I have never been asked that before. Ever. Not until yesterday. Although L laughed when I told her and pointed to my Roots Jamaica track jacket as the culprit, (I love it dearly and you would too), the truth is we had never ‘hung out’ at a place like this before. It is a place where, “Are you homeless?” in a starter/small talk/get to know you kind of conversation is not completely out of place. *** “No…no, I have a home.” *** Perhaps I should be more clear in setting the stage. We were, in fact, at place we’ve always been, every week in fact: church. That Wednesday afternoon, as odd and as new an experience as it was, took place in a church. A church in a sense of a gathering of Christians, Jesus people, sharing a meal together. A church in a sense of a physical building that would be recognized as a church. So what made it so different? First off, it was a gathering of Christians but, I would assume, Christians were certainly not of the majority in the room. As a church that welcomes friends from the community, particularly the homeless, the jobless and the addicted the scene and the smells…were far from what I conceive of a typical ‘corporate’ gathering of disciples. Second, you might have noticed, that this church took place on a Wednesday afternoon. In fact, at this church, ‘church’ takes place everyday of the week – over meals, art classes, community walks, and board games. Certainly, there is a dedicated time of musical worship and a listening of the Word that takes place on Sunday evening. Now, for a church that staffs more then ten people, you’d figure this gathering would be in the hundreds if not a thousand. But typically, about fifty gather for that time of worship. L and I have been thinking about church a lot since we’ve been back in Toronto. Besides the typical questions one might ask when looking for a church we have the added (complicating) dimension of now being missionaries-in-waiting with Wycliffe. But we’ve also been thinking of belief. Not do we believe (in God), but what do we believe, and more specifically, how does our lives reflect what we believe. The premise is, is that we live what we believe. Instead thinking of ‘belief’ as some sort of some process of the mind or heart that may or may not affect our actions, we have come to learn that it is much more accurate to assess one’s actions to determine one’s belief. What do you believe? What do you believe about the human spirit? What do you believe about money and possessions? What do you believe are good things and ultimate things in this life? Look at your life and the way you live. Look closely and there it is. Scary isn’t it? We’ve been a little scared. That is perhaps why we’re looking to find a little more consistency, to actually live out what we believe. What is it that we believe? We believe that God loves the broken people in this world and calls us to share that divine, eternal, ultimate love with everyone in this world. This needs to happen everywhere because broken people are everywhere. It needs to happen in the neighborhoods with million dollar homes and it also needs to happen in the neighborhoods with homes that are nothing more than a concrete floor at the bottom of a couple steps or a couple of boxes well placed together. It just so happens, that Bible calls us particularly to the latter…to the “the poor and crippled and blind and lame” in the “the streets and lanes of the city” and then out further “to the highways and hedges” (Luke 14). On our first round of preaching and telling churches that we’re going to serve with Wycliffe in Bible translation, I preached from this text, taking it metaphorically…the call is for us to go out into the world, that is beyond our boarders, as we are intending to, to invite people in to God’s great feast. That is, I still believe, one way to read and interpret it. But it is not the only way or, I suspect, the primary way. In it’s original context, Luke 14 was a teaching delivered by Jesus at a meal with the rich and elite of that society. The impact of the message would have been clear and not at all interpreted as metaphorical. Go, literally, out to the streets and invite these dirty, smelly, outcast people into your home, seat them at the table and serve them a meal. We’re ‘believing’ this more and more.
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