What would Jesus eat?
Every week, the handful of early birds who show up to share Morning Prayer together at 8 am linger afterwards to share a simple breakfast in our Parish House .
The meal is always different, always wonderful, and always accompanied by tall tales, sweeping theological observations, soaring oratory, and peals of laughter.
One morning a while back one of our number surprised us with a wonderful gift.
Our host for yesterday's breakfast announced with a twinkle that our meal would be called, "What would Jesus eat?"
And eat we did. Almonds, dates, cheese, pomegranate seeds, figs, olives, pistachios and wonderful bread.
Our God keeps reminding us that if we will take the risk and effort to gather and pray together, God will be in the midst of us. God keeps reminding us that our prayers don't have to be complicated or extravagant to be holy, beautiful, real and enough.
In a world that can seem so full of darkness, isolation and despair,
this community is a place of deep healing, wholeness and community.
Chapel of Our Saviour is an incredible expression of God's Holy Church.
That is because of all of you who have chosen to make this particular church your church home.
Every Sunday I see how eager you are to give this church away, to share a simple and holy meal, to laugh, sometimes uproariously so, to give your stories of how you've been blessed away, to give God away to those who come sneaking in the door for a first-Sunday-back-row-try-out of this church.
Every Sunday we welcome new people into the life and prayer of this community - and you are always there to show those newcomers the way and to bless them as they take the risk of praying with us and eating with us and laughing into the darkness with us.
Every Sunday new lives get touched, fed, blessed on this holy ground.
That kind of on-the-ground evangelism (the spreading of God's Good News)
is exactly what God requires and charges us to do.
On Sunday we will celebrate our entry into the season of the Epiphany.
Epiphany is the season when we warm up in the light that is God come among us - the God who lives in our neighborhood. The God who keeps telling us to eat with him and to remember that it is always more than we can possibly eat. Almonds, dates, cheese, pomegranate seeds, figs, olives, pistachios and wonderful bread.
When we keep asking each other, "What would Jesus eat?" there is no end to what we can do together as God's people of the Holy Spirit.
I hope you will join us on Sunday as we gather to give thanks to God for the Holy Spirit's mighty movement in this place and as we pray for God's leading
in all that is to come in this new year.
See you Sunday- and bring a friend!
David
