Eat | Matthew 9:9-13

Transcript is automatically produced. Errors may be present.

Good morning friends. Wonderful to see you all. Thank you. This morning in the first service, I proudly walked on stage, was slightly distracted by something and declared myself to be Alex, one of the visitors here. And some people left ’cause they’re like, wow. We, if they’re just gonna let anyone preach, we’re out of here.

And. Yeah, all sorts of things happen. So this service, I would like to say to you, I am not one of the visitors here. My name is Alex and I’m one of the pastors here. And if you are visiting, we’re really glad you’re here. If you’re watching online, really glad that you are here as well. Today we’re gonna be coming to this table.

Some people call it communion, mass, the Lord’s Supper, Eucharist, all sorts of things. It’s a place where we gather and are thankful. For the work that Jesus did. And in a moment, I’m gonna ask you to stand, we’re gonna be reading Luke chapter five and verse 27. But before we get there, let me just say this.

There is a conflict. A a war, a disagreement across America that’s taking shape, it’s getting nasty, and people are taking sides and they have no patience for the other side’s point of view. I’m not talking about politics, which would be dangerous in the introduction to a service. I, I’m talking about.

Food. Years ago, we le lived in the Midwest and I took a trip down to Chicago. We have some Chicago people in the house, and they told me that pizza should be eaten like this. And then we moved to New York and they said no. People should be eaten like this. And the New York crowd are correct, right?

They got the hard no. With some shaking of the heads. There’s some disapprovals. I get it. More Chicago people in the house than New York people. But this has been going on for a hundred years now and people are convinced, they’ve figured out the way to, to make pizza. And that could have been almost any element of food.

It’s a regional conflict. Is barbecue made the Tennessee Way or the Kansas City way, or is it made the Texas way, which is the correct way to make barbecue? Does pineapple belong on a pizza? Does it not belong on a pizza? People feel. Strongly about these things. In actual fact, we are a nation. The loves to eat.

When you look at some of the statistics America stands alone in how food is consumed, what we do to take it in. We eat around $2.58 trillion of food a year. And what makes America unique is actually how much people love to go out. To eat. We love to consume. People love food, especially in specific places, their hometown food.

And so wherever you move, you’ll quickly find someone who comes and grabs you and says, you know what? This is the best place eat, or Our cuisine is the best cuisine in the whole of the country. Something interestingly that no city in Britain has ever said about their food, no one’s put their hand up confidently and said, we have the best food anywhere in the world.

The love of food is so great that when 2000 people were polled around, two thirds of them said that food is their love language. It’s the thing that tells ’em that they are valued cared for. In terms of like last meals and things, people would love to eat more than anything else in the world. 20 million people watched Gordon Ramsey Cook and eat his last meal, the thing he would want to eat after.

All of his life was over and there was one meal left. But we know something instinctively that a great meal is more than just the food. Now, maybe that more than is the time that’s put in into it. A famous chef who also happens to be a nun, Juan Qua, said this the ultimate ingredient in food is thyme.

Maybe you’ve eaten that delicious 16 hour smoked brisket. That feels like super tender. I know it’s near lunchtime. So my goal is that you feel irritatingly hungry. I want you to. Grasp that emotion. Maybe it’s the time that goes into it that makes it special. May, maybe it’s the feeling that it creates the famous restaurateur and chef Danny Meyer said of one restaurant he went with his dad, that the owner and the food, it made his father feel like the king.

He longed to be felt, cared for, treated well in this particular place. We had one wonderful lady that attended South for many years who passed away probably four or five years ago, Ann Creswell, and she said this. I try to make others feel as though they made my day by coming to stay. That there’s this beautiful element to hospitality that we can create when we welcome people in.

But it’s something more than that, right? As well. It’s not just the food, it’s not even how good the food is or how welcome we feel. I think a great meal is also about the people that we gather with. Maybe you think of like a meal you ate as a family reunion. You get people in the room that haven’t been in the room together for years.

There’s this joy of old jokes, old stories told, and old recipes cooked, as well as people that have been tied together for perhaps decades come together finally in one room, in one. Place and maybe remember experiences like that may, maybe there’s the first meal you had as a romantic couple. You went out and you paid the extra special money for a date, and you sat across the table as you tried to figure out, can we do this together forever?

Can we make this thing work? Perhaps you remember that first meal, that first special occasion. Maybe it’s a gathering of friends this moment where just people that love each other, that have chosen to love each other, that picked each other, gathered together and the laughter just runs just easy, and it’s just a beautiful experience.

