. It's the cultural equivalent of refusing a handshake. Then, before anything else is said, Jesus says, "You're full of greed, you fools." That's rude in any culture! This isn't Jesus meek and mild. This is Jesus spoiling for a fight. The Pharisees' system of ritual cleanliness stinks, Jesus says. These religious leaders are like cups that are rinsed on the outside, but inside are the molding remains of coffee dregs and lipstick. Jesus finds it repulsive. "This cup may look clean on the outside," Jesus says in effect, "but if you really want it to be clean, use it to offer aid to the poor."

As far as the Pharisees were concerned, if you gave a dish to the poor it became unclean, because the poor were the great unwashed who didn't fulfill ceremonial washing. But Jesus says the dish becomes clean because it expresses love. The cleanliness that counts is found in the heart (Mark 7:20–23).

But Jesus's critique of these outwardly respectable people goes further. The Pharisees may look respectable, but Jesus calls them "unmarked graves" (Luke 11:44). Though people don't see it, they're dead inside.

The reference to the poor is significant. When a teacher of the law intervenes, Jesus replies, "Woe to you lawyers also! For you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers" (Luke 11:46). The effect of this ritual cleansing was not only to create boundaries with Gentiles, but also with the poor. The religious elite had created a system of moral respectability that only the wealthy could ever hope to maintain. Only the rich had the time and money to do all the required ritual cleansing. You can't be ritually clean in a slum. This was bourgeois spirituality. We can do this too. Our expectations of clothing, behavior, literacy, and punctuality can exclude the poor. These verses also speak to a professionalized church ministry — a life seen as the epitome of godliness, but all but impossible for those not in full-time ministry.

The teachers of the law created a system that allowed them to feel superior, and then lifted not one finger to help others. Think how this might play out today. Today's Pharisees might condemn the poor for their dysfunctional families, but lift not one finger to help. Today's Pharisees might condemn the poor for their excessive drinking, but lift not one finger to ease their pain. Today's Pharisees might condemn the poor for their laziness, but lift not one finger to provide employment. Today's Pharisees might condemn the poor for their abortions, but lift not one finger to adopt unwanted children. I'm not defending dysfunctional families, drunkenness, and so on. But we can't condemn these things at a distance. That's legalism. We must come alongside, proclaiming and demonstrating the transforming grace of God.

The Pharisees are people who have the Word, but hide it. Formally they honor the Word, building monuments for the prophets. But in reality they ignore God's Word, effectively siding with those who killed the prophets (Luke 11:47–51). They'd created a system that the poor could never keep, and then instead of helping them, despised them for their failures. Jesus concludes: "Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering" (11:52).

How might we do this today? Perhaps through sophisticated displays of exegesis or rhetoric that make the nonliterate feel that they can't read the Bible for themselves. Perhaps through application that focuses on externals and leaves hearts unchanged. Perhaps by applying the text to dodgy charismatics or Catholics or dispensationalists or fundamentalists or liberals or pagans — anyone but ourselves. Perhaps by reading the Bible through theological grids so we say what the text does not say rather than what it does say. Perhaps by emphasizing knowledge but not obedience or love. A key theme in Luke's Gospel is "heeding" the Word of God. "Heeding" is an old word, but one that beautifully combines both hearing and doing.

Jesus is handing out God's party invitations. They read: "You're invited to my party in the new creation. Come as you are." The religious leaders agreed there was a party and an invitation and even that it was possible to attend. But when the religious leaders passed out the invitation, they didn't say, "Come as you are." They said, "You've got to get changed; you've got to get cleaned up." As a result people didn't come, because they didn't think they were good enough. This is how the Pharisees took away the key of knowledge.

It's been a great privilege for me to know Saul and Pilar Cruz, and to participate in their ministry to the slums of Mexico City. Saul was brought up in a good and proper evangelical church. Pilar was converted through a Bible study he was leading, and soon they started dating. Saul's mother disapproved. Pilar to this day wears high heels and short skirts — this is not how a good, middle-class, evangelical Christian is supposed to dress. Saul's mother noticed that Pilar had stopped attending church in the morning. Her suspicions about her son's girlfriend were confirmed. So one Sunday Saul secretly followed Pilar. She took a bus across town to a poor neighborhood, where she met an older man, and together they held an impromptu Sunday school on the pavement for slum children. After a while Pilar came over to where Saul (who thought he was hiding) was and told him he may as well join in. Her explanation for her absence from church? "If Jesus is Savior, then he's the Savior of these people as well, and your church is doing nothing to reach them." Saul told me with a twinkle in his eye, "That's when I knew for sure she was the woman for me."

They began working with a local church in a poor neighborhood. The church members were more affluent and came from outside the area. Saul and Pilar began reaching prostitutes and drug addicts, befriending them, serving their needs, and sharing the gospel with them. Some of them started coming to church. Then one Sunday morning they turned up to find the building locked. The members of the church didn't want prostitutes and drug addicts corrupting their children, so without any consultation they'd decided to move elsewhere. The culture gap between the church and the marginalized had proved too big for the church members.

So Saul and Pilar started again. Someone gave them a garbage dump in a slum area on which they built an "urban transformation center" called Armonia. They didn't call it a church because of the negative connotations people from the slums had for that word.

At one point they created a housing project. But when they came to hand over the new homes, they realized couples weren't properly married. It was simply too expensive for the poor to marry because of the certificates required and the cultural expectations of a lavish party. This meant the women had no legal protection.

The teachers of the law in Luke 11 would have wagged their fingers. Saul and Pilar lifted their fingers to help. They started organizing community weddings. They married ten or so couples at a time in the community center. They pulled some favors with a local judge to preside over the ceremony for free, persuaded wealthy churches to buy rings, and threw a banquet for all the community. On one occasion one man got married at the same ceremony as his grandparents.

Grace Turns Everything Upside Down

Come back with me to Levi's party. Please have some sympathy for the Pharisees. Jesus welcomes the enemies of God. Surely this makes any claims that Jesus might be from God nonsense. Can you see how their position makes good sense?

Unless ... Unless God is doing something new — so new it doesn't fit any of the old categories. Unless God is doing something so gracious it takes us completely by surprise.

Look at what is happening around this meal in Luke 5.

In Luke 5:12–15 Jesus touches a leper. Normally if you did that, you became unclean. But instead of Jesus becoming unclean, the leper becomes clean. This is God's grace in action. God's grace welcomes the outcast and brings transformation. Suddenly it isn't uncleanness that's contagious. That's how it was in the old Levitical system. If you touched anything unclean, you became unclean. But with Jesus it's his holiness that's contagious.

Jesus isn't rejecting the purity laws of Leviticus because they were wrong; he's showing that they're being fulfilled. Leviticus pointed to the need for a holy people; Jesus is the one who will atone for sin, baptize with the Holy Spirit, and write God's law on our hearts. Levitical-style cleanliness is being superseded.

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Excerpted from "A Meal with Jesus"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Tim Chester.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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