sustain:if:able kiwi

feasting as the way, the truth, the life

Off to talk about hospitality and mission this weekend with Coromandel Valley Uniting. Pretty much a re-run of what seemed to go so very well in Tasmania. So I shouted myself to some extra reading in the area of Christian hospitality and came across the following fabulous quote by Luke Bretherton, Hospitality as Holiness:

To be drawn into the messianic feast, anticipated now in the feastings of the church, every area of life and every person must be transfigured. However, no new totality is created. There can be no overview or single principle that orders the feast. The myriad of conversations, encounters and exchanges, which in turn generate surplus to be exchanged, cannot be contained or directed. Neither is there a single pattern to conform to: each person has a gift, and each exchange takes place between distinct and unique persons whose particularity is established and enhanced through these exchanges. Thus, feasts and festivals are ways to anticipate and respond to the inbreaking messianic age that initiates true freedom and generates transfigured patterns of human sociality.

My mind went scrambling in all directions. I thought of the meals I am part of recently, the random chaos of a Taylor table when we are all in fine form and the conversation can go anywhere, each one adding a new and rich twist.

I thought of the modern Western mind, which loved truth as individual, intellectual and objective, and yet the sense here of truth as relational and embodied.

I thought of the theological battles over the location of heaven and whether some will be left behind, in contrast to this image of new human relatedness.

I thought of Jesus, hosting the Last Supper at the end of three years of ministry of table fellowship.