Maybe it’s a Sabbath meal. The one at the end of the week where you say that the work is done, we’re gonna pause and we’re gonna rest now, and there’s just this quiet as you sit and eat together. I think what we’d find is this, that if we were to go round the room and ask, my guess is almost every one of us has a table story.

We have a way or a place or a time, a moment where we’ve sat at a table. And it’s felt special, important. We love gathering, we love eating together. We love those moments. But I have a discipleship, I guess a formation question for us as we enter into this week. I wonder. If discipleship means surrendering your table to Jesus, inviting him into that space and inviting him to use it as happens in this story today.

Before we get there, let me catch you up. We’re in this series called Love Thy Neighbor. The language is designed to reflect that people have been doing this for a couple of thousand years, and it’s not particularly easy to do, especially when you think of neighboring the way Jesus describes neighboring.

Most of the people of his day describe neighboring as loving people that are like you. And Jesus said, no, actually, neighboring is different to that. Neighboring is loving people who are near you. When you encounter someone, treat them as a neighbor. When you live next to someone, guess what? They became a neighbor.

When you meet someone that you don’t like, guess what? In Jesus’ language. A neighbor. And so how do we go about that process That’s been really hard for a couple of thousand years, taking it seriously and entering into it in whatever way we can. And I’ve suggested so far a couple of practices. And the first is to begin with prayer.

If you’re someone that says, I follow Jesus, asking to bless your neighbors, ask him to keep them. Ask him to speak to them. Ask you to help. Ask him to help you. Tolerate them when they’re hard to tolerate. The idea there was this prayer is the least we can do ’cause it’s something everybody can do. My grandmother was in a wheelchair for six years and just constantly was praying for those people around her.

It’s also. The most we can do because God moves in prayer. The second week we talked about listening. We talked about this beautiful lost art form of actually listening to someone in order to hear them, not to respond to them, not to have something clever to say. And the big idea there was this a story heard.

Is the first step to a story healed that if you can harness Jesus’ work within you to listen to those around you, something magical begins to happen. And the first one, the third one might be the easiest of all of them. It’s to choose to gather, to eat together, to invite people in to do the thing that you probably already do three times.

A day, you probably already make space for this and to use that beautiful God-given activity to care for those around us. So Luke chapter five, verse 27. If you’d stand with me. I’m gonna read from this passage of the scriptures. I’m gonna start in verse 27. This is the NIV version. After this, Jesus went out and saw a text collector by the name of Levi sitting at his text booth.

Follow me. Jesus said to him. And Levi got up, left everything and followed him. Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees, the teachers of the law who belong to their sect, complained to these disciples, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?

Jesus answered them. It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. This is the word of the Lord. Please proceeded. So some background to this book, Luke, which is the longest of the biographies of Jesus life. It’s also the most involved language wise.

Luke is a brilliant linguist, brilliant historian, and when he talks about what Jesus is doing, what the mission means, he describes it in some specific terms. And Jesus stands up in a synagogue one day and gives us the background, the heartbeat to the mission in these words that come from Isaiah Chapter 61.

The spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, and set the oppressed free and all. And one more thing to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Jesus stands up at the beginning of Luke and says, I’ve come here to bring God’s favor.

And you can imagine everybody in earshot, everyone who knows where this story comes from, stands there and waits and says what else? ’cause this verse doesn’t end there. There’s another little bit of text that Jesus just leaves out, not arbitrarily, but because he wants us to know something.

In Isaiah 61, the verse finishes and the day of vengeance of our God to come. For all those who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion, the text in its original. Was about a specific place, Israel and God’s care for that group of people. And this announcement, this proclamation that God will come and bring justice for this people and vengeance against all those people that oppose them.

And Jesus stands up and reads a text and he skips the vengeance part, and he just talks about God’s favor, God’s goodness. He announces this moment where this goodness is beginning to arrive on this world. This is how Jesus begins his work here. Someone once said that in Luke, Jesus is particularly for the poor.

The other the disadvantaged. For disenfranchised, the person that’s pushed to the side, that’s who Jesus cares for, particularly in this gospel. But there’s also another element to this gospel, Luke, that’s important to know as well. In, in Luke, Jesus really loves to eat. He really loves to gather around a table.

