Tag: Meals with Jesus

Meals with Jesus V: Home cooking at Bethany

On By Gareth Gilbert-HughesIn BibleLeave a comment

This article is the fifth in a series on Meals with Jesus which formed part of this year’s Lent course. This fifth is on the pericope of Mary’s anointing of Jesus, John 12·1–11.

The Anointing by Stephen St. Claire
The Anointing by Stephen St. Claire.

There’s no place like home, and this place offers security, love and comfort in the midst of spiraling tensions in Jesus’ ministry. Perhaps we all got too comfortable, and when the love and friendship overflowed in an attempt to push those fears aside, they came right back in with fears and hates expressed by one thought to be a friend.

This house in Bethany — the House of the Lord’s Grace — is the place of Jesus’ greatest victory, raising Lazarus from the dead. Here the Pharisees would only point and whisper, not confront and condemn.

It had been a long journey, with little comfort, so reclining on cushions around a table laden with food, surrounded by friends, was a joy. We were looking forward to celebrating the Passover in Jerusalem, but there were fears of what it might bring.

We smelt it first, as Mary came in with the box after dinner. We didn’t know that scent, but it was Matthew Levi or Judas Iscariot who, in hushed tones, told us of this precious Indian plant. We shifted on our cushions, cleared our throats and examined the patterned cloth that covered the dining table. We couldn’t watch this embarrassing display, and Jesus’ accepting of it. We wished someone would say something.

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Meals with Jesus IV: Tea with Tarts and Traitors

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This article is the fourth in a series on Meals with Jesus which formed part of this year’s Lent course. This fourth is on the pericope of the Calling of Levi, Luke 5·27–39.

Eating with the tax collectorHe had given us this look that cut off our complaints and told us to go with him to see. What would our families say if they saw us? We hoped no one we knew would see us.

We knew we were not great and holy men, but he must have called us because we are the ordinary, downtrodden Jews. Just like King David, he would raise us from obscurity to splendour. We have great respect for the priests, don’t get us wrong, but they are a bit too lah-di-dah for us. They keep on their Temple schedule without speaking out about the injustices we face under Roman occupation. We always had suspicions that they were in league with our oppressors, and here we find this Levite collecting funds for the Romans and lining his own purse in the process.

We were sure he would do something to rebuke the sinful Levite traitor. We were straining to see and hear as he strode up to the booth. But what he said was familiar, it was those words that filled us with dreadful challenge on the beaches of Galilee, that told us we were his chosen men — “Follow me!”

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Meals with Jesus III: Living on the Edge

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This article is the third in a series on Meals with Jesus which formed part of this year’s Lent course. This third is on the pericope of the Gleaning in the Wheat Fields, Luke 6·1–5.

Ruth gleaning
Ruth gleaning.

It’d be wrong to think that it was a whirlwind of dinner invitations that sustained these thirteen vagabonds over their years of wandering hither and thither. Sometimes you must eat what the Lord provides and be thankful for what you can get. Sabbath prayers were over, and the thirteen were on the road again, and their sustenance was the wheat growing at the edge of the fields — plucked, rubbed between the palms of the hands and eaten raw.

The Pharisees saw them, and saw they had committed the serious sin of letting the world of work, politics, poverty and foreign occupation into the sacred time of the sabbath. “By the seventh day, God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.”

Blinded by the need to protect the sabbath from all worldly intrusion, they forgot that it should be a day for the satisfaction of good and right. For the hungry vagabonds on the road, the leftover ears of grain, left in observance to the commandments, was an answer to the sabbath prayers — no more fishers of the seas, but gleaners of what could be found, and reliant of God’s good provision each day.

“Give us today our daily bread” — each day just enough for the day, like the manna in the desert.

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Meals with Jesus II: Creative Catering for Campers

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This article is the second of a series on Meals with Jesus which formed part of this year’s Lent course. This second is on the pericope of the Feeding of the 5000, John 6·1–15 [25–59].

Feeding 5000

We could have popped out to the shops to get some sarnies before we came, or boiled some eggs or scrumped some apples, but we didn’t. We could have looked out the hiking boots, change of clothes, tent, sleeping bag and rucksack before we came, but we didn’t. In fact we felt pretty stupid stuck all the way up there in the Golan Heights with nothing but our sandals and the shirts on our backs. Perhaps we thought that there would be catering laid on, but that seems a little daft now: Zebedee’s lads might be good at catching fish, but they’re no Rick Stein!

We came not because we had planned an expedition, but because we had to. There are foreign soldiers on our streets, watching what we do or say, thinking that every one of us could be a Jewish insurgent. In the midst of our national humiliation a new leader came — someone who could inspire and heal and make us feel human again. So we didn’t think, we went, and we followed him and his group up and out to find some space to breathe in great lungfuls of the freedom we desired with all our being.

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