Hi, everybody.
It's Rob here at Trinity Streetsville.
And here at Trinity, we're just a group of ordinary people
learning to follow Jesus in our own day.
Hey, we live in a divided world.
People are divided, left, right, rich, poor, insiders,
outsiders.
How do we bridge the divide?
How do we heal the divisions that exist within us?
Well, sometimes the most complicated problems
have the easiest solutions.
And today, we are starting a brand new teaching series
called Around the Table.
And we're going to learn from Jesus
that the simplest way to change the world
is just to open up our homes, open up our dinner tables,
and practice hospitality with each other.
Join us.
From the Gospel of Mark, chapters 2, verses 13 to 17.
Once again, Jesus went out beside the lake.
A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them.
As he walked along, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus,
sitting at the tax collector's booth.
Follow me, Jesus told him.
And Levi got up and followed him.
While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house,
many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him
and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.
When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees
saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors,
they asked his disciples, why does he eat with tax collectors
and sinners?
On hearing this, Jesus said to them,
it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
The word of the Lord.
In 2018, President's Choice, yes, the grocery store
President's Choice created a series of commercials,
like the one you just saw, to launch what they called
their Eat Together campaign.
Their Eat Together campaign.
What they were trying to do was not just promote their food,
although I'm sure they were trying to do that.
They were trying to promote people eating together.
And the ad campaign was wildly successful.
That video kind of went viral and garnered millions
of views.
People really connected with what they were seeing.
And the ad campaign even won numerous awards.
And I'm sure that grocery sales at Loblaws went up.
But what was more important was that they
started a conversation.
They started a conversation about social isolation
and our modern world and how important
it is for people to gather around tables and eat
and be together.
President's Choice even created a website.
And they created the hashtag, encouraging people
to send pictures and photos of the meals
that they were eating together.
Local Loblaws stores even started
hosting community dinners.
Can you imagine?
Community dinners for those in the neighborhood
to gather together and eat together.
It was a brilliant marketing campaign.
And it was brilliant in part because of its simplicity,
because is there anything more simple and yet more
powerful than the act of being together and eating together?
You know what I'm talking about.
You have experienced hospitality in your own life, I'm sure.
Do you remember the time when you were at the office
and it was kind of a bad day and then your coworker walked in
and she had a freshly baked loaf of banana bread.
And she sat it down.
And you sat down.
You poured the coffee.
And you started eating and talking and laughing.
And you didn't get any work done that day.
But that was hospitality.
That was hospitality.
Or do you remember when you moved in to that new house
on the street and you didn't know anybody on the street
and you were having a hard time feeling like you belonged.
And then the guys down the street,
they invited you over.
They said, come on over.
We're going to watch the game.
And you went over and you watched the game.
And yeah, it was just like pizza.
And it was just chicken wings or whatever.
But it made a huge difference.
You felt like you belonged.
You felt like you made a friend.
That's hospitality.
Or what about even last week?
Some of you started school.
Some of you started brand new schools.
And you were really worried.
Like, what's going to happen when I go to the cafeteria?
I'm not going to know anyone.
Who am I going to sit with?
Who am I going to eat with?
And as you walked into the cafeteria, somebody, maybe,
slid out a chair and said, hey, why don't you eat with us?
And a friendship was born in that moment.
That's hospitality.
And it seems like it's the simplest, most everyday thing
you could ever imagine.
And yet, it's powerful beyond words.
Hospitality is not just a nice thing we can do.
I want to suggest to you today that hospitality
is the most important thing that we can do in our homes, yes,
but even here in our church.
Because I have to be honest with you.
Sometimes I struggle on knowing exactly what our church should
be focusing on day by day as we go forward.
And there's lots of good things.
We could be focusing on evangelism.
That sounds like a good idea.
Or Rob, we should be focusing on discipleship.
That sounds fantastic.
Rob, what about mission?
Or what about outreach?
Or what about stewardship?
Or what about all those things?
And they all seem like really good ideas.
You need to know that clergy are actually
inundated with all the latest ideas.
Like, why don't we try evangelism
through interpretive dancing?
Or why don't we give a free toaster
to everyone who shows up at church?
My library shelves, I have to tell you, are filled with books.
And in those books, there are plans and ideas and methods
and strategies and diagrams about how
the church can move forward.
But what if we just ate together?
You know, Jesus, as well, he had many different competing
priorities and ways he could have gone about his mission.
What are you going to focus on, Jesus?