The writer of Robert Caris once said in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is either going to a meal, he’s at a meal, or he’s coming from a meal. How many of you’re like, I’d like to live like Jesus, if I could just do that all the time, that would be a beautiful gift. Think about that. Yeah, Jesus is always going to a meal or he is at a meal, or he is coming from a meal, but he’s not just eating to eat.

What we watch in these 10 stories where Jesus is either at a meal or he’s going to a meal, or he is leaving a meal is that he’s always doing something. With that meal. You might say it this way, for Jesus, a meal is not just a meal, it’s a theological event. He wants us to see him go away from this meal learning something about God’s deep heartbeat and the people.

That Jesus chooses to gather with. That’s important as well. ’cause out of all the religious leaders of his day, and there were many, and Jesus doesn’t gather for meals like any of them. And so this is the first one of those stories, the only one that we’ll get to, but I wanted to give you that background.

Luke chapter five, verse 27. After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his. Tax booth. The landscape of Israel in this day was covered with tax collectors and tax booths. The Romans liked to collect tax on every single thing they could. They collected tax on income, the things that you caught, the fish you caught, the things you made, the things you grew.

Everything was taxed, but not just that as well. All sorts of little roads, all sorts of little bridges. There were all sorts of things that you could end up paying tax on. Imagine what that is like to find yourself driving down a particular road and then turning onto another road in your own country and finding that there was a tax, a toll to pay on that road.

It must be. Must be terrible to have to do that. There’s a way that we can understand what’s going on here by, by the process that we think of jumping onto E four 70 and paying the toll we have to do that. And there were all sorts of places that people had to do that in the first century in Israel.

And once someone started to tax something. They don’t seem to particularly want to stop. And so the resentment would grow for people as more and more taxes appeared and were lumped on top of old taxes that had been in place for years, and the taxation grew and grew, and the people that participated in it were reviled by everyone around them.

Because the Roman soldiers weren’t particularly interested in claiming taxes themselves. They wanted to find people who could claim them for them. And so imagine what it is when one of your own people starts collecting taxes from you for being in your own land and how you might feel about that person in that space.

And so surprisingly to everyone watching Jesus stands by the tax collection booth of a man named Levi. And we might expect, and they might have expected to Jesus, have this moment where he begins to lecture Levi about how much he’s betrayed his own people and how much he should repent of his ways and change and no longer tax anyone.

But what Jesus actually says to Levi is this, follow me. Jesus makes Levi an invitation, just like he invited certain fishermen, just like he invited other people. He says, Levi, come with me. Come take a journey. And to the surprise, perhaps of the watching people, Levi gets up. Leaves everything and follows him.

Think about the things that we often would put our hands up and say we want in life. Maybe we put our hands up and say we want wealth. Or maybe we put our hands up and say, we want security and comfort, all of these different things, and Levi has every single one of those and he gives them up to follow Jesus.

Causing surprise to everybody watching. Levi actually becomes Matthew. This story appears in Mark’s biography of Jesus, Luke’s biography of Jesus and Matthew’s biography of Jesus. In Mark and in Luke, the name is Levi, and in Matthew’s biography, Matthew puts up his hand and says, that’s me. The person telling you the story is the one that experienced this change.

Maybe Matthew is a name Jesus gave him as a celebration for this new way of life, and whether the name change is real or whether he just had two names, the feeling the movement is real. Levi becomes a different person. He encounters Jesus, and Jesus invites him on a journey, and something begins to change.

Levi in our story moves from rich and morally suspect and moves into Jesus new. Community, and that’s the kind of story that the gospel writers celebrate. They love when people have this life change moment is the kind of story we celebrate. But what comes next is easily missed because Levi does something that I think most of us would say.

I probably wouldn’t have done that. Maybe you did, but I guess most of us would say we probably didn’t. First thing Levi does after meeting Jesus for himself is he says, then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house. Levi invites everybody he knows the down and outs, the disadvantage, the herding, the broken, the sinners, the tax collectors, the people that are the worst of society.

For all sorts of reasons, and Levi opens his doors and says come into my house. Come and meet this person. I love how Luke describes it, a great banquet. He gives this celebratory feel that we’re trying to feel when we talk about a meal, when we think about those wonderful moments of gathering together, when everything feels perfectly done.

A place where we feel like we could stay linger forever. In Luke Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house. L Luke says The meal was essentially a party that in the poll of his time. This is like a big social event. I often wonder if Matthew read Luke’s account of this story and said, I, I really just didn’t get there with Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house.

