Day 48

When Jesus ate, he usually broke all the rules of etiquette.

Back in his day eating together was a big thing.

First off, you only ate with your kind of people. Like if you were a Jew, you never shared a meal with a Roman, Greek, Arab, Samaritan or an African.

If you were a religious Jew, you never ate with anyone who had the label “sinner” around his or her neck. The list included drunkards, divorced women, gays, prostitutes, murderers, tax collectors, Romans, Greeks and especially Samaritans.

If you were a religious, educated, high profile Jew, like a Rabbi for instance, you never shared a meal with people from a lower social standard. The list included woman in general, children, fisherman, farm workers, servants, slaves and everyone who will fall under the category of being poor and vulnerable.

What you ate and with whom you ate determent almost everything about you as a religious human being.

But like I said earlier, Jesus was not your everyday religious type.

He loved a good party. All he needed was bread and wine and if he could not find any wine, water would have been just fine.

The guest list usually got him into a lot of trouble with his fellow Rabbis and other co-workers. Once he had a huge party with the local Mafia boss and his friends. Another time he stayed for days in a Samaritan village, called Sigar, having a ball of a time. There is also the story of a woman with dodgy sexual reputation crashing a very boring party Jesus was attending, just to have a dance or two with Big J.

But just when you think that Jesus was just another party animal, you’ll find a golden thread running through every party and every meal Jesus shared with people.

Wherever he ate, the lives of the people who ate with him, changed for good.
The Mafia boss turned his life around with a promise to pay back double, even triple to everyone he ever stole from. After Jesus left Sigar, the whole town became part of the Jesus revolution. And it is told of the party crasher, that she was one of the few people who stayed at foot of the cross until the end.

No wonder Jesus told one of the townspeople of Sigar that if she drank the Living Water he usually brings to a party, she’ll never go thirsty again...

Day 39

Just your average Saturday post:

One of the oldest virtues in the Way of Jesus is hospitality. The ancient children of God believed that by treating strangers as old friends, we are welcoming God into our lives.

When we invite the uninvited, Jesus shows up, not as one of the guests, but as the host.

Two friends were walking back to their hometown. They were down and out, they’ve hit rock bottom.

Their Friend was brutally murdered a few days before.

They were upset with themselves for not being there for him, with the rest of the gang for abandoning him, with the religious leaders for missing the point about Life and with the women for saying that their Friend isn’t dead after all.

They talked the whole way, trying to figure out what the hell happened. Suddenly, somewhere between depression and giving up, a Stranger joined them on their journey, asking questions with obvious answers, sounding totally out of touch. This led to heavy theological discussion about the coming Messiah, the stuff the prophets wrote about and the salvation of a nation that’s fed up with the status quo. The Stranger baffled the two with his knowledge of history and theology. They were completely outwitted.

It was almost dark when they reached their hometown, but the Stranger still had a few miles to travel. True to their Ancient Faith, they insisted that he stay the night. He looked reluctant, but the insisted.

At the table they served a modest meal, bread and wine, reminding them of better times. The Stranger did not wait to be served, he took the bread and said the prayer, suddenly they saw, as if for the first time, that the Stranger was their Friend all along.

The great thing about this story is that the “kairos” moment, something the Ancient Greeks understood as a moment in history where the divine meets the ordinary and everything there after will be completely different, happened in the stuff old friends do around a loaf of bread and perhaps a bottle of red.

That is why, through the centuries, the friends of Jesus loved to party. What we know today as Holy Communion, with a piece of bread and a shot of sweet red, would have been very bland, compared to the way the first followers used to remember the good old times with Jesus around a table. The idea was to eat, drink, talk, laugh, joke, dance and have a whole lot of fun, because that’s the best way to celebrate Kingdom Come.

No wonder, when Jesus and his friends were at a wedding, he got a dying party started again with 2400 glasses of award winning wine.

Tonight my wife and I are going to party with some friends. Now the best parties are hard to define, but most of the time it involves music, a table (preferably to dance upon...), good food, perhaps wine and a whole lot of hospitality. The idea is to let people feel at home underneath someone else’s roof.

It’s actually very simple: Safe spaces full of fun and laughter, leads to chemistry and connection, which in turn can lead to strangers becoming good friends.

Ole!