You're going to focus on teaching?
That sounds good.
Evangelism?
That sounds good.
Leadership development?
You're going to focus on spiritual disciplines?
You're going to focus on healing?
Come on, Jesus.
Time is short.
You're only here for a brief period of time.
You've got to act.
You've got to move.
What's it going to be, Jesus?
Hey, Jesus, shouldn't a priority be to launch a revolution?
Against the Romans or Jesus?
Shouldn't a priority be for you to go to the temple
and have a showdown with all the religious leaders?
And I think Jesus thought, yeah, yeah, I could.
I could.
I could launch a revolution.
Or I could just have some tacos with tax collectors.
That sounds nice.
But see, listen, Jesus knew what he was doing.
Hospitality comes from his Greek word, phylosophy.
It comes from his Greek word, phylozenia.
Phylo means love.
Zenia means stranger.
Hospitality literally is the love of a stranger.
But the big problem we face in our world today is the opposite.
It's another Greek word, xenophobia.
Xeno means stranger, but phobia means fear.
It's the fear of the stranger.
So Jesus believed that the way to break down
the xenophobia in our world was through phylozenia.
Opening up your homes, opening up your tables,
opening up your hearts to others.
That has the power to change the world.
Our world needs changing, doesn't it?
We live in a divided world, so polarized.
Conservative or liberal or Republican or Democrat or rich
or poor or gay or straight or whatever, Christian, Muslim,
rich.
There's so many ways that we are divided.
And so many ways we're pitted against each other.
What can overcome the division in our world?
Well, how about hospitality?
How about hospitality?
We live in a world where people are distanced from each other,
where people are lonelier than they have ever been.
Whether you're a middle schooler or whether you
are a senior citizen, you can feel alone.
You can feel forgotten.
You can feel overlooked and left out.
A few years ago, the UK hired a minister of loneliness.
Japan followed suit a few years later.
Many people think that Canada should do the same thing.
How can we solve the loneliness crisis?
How about hospitality?
We live in a world where people are detached from one another,
especially in the suburbs like Mississauga.
You can get up, go to work, come back, drive back
into your garage, never see your neighbours.
Go downstairs, eat something, watch Netflix, go to bed,
and the next day repeat it.
All within the safety of your little castle,
your little home, and you never have to meet your neighbours.
But how do we reconnect with our neighbours around us?
How about hospitality?
We live in a distracted world.
We spend more time with our faces looking down at screens
than we do looking up at the people around us.
How can we overcome this distraction?
How can we overcome this sense of being alone together,
as Shirley Turkle has called it?
How about hospitality?
And of course, we live in a disillusioned world.
People are disillusioned with the church.
They've written us off.
And all the old strategies that the church used to try,
they just aren't working anymore.
What could we do to communicate and demonstrate our love of God
and our love for people to a skeptical world?
How about hospitality?
Right?
It's radical, and it's simple, and it can change the world.
Hospitality is the answer to overcome division and distance
and detachment and distraction and disillusionment.
Hospitality.
Folks, I would say there is one spiritual practice
that the world needs more than anything else right now,
and that is hospitality.
I think it can break down barriers.
I think it can relieve our loneliness.
I think it can renew the church.
It's the medicine for the sickness
that we feel and that our world feels.
Wouldn't it be crazy if all the complicated, confusing,
crazy problems in our world today
could be solved by something oh so simple
as just welcoming people in, sitting down at the table,
eating and drinking together?
It's not as crazy as you might think.
In fact, as I've already mentioned,
it was the very thing that Jesus chose
to do to change his world.
You see, Jesus was always eating and drinking
with the wrong sorts of people.
Jesus would eat at weddings.
Jesus ate with friends.
Jesus ate with religious leaders.
He ate with tax collectors, and he ate with sinners.
He ate with his disciples.
Jesus eats with 5,000 people.
He eats a final meal with his disciples before he dies,
and then after he rises from the dead, he's hungry again,
and he has a fish barbecue on the beach
with some of those same disciples.
Jesus once healed Peter's mother,
and then she immediately got up and started preparing Jesus
a sandwich.
See, one author says that in Luke's gospel,
Jesus is either on the way to a meal,
he's either at a meal, or he's on the way back from a meal.
And he got the nickname of being a glutton and a drunkard
because he was just always eating and drinking with people.
And today, I thought we were looking
at the very first story of when Jesus had a meal with people.
Mark chapter 2, earliest gospel, early in the gospel,
Jesus sitting down at the house of Levi.