It doesn’t feel like the celebration that Luke says it’s, it is. In Luke, Jesus gathers with a bunch of people and there is a huge celebration moment that Jesus is present at meeting people, caring for people, and Luke wants to make sure we know who’s included. A large crowd of tax collectors and others.

The others language is simply people like that. Perhaps the worst of society, perhaps people that good people would be ashamed to be with. That’s the kind of people Levi invites and the kind of people Jesus gathers with. I’m always amazed by Jesus’ ability. He has this charisma, this like this presence. He doesn’t go to the margins.

In actual fact, he does more than that. He takes the center to the margins. All the action is where Jesus is. With a group of people that would never have the spotlight on them if Jesus wasn’t present. But he goes and he’s comfortable in that environment. He belongs, he fits. It’s one of the wonders of this Jesus story that we’re given, that he’s able to be with whoever he wants to be in the story spotlight lands right there, but the Pharisees who always have questions as you’ve picked up, and the teachers of the law who belong to their sec, complain to his disciples.

Why do you eat? And drink with tax collectors and sinners. Why do you invite these kind of people and how can you possibly sit with them? Because the Pharisees had a practice, a premise. The Pharisees would gather with insiders only. You had to look the part. You had to look right, you had to fit for them to say you were okay.

You had to be the right sort of person. In actual fact you might say it this way to the Pharisees, the table being able to sit down for a meal came at the end of your journey. If you could get to a point where you just started living the law, living right then the Pharisees could sit down with you, you were the right sort of person, but if you were still on the journey there.

They could never imagine keeping company with you. Jesus does something different and Jesus eats with the outsiders. He eats with the people that don’t fit, that don’t necessarily belong. Question, why do the Pharisees think this mattered? Why are they so connected, so centered on this idea that we have to go around and watch who Jesus is eating with and it becomes a big problem.

They had a worldview. They had an idea of the world that said this one day, if we can just live as God wants us to live, he’s got to act. He’s got to do something, he’s got to come and he’s got to change this world. He’s got to come and get rid of the Romans who oppresses. He’s got to come and make this country what it used to be.

All of those things that they would tell themselves meant that if anyone did something different. They felt like it was their job to go and bring them back into line. And they have imagined that they might be able to do the same with Jesus, that maybe they can get Jesus to operate as they operate.

Maybe they can get Jesus to live as they lived, but again, we’re talking about Jesus, not somebody else. And Jesus has a reply, is not the healthy who need a doctor, but it’s the sick. The people that need me are the people that are on the fringes. The ones that are the most broken. The ones that can put their hand up and say, I am desperately in need of some kind of help haven’t come.

For those that think that they’re already okay. I’ve come for the ones that are like really feeling it. The ones that are on the edges of society. I have not come. He said to call the righteous. But sinners to repentance of, I’m inviting them to turn around, to walk back towards God and know that his arms are open, welcoming them home.

That’s how Jesus describes what he does, and in Matthew’s version, he throws in this little barb that would get the Pharisees exactly at the center of their being. But go and learn what this means. I desire mercy. Not sacrifice. It’s as though he says to these watching Pharisees, you’ve done so much in terms of giving stuff away or following laws, but you’ve never learned to be kind.

You’ve never learned to be gracious. You never learned to welcome in those that are hurting, that need someone to welcome them in, to show them that they cared for and loved. I think you might say Jesus’ mission was to bring the outsiders inside. He was welcoming anyone in who wanted to come in. It’s the kind of wonderful things that Jesus did.

But it’s more than just kind. I want you to go away believing Jesus was kind. ’cause I’m convinced he was, but I don’t want you to go away thinking Jesus was just kind. It wasn’t just kindness and Jesus is making a statement. He’s telling everybody, watching something. When you ate with someone in a first century context, it wasn’t like today where there’s no social kind of I’m gonna use the word infection ’cause it’s a little pejorative.

There was no social infection. But in the first century, if you ate with someone, it’s said to the watching world. That you agree with their behavior, that you endorse what they do. It was like a covenant, an agreement. It mattered. Something happened when you ate with someone in that world where you shared a plate where your hands crossed or touched.

As they grabbed for the food. It meant something in their culture. And Jesus opens a table to anybody who will come in. John Chase says this. Jesus table is open to all. Who are willing to sit down with all in actual thing. The fact, the only thing that makes you unwelcome. In Jesus table is if you believe, you get to decide who is welcome at Jesus table.

