Going Where Jesus Is; Where His Disciples Aren’t...

Paul writes – Given a lot of reflection and talk in relation to Luke 10:1-12 (see, for example this and this post on this blog) my attention was grabbed by a recent post from Cheryl Lawrie on the other side of the Tasman Sea. Thinking about new ways and new expressions of church, her insight becomes wonderfully provocative and evocative… In essence, she names the tendency for churches to increase the size of their table in the hope that others will find a space and join. Jesus on the other hand was good at “going” and “finding”…new tables... was good at crossing boundaries (e.g. clean / unclean; Jew / Samaritan etc), at going to places and people beyond the Temple.

“…Most conversations about new forms of church or Christian community are about rethinking the table at which the disciples sit. True confession… this project doesn’t emerge from any interest in that table, or even really in the disciples. I think the really interesting stuff of the gospels is the other stories - the tables Jesus went to where the disciples weren’t invited, or where they were so absent no-one thought to mention their presence - the afternoons at Mary and Martha’s, the nameless person’s house where Jesus met the syro-phonoecian woman, dinner at Levi’s house, dinner with Peter’s mother, the ‘water into wine’ wedding table… I think they’re the fun tables.

Interestingly, there’s not a lot of evidence in the gospels that the people around those tables wanted a seat at the disciples’ table - the main event, as such. Which makes it interesting, then, is that most conversation about inclusion [and about new forms of Christian community] involves making sure there’s space for everyone at the disciples’ table - the presupposition being that there is only the one table around which everyone should sit. It gives those around the table an enormous amount of power. Perhaps that’s a myth perpetuated by them – because we have been taught to look at things from the disciples’ perspective we think there’s only one table - but the disciples were never as good as Jesus at recognising the other tables…

If that’s the case, the ultimate act of inclusion for Christian communities is to encourage the possibility there might be other tables [fun tables, with good food - just as good as the church’s table] where God might just turn up, because the story of God is not about inclusion into the Church’s table, but inclusion into a story of life…”

I’ve had a couple of rich conversations / experiences recently – one with an Anglican priest on the edge of the “institution”, outside of parish ministry; a person invited to “tables” she doesn’t choose; tables in which she has, in a very real sense, no “institutional” power. The other was with a young woman willing to take risks, and to “go”; a woman willing to embrace vulnerability and a radical trust in God already being at work. Both, whether intentionally or not, are animated by Luke 10:1-12. They are both willing to “go” and to “do” – to enact and embody “gospel” beyond the “table” of local churches. I was inspired, yet my fear remains and needs to be confronted...

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[Paul Fromont]

Sara Miles in her book “Take this Bread: A Radical Conversion” provocatively writes:

“…The more I read of Scripture, the more it began to occur to me that Jesus, if the stories had it right, was singularly uninterested in church.Everything I’d yearned for when I first tasted that bread [her first Eucharist] was never going to be found neatly wrapped up inside the comfortable rituals of religion, the pretty spaces I’d come to associate with holiness… I was going to have to hunt in what the Bible called ‘the rough places,’ ‘the lonely places,’ ‘the desert’; among people who’d been cast out, in one way or another, from the church…” (p. 180)