I bet it was wrong, actually.
Because even in Mark chapter 1, we
see an earlier picture of Jesus eating with people.
Check this out.
This is from Mark chapter 1, that when
Jesus was tempted in the wilderness,
he was sent out into the wilderness.
And he was being tempted for 40 days.
By the way, many people in our world today
feel like they're in the wilderness,
that they're lonely, that their distance,
that life is dangerous for them.
And in the wilderness, we read that angels waited on Jesus.
What a picture of hospitality.
The first picture of hospitality.
Jesus is lonely.
Angels come to be with him.
Jesus is hungry.
Angels come to feed him.
Jesus is in danger.
Angels come to protect him.
The Greek word here for angel, by the way,
is angelos, which means messenger.
And scholars would say there's probably two reasons why
this is included in the Gospels of Mark.
And that is, first of all, because it's
telling us how important hospitality is going
to be in the life of Jesus.
And secondly, because we are the angelos.
We are the messengers of the Gospel today.
And it's reminding us of how important it is for us
to practice hospitality with others.
It's a very interesting story.
Anyways, then we moved on to the story
that Jen read for us this morning in Mark chapter 2.
And Jesus is walking along, and he sees Levi, son of Alphaeus.
He's sitting at his tax collector's booth.
Uh-oh, that's a problem right there.
Tax collectors were the worst.
They were the worst of the worst.
They were notoriously corrupt, hated by all their fellow Jews
because they were complicit with the enemy.
Tax collectors basically worked for the Roman occupying force,
even though they were Jewish people.
They collected taxes on behalf of the Romans.
And the only way they got paid was basically
by adding their own fee to the taxes they collected.
They were absolutely hated.
Oh, that's a nice catch of fish you've got there.
That'll be 50%.
Oh, you don't like it?
Let's make it 70%.
Wait, wait, wait.
You want to fight?
Well, you'll have to take it up with all these soldiers who
are behind me because they're ready to defend me
at a moment's notice.
They had the support of the Romans.
They were just absolutely hated by their fellow Jewish people.
These are the enemy.
They are the enemy.
They are on the lowest rung of the moral ladder.
Tax collectors, prostitutes, sinners,
they're just there was an expression.
It was just how people spoke about the lowest of the low.
But now we go and see, look, Jesus is now all of a sudden
eating at Levi's house.
And we have to, please, have some sympathy for the Pharisees
that day because they would have been absolutely shocked
and rightly so.
What on earth is going on here?
And the Pharisees asked the disciples, why does he eat?
And not only eat, but why does he
eat with tax collectors and sinners?
I want to say to you that I think there's two ways
that meals can be used.
Meals can be used either to keep people apart
or meals can be used to bring people together.
Think for a moment just now, thought exercise,
who are the people that you normally eat with?
Chances are the people you eat with are a lot like you.
They probably look like you.
They probably think like you.
Maybe they earn the same amount of money as you.
They believe the same things as you.
We are notorious for eating meals with people
who are very much like us.
And that means that in some ways our meals, even our meals,
are keeping those who are different from us away from us.
This was certainly the case in Jewish society.
Jews did not eat with people who were not like them.
They're very careful.
Sharing a meal was like a sign of friendship and unity.
So you would never, ever, ever share a meal
with someone like Levi who was the enemy, a backstabbing
traitor.
In this case, the meals in those days were used to delineate
people, keep them apart, figure out who belongs where.
But Jesus used meals in a very, very different way.
Jesus used meals as a doctor.
We'd use medicine to heal the sick, to bring people together.
Jesus' ministry, after all, the Bible says,
was a ministry of reconciliation.
It's about bringing people back together.
The redeeming love of God, the reconciling love of God
was most visible and worked the absolute best
when it happened around a table with a bottle of wine
and a loaf of bread and maybe some fish or maybe some olives.
That's how it worked for Jesus.
Meals were about bringing people back together.
You know, in the Bible, you can read this phrase.
The son of man came, dot, dot, dot.
Son of man is one of Jesus' favorite titles for himself.
Jesus came doing what?
What did Jesus come doing?
If I was to ask you to finish that sentence,
what would you say?
You might say, well, Jesus came preaching.
That's probably true.
Jesus came establishing the kingdom
or Jesus came to die on the cross for our sins.
There are, in fact, three places in the New Testament
where these words are used, and this is how they're finished.
So the first instance says, the son of man
came to seek and save the lost.
That's in Luke's gospel.