The Pharisees in this moment are perfectly welcome, invited to sit down so long as they can handle the fact that Jesus is going to eat with people they don’t think deserve a place at the table. The thing that stops them sitting down is their control. Of the group. And it seems like in the world that Jesus creates to sit down with him at his table, you had to accept that he might invite people that you didn’t think were particularly worthy of an invite.

The Pharisees believed a meal was a thing that you could sit down at an end when you’d shaped your life as God wanted you to shape your life. And this is what I think Jesus says with Jesus, the meal is a beginning, not an end. Anyone can sit down and something begins when they sit with Jesus. It’s not the end of the journey.

It’s a start of a brand new journey, and all Matthew does in our story is in this moment where he encounters Jesus. He comes up with one principle. Think about it. He knows nothing about following Jesus. He’s certainly not got any knowledge about what Jesus is doing or who he is. He simply has experienced Jesus in this beautiful way and Matthew makes one decision.

Matthew just made his table available, said, you can come and sit and you can eat. And that’s, it doesn’t tell any stories himself doesn’t have any stories about Jesus to tell. He simply sits and eats with people who find themselves on the edge, the fringe of society. I think when we read stories like this in the New Testament, especially in the gospels, and the invite that we get a lot of the time is, which character am I supposed to be in the story?

Which character am I right now? Which character does God want me to be in The story? When we think about parables, we see this a lot When we think about parables. You can’t always choose the parable you’re living in a moment. You can always choose the person you choose to be in those parables. I think in this story we’re supposed to think of ourselves as Matthew.

We’re supposed to do the kind of things he does not ’cause we’re, we have all the knowledge, not ’cause we’ve perfected life, but simply because the way of Jesus is to invite people into our world. And give them a place to belong. I feel like I am average at this, the best I feel like it’s something that I have struggled with for all sorts of reasons.

Maybe it’s the different culture. Maybe it’s the different experience of the world that I have today. But I lived and grew up with two people that modeled this to perfection. They were incredible. This is my wonderful parents Angeline and Nigel Walton looking a little older than when I lived with them.

But they mastered what it was to open the door. And Saturdays the door would just be open for the whole of the day. You could just walk in and people did. And all the people that chose to walk in were people that found themselves on the edges of society. They walked in because they had nowhere to belong.

And so my parents did one thing. They created space for them to belong. And I think of the people that walked through that door, I think of Justin who had just immigrated from Africa and whom half the church thought was demon possessed. And my dad, who just noticed he was just lonely and hurting and struggling with anxiety.

And so Justin would come in and on a Saturday and sit and he would drink tea. And when my parents were available, they would sit with him and they would talk to him. I think about Pat who came in at about four foot three inches, who struggled with learning. She was mentally disabled or classed as mentally disabled.

And Pat thought she was caring for my parents, when in reality they were caring for her. And every Saturday she would walk in and she would sit and he would talk, and then she would leave. I think about Betty, who lived over the road, who had dementia, whose family had moved out of town, and she would come and she would sit.

She would drink tea, and then she would leave. I think about Pat and Eric, the couple over the road who struggled with alcoholism. They would come and they would sit and they would watch as this group of people would come in and out. People. That, if I was honest, we’re in a completely different social class, a completely different education class to my parents.

It was a different world, and yet my parents intuited that the one thing in the way of Jesus that they had to do was create space for those that did not look like them. It was a gift to see, and every now and again, I’d have this moment where my dad would invite people to dinner. And he would say to me and my brother at the time, about 12, 13 years old, I want you to go down to the bottom of the garden and I want you to bring up the big table.

And we would go down to the garden to this room where there was stored this huge piece of wood that sat on top of our table and it turned a table for seven or eight or nine or 10 into a table for 13 or 14. Or 15 or 16, and when to watch as these meals would take place, where people would crowd around this table.

And it was messy and difficult. And challenging and at times as a teenager, quite frankly, just annoying. And yet looking back what was there was the kingdom of God. It was the kind of thing that Jesus does. He welcomes in those that are lonely, that are hurting, that are broken, and says that surprisingly in my story, the gospel is for you as well.

It’s what he does. I love how Rosaria Butterfield describes that radically ordinary hospitality. Is this, using your Christian home in a daily way that seeks to make strangers, neighbors, and neighbors family of God. It sees this first invite it simply saying, come in. There’s no story to tell, no commandments to give nothing except an invite, a welcome that’s summed up in my family.

