A Meal With Jesus
R160.00
Out of stock
Meals have always been important across societies and cultures – a time for friends and families to come together. An important part of relationships, meals are vital to our social health. Or as author Tim Chester puts it, Food connects.
Tim argues that meals are also deeply theological – an important part of Christian fellowship and mission. He observes that Luke’s Gospel is full of stories of Jesus at meals. And these meals represent something bigger. In six chapters Tim shows how they enact grace, community, hope, mission, salvation and promise.
Moving from New Testament times to today, the author applies biblical truth to challenge our contemporary understandings of hospitality. He urges sacrificial giving and loving around the table, helping readers consider how meals can be about serving others and sharing the grace of Christ.
| Author | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | |
| Format |
CBD –
I liked this book. It set forward a great model of Christian living around a meal table. A lot of what we do as community and fellowship is done around food—what a great opportunity to use that time to live out Gospel truths. The introduction really explains the entire principle behind the whole book; this book belongs to the same vein of thinking as Ordinary by Horton: it is through the everyday, ordinary act of eating around a table that we do community, mission, grace etc. Tim Chester spends the rest of the book using Luke’s Gospel to show that this was basically Jesus’ mission strategy (p. 16). He makes out evangelism and fellowship into very simple, ordinary activities, albeit acknowledging that while not challenging, it may take us out of our comfort, opening ourselves up on regular basis to being vulnerable and sharing our lives with others. If you want to get the vision that he is selling through this book, you really just need to read the introduction.
What I liked
• “Jesus spend his time eating and drinking – a lot of his time. His mission strategy was a long meal, stretched into the evening. He did evangelism and discipleship round a table.” (p. 13)
• “Community and mission are more than meals, but it’s hard to conceive of them without meals” (p. 15). “If you share a meal three or four times a week and you have a passion for Jesus, then you will be building up the Christian community and reaching out in mission” (p. 16).
• Tim spent a few pages showing that the New Testament Church did church as a meals; it was central to their community. This then gives context to the significance of church discipline in withholding the Lord’s Supper from an unrepentant believer: if eating is central to church, then not partaking is to be cut off from the communion/fellowship (pp. 53-56).
• Meals, as a church family gathered, are a foretaste of the future messianic banquet—what a great picture of hope for us (p. 65).
• Food is in-and-of-itself a good thing; it is a part of God’s goodness to us, not merely an illustration of that fact. This is expressed in the fact that food will be a part of our future with God for eternity (p. 71).
• We need to fast more, in order to remind ourselves of our dependence on God, both for physical and spiritual satisfaction. It also teaches us to turn to God in times of need or distress rather than to food as our escape or refuge (76).
What I didn’t like
• The expository part of each chapter tends to be quite long, particularly flowery and descriptive in its nature. This book is fun and easy to read, but these parts don’t really add much to the point of each chapter and just makes them feel longer.
• The last chapter didn’t really add much to the whole of the book. In fact, as the book progressed, every chapter felt as though it were adding less and less. But then, in the introduction, he does admit that this book is a bit circular and doesn’t have a clear flow (p. 16).