The second time we read it, it says the son of man came
to serve others.
Actually, it says not to be served, but to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many.
It's the second time that comes up.
The third and last time we see this phrase,
the son of man came, it says the son of man came
eating and drinking.
The first two instances are statements about purpose.
Why did Jesus come?
What was his mission all about?
Oh, his mission was to seek and save the lost.
That's why he came.
And why did he come?
Oh, he came to serve and to give his life.
But the third statement is not about the mission.
It's about the method.
It's not the why, it's the how.
How did Jesus come?
Oh, he did this.
He came eating and drinking.
It's really important to make this connection
between both the mission Jesus had
and the method he used to accomplish that mission.
Because just about everybody agreed on what the mission was.
The mission was, yes, to seek and save the lost.
It was to bring in the kingdom of God.
It was to inaugurate God's reign on earth.
It was to launch the new creation.
That was the mission.
Everyone agreed on that,
but what surprised people was the method.
People assumed the method was gonna be military,
not culinary.
People assumed that the method was gonna be involving swords,
not socials.
The Messiah was supposed to defeat God's enemies
with glory and power and might,
not with food and drink and tables and parties.
Tim Chester writes,
"'Jesus' mission strategy was a long meal
stretching into the night.
When Jesus did evangelism around a table
with some grilled fish, a loaf of bread,
and a pitcher of wine,
hospitality was a priority for Jesus.
It was the how of his why.
It was the method of his mission.
As a result, hospitality became a priority
for those who followed after him."
You read your Bibles,
a quick scan through the New Testament,
you will see his early followers
picking up this thread of hospitality again and again.
In Romans, we read,
when God's people are in need, Paul writes,
be ready to help them.
Always be eager to practice, say it with me, hospitality.
If your enemy's hungry, feed him.
If he's thirsty, give him something to drink.
In one Peter, we read that we are to show hospitality
to others without grumbling.
And in Hebrews, we read that we shouldn't neglect
to show hospitality to strangers because,
and this is kind of cryptic, he says,
for in doing so, some have entertained angels
without knowing it.
I wonder if that's somehow connected to that verse
from Mark chapter one about angels taking care of Jesus.
And did you know this?
That in the early church, if you wanted to be a leader,
a pastor, an elder, there was lots of criteria.
You needed to be above reproach,
faithful, temperate, self-controlled, respectable.
You also needed to be good at hospitality.
Now, I've heard of pastors getting dismissed
because of an affair.
I've heard of pastors getting kicked out
because of heresy or of some financial funny business,
but I have never heard of pastors being kicked out
of their job because they were not hospitable enough.
But it was so important in the early church
to practice hospitality.
Jesus' first followers, they just picked up
where Jesus had left off and they made hospitality
their priority.
Historians have wondered, how on earth did the gospel spread
so fast and so far?
It began with just 120 people on the day of Pentecost
stuffed in an upper room.
And then, you know, 300 years later,
it had swept across the whole empire.
It had conquered paganism.
Even Constantine the emperor had converted to Christianity.
How did they do it?
They did it one meal at a time,
one dinner table at a time,
one invitation at a time.
In fact, an emperor who came after Constantine said this,
oh, these Christians, they're not just feeding
their own poor people, they're feeding our poor people too.
They're welcoming them into their meals.
They attract them as children are attracted with cakes.
This is before internet, before websites, before Facebook,
before, you know, Christian bookstores and seminaries
and religious freedom.
Before there was ever a celebrity pastor,
the gospel spread just one home to another,
one dinner table to another, one meal to another.
And the world was changed.
It was changed by bread and wine and fish
and fruit and vegetables around a table.
I can't overstate this.
Hospitality became central to the way the gospel spread,
which is why this fall actually, side note,
we are offering a course called Alpha
that introduces people to Jesus, to Christianity,
and what the gospel is all about.
And this fall, because we're focusing so much in
on hospitality, we decided, you know what,
rather than do it over here in our hall,
like we usually do it, we're gonna do it in smaller groups,
in people's homes throughout our church community.
So if you wanna learn more about Jesus,
if you wanna learn what the gospel is,
what the good news is,
if you wanna learn what Christianity is all about,
why not gather together with some other people
in their homes, around some food,
engage in a great discussion, watch a great video,
and grow in your faith and grow in your friendship.
That is how the gospel spread 2000 years ago.
And that's how it needs to spread again today,
which means that hospitality is not just a priority
for Jesus, and it wasn't just a priority
for his first followers, but it needs to be a priority
for us as well.