In the words go and get the big table. Make sure that there’s room for whoever wants to be there. I think my parents just did what Matthew did. They made their table available. And it made a difference to so many people. People that I look at today, whenever I’m back in that part of the world and I say, oh, this person, that person, they’re alive because my parents believed in this kind of thing.

Rosaria Butterfield has another sentence to add. It brings glory to God, serves others, and lives out the gospel in Word. Indeed. This kind of hospitality is radical. It’s difficult. It’s hard. But it’s the way of Jesus. Christina Paul says this. There is a certain irony in the reality that the more possessions one has, the more one can feel the need to protect and care for those possessions, and thus be less willing to risk welcoming strangers into their context.

Isn’t that ironic that the more we have, the harder this becomes to do that? It’s easier to do this when you have almost nothing to lose. And yet learning to do this seems to be a desperately important thing. Something for us to grasp hold of, something to risk, something to say yes to. It’s exactly what I pictured on a church level.

When we came up with this concept of we wanted South to have environments that felt like coming whole, we wanted people to walk through the door of the food bank. The church, the ELC, every part of South, and say, I was welcomed in with no judgment, no sense of commandment, but simply come and experience that.

The story of Jesus is good and beautiful, and for you, whoever you are, and whatever you’ve been told about your story, but it’s not just a church thing, right? It’s actually each of us as individuals being the church doing this in our particular spaces. Saying that our door is open to people around us.

’cause that’s the kind of thing that Jesus people have always done. Maybe you don’t have a house to do that in. Maybe for you it’s a restaurant, maybe it’s a coffee shop, maybe it’s a different kind of invite, but still somewhere the heartbeat remains the same. And trust me, this will not get easier to do the older you get.

It’s done now, perhaps, or not at all. I think the question lingers over this story. Will we make our table available? Will we live the kind of life that Matthew lived, that Jesus used, even when Matthew didn’t have stories to tell with Jesus? The meal is a beginning. It’s not an end. It’s what starts things.

What’s releases new stories into the world? What shapes the kingdom of God? And that, I think friends is what we are called to. We’re gonna come to this table at the end of a story that ends with the table, even though just like it always is with Jesus. That story is actually, that table is actually a beginning.

It’s the story that neatly brings us here to this space where we come and remember what Jesus did to invite us in. To make invite of others possible as well. The story in Luke 15 is another table story In it, there’s two sons and one of the sons has decided he doesn’t want to live the life that his father’s world demands, and so he goes off and lives this adventurous life in a place that the story simply calls the far country.

It describes the kind of life he lives in. Some brief details, and then talks about his desperate journey back home. It’s longing to be back in the world. His father created for him. And in that story, his return is celebrated. In verse 22 of chapter 15, it says, this is the reaction of his father. But the father said to his servants, quick, bring the best robe and put it on him.

Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fatted calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. To us, the celebration, the feast seems like a good end to a story, but in this story, it means something. In this story, it’s the father’s way of telling all of society, this is my son again.

He’s accepted, welcomed back in, in spite of what he has done. It’s what Jesus does. He welcomes people in, creates new stories for them. When we come to this table. Whatever your story looks like and the Jesus story is there for you, maybe you’ve never followed Jesus for yourself. You’re invited to come to this table and believe that Jesus death and resurrection matters.

That it’s the very thing that invites you back into this story that says, welcome. You’re coming home. When we find ourselves back in the place of the far country, it’s the thing that welcomes us again. And says, I’m so glad you’re home again. It’s the thing that reminds us that our one job to do is to keep a table open, to say whoever so will may come.

’cause that’s the kind of thing our father does. So would you stand with me

as we come to the table, you hear Aaron and the team leading us in a song or you weary. Lost and lonely. It’s a song that calls people to Jesus and whoever you are welcome. ’cause on the night that he was betrayed, Jesus gathered with his followers and said, this is my body broken for you. And in the same way he took the cup said, this is my blood shed for the sins of the world.

As long as you gather together. Do this in remembrance of me. Remember that Jesus at Great cus to himself went to incredible lengths to make sure our welcome was sure so that we could know that we are loved. Whether we find ourselves in the margins or in the center, all it requires doing is putting up a hand and saying, I don’t have it all together.

I cannot figure this out by myself. It’s not okay. I don’t have it covered. We get to come time and time again and say, Jesus, I deeply need you. The one who made me, loves me and redeems me. When you’re ready, come take the bread the cup. We’re gonna have you take the bread alone as a private moment.

I’ll come back up. We’ll take the cup together. Come when you’re ready.