We too can change the world.
We too can change our community.
We can change our neighborhoods
if we just recapture Jesus' call to hospitality.
And I know that some of you are already saying,
okay, Rob, I get it, but listen,
I'm not good at hospitality.
I don't have a very nice house,
don't have a very big house.
I live in an apartment in a basement,
or I'm not really good at cooking,
or I've outdated furniture.
I just wanna say that if your idea of hospitality
is like ordering a pizza and then shoving your laundry
under the couch so nobody sees it,
God can work with that.
You might not be a Gordon Ramsay,
but God can work with that.
Jesus turned water into wine.
I think he can work with your overcooked casserole.
I think he can use it, right?
Because we're not talking about entertaining.
We're talking about hospitality,
and there's a big difference.
Entertaining is all about impressing.
Hospitality is about blessing.
Entertaining is about staging.
Hospitality is about engaging.
You don't need to have an Instagram-worthy tablescape
in order to do hospitality.
Whereas entertaining always creates a line
between guest and host.
Hospitality brings them together,
both as children of God made in the image of God.
Whereas entertaining always puts somebody in your debt.
Oh, thank you, I'll get it next time.
Next time, it's on me.
Hospitality is just about generosity
and giving without expectation of getting anything back.
And whereas entertaining takes all sorts of planning
and preparation,
hospitality is just inviting someone into your life,
maybe into one of the 21 meals
that you are gonna eat this week anyway, right?
So as we wrap up, I wanted to share with you,
and by the way, we're not really wrapping up
because we're just kicking off this
for the next seven weeks.
We're gonna be looking at this
from so many different angles.
But today, as we wrap up,
I wanna share three ways that we can start thinking
about how to implement this.
First, obviously, in our own homes.
Put the barbecue in the front yard
instead of the backyard,
throw some meat on, see who shows up.
I don't know.
And invite some people over to watch the game.
Host a potluck, host a block party, right?
Set aside just one night a week,
or no, even one night a month,
and say, on this night,
we're gonna invite somebody into our home for dinner.
Make it a point, make it a point.
Dustin Willis, he writes this, what a great quote.
Our homes are not our own,
but rather they're a weapon given to us
to push back the darkness and to hold up the light
for a hurting world.
Rosario Butterfield, who wrote a great book on hospitality,
says, our homes are not ours at all,
but they're God's gift to use
for the furtherance of his kingdom,
and the gospel always comes with a house key.
So that's one place you can practice it in your homes,
but I wanna tell you another place
you can learn to practice hospitality,
and that is in life groups.
In our church, we have groups of people
meeting all over our city,
and they're getting together week by week,
and what are they doing?
They're learning about God, they're studying the Bible,
they're praying together, they're supporting each other.
There's usually some food there,
but it is a picture of hospitality.
And if you're interested in joining a life group
or finding out more about life groups,
the timing couldn't be better,
because in two weeks, we're having our life group launch,
where you can find out what a life group is,
where they're being held,
some of the new ones that are starting up,
and how you can join one of these groups.
It's a great way to learn and experience hospitality.
And finally, I wanna say the last way
we can really experience and practice hospitality
is right here, right what we're doing
here this Sunday morning.
This fall, why not extend the invitation
to someone you know to come to church,
to invite them into this meal?
Because after all, at the center of our service is a meal.
We have bread and wine as the central point
of our gathering, and so his body wasn't just broken
for you, it was broken for them too.
His blood wasn't just poured out for you,
it was poured out for everyone.
You see, Jesus is the ultimate host, ladies and gentlemen.
Right, and he extends that hospitality to you,
but he's trying to extend it to others as well.
And so please consider the act of inviting someone
to be part of this community.
Over the next seven weeks as we go through this,
I wanna encourage you, just like President's Choice,
share some of your pictures with us.
Share pictures of eating and drinking, gathering.
If you decide to do something new or try something
or go outside of your comfort zone
or if it's just a regular dinner you're having with friends,
why not share the photo with us?
You can send your photos to eattogether
at trinitystreetsville.org.
We'd love to see those photos and maybe look at them
as the weeks go on.
So in summary, guys, it turns out that the gospel
pairs very nicely with a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine.
In Jesus' day, he changed the world one meal at a time.
Following Jesus, his disciples changed the world
one table at a time.
And we can change the world one invitation at a time.
Sometimes the biggest problems in the world
are solved with the simplest of ideas.
Amen?
Amen.