Setting the Table

Some Presuppositions

Let us start with some presuppositions.

 /1/  What are we rushing around to get to if we are not rushing home to sit around a dinner table with friends and family in celebration of the Maker of the universe?

This book presupposes that God is real, and if real, then doing things we think of as “spiritual” make all the sense in the world. The reality for many of us who claim to be Christians is that our faith is so narrowly practiced and under-formed that we actually feel awkward sitting around a dinner table reading Scripture with other people who self-identify as Christians.

My guess is that while most us know we aren’t model Christians, there remains a place inside of us that earnestly desires to live a life of vibrant faith. However, in the day to day, we can’t even juggle work, children’s soccer practices, and the laundry, much less carve out the time for spiritual conversations around leisurely dinners. For those of us in this category, honesty is the key. We need to honestly align our lives, our schedules, and our priorities with our beliefs. This happens as we recognize that we are not as important as we think we are. We come with many limitations, and instead of trying to achieve or cram so much into this life, we would be better off to do a few really important things well.  Remember that while Martha was doing a lot of good things, Jesus reminded her and reminds us that it is crucial we find balance by resting from even the good things in life to discover the Good. Rituals or liturgies that interrupt our old patterns can help us to form new habits and construct a new reality.

So our mantra is a question, “What are we rushing around to get to if we are not rushing home to sit around a dinner table with friends and family in celebration of the Maker of the universe?”

/2/ The faith authored by Jesus cannot be reduced to a private matter, it is public affair. To do all the one-anothering that is called for in Scripture, we need to actually be in the physical presence of each other.

/3/ Church is not a building, it is a people. People don’t go to church or even do church, they are church. We do life together.  The simple yet profound implication flowing from this is that our most meaningful worship should be the most quotidian, like a normal Tuesday dinner.

/4/ The liturgy set forth in this book draws upon numerous streams of Christian thought, with the humble hope of conforming to the Holy Scriptures at all times and the likely byproduct of challenging elements of our traditions at various junctures. For many, the idea of having friends over and sharing in Communion (or maybe you call it the Lord’s Supper or the Eucharist) without the sanction of an institutional church, or the presence of priest or pastor to preside over the sacrament, will be a stretch. At this point my response will remain simple: search the Scriptures, see what they say about this.

/5/ The Scriptures are filled with what we’ll loosely call paradox. For the sake of this text, paradox can be defined as “truths or statements that through the combining of opposites, or at times even contradictions, arrive at further truth.” The fact that the Scriptures are filled with paradox is important because those in the West have been nursed in reductionism and rationalism, but of which make embracing paradox really difficult. If we had the time and space we could make the argument that much of Western Christianity is more Western than it is Christian, with the result being that the dominant understanding of Christianity is a significantly skewed version of the original faith that was given by the risen Christ to the apostles. While the reality of syncretism is inevitable and should serve to humble us, we don’t need to stand paralyzed before the question of what is truth either. At the heart of the Christian faith we believe the Holy Spirit has come to live inside us and the Spirit alone has the power to interpret life’s parables and navigate the way.

God’s truth, it turns out, most often comes to us in opposites that are designed to be held together to experience their full dynamic power. It can be said then that all of life is best understood through a theology of pairing. A theology of union. Christ is the author and archetype of union. Those who abide in Christ experience a radical balance. This is not a balance achieved by being a centrist, but through a kinetic stillness that comes from the tension of dwelling in life’s dialectic extremes. I see this balance more and more as a kind of conflicting harmony. 

The Truth shall set us free. We know the Truth is finally a person: Jesus, the union of God and human, and therefore our liberation comes more through a relationship than a list of tenets. This Come Union liturgy attempts to hold the diversity of God together for the sole purpose that we might grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. We want to know as much as we can about the people we love, even if our knowledge will never be full or perfect, each new discovery is bliss. In like manner, when we encounter the complexity of our God and faith it is less reason for confusion or doubt, and more cause for wonder and delight. More often than not, I’ve found that it is precisely the tension of these paradoxes that rings so true to my experience of this adventure called life and functions to reassure me that the Jesus presented in the pages of the Bible is no fiction but the one wonderful Fact I was after all along.  

/The Invitation/

The Come Union table is a table shared with others to strengthen and encourage a pre-existing faith. The implication being that this is probably not a dinner party to invite non-Christian friends or family to. Evangelism is an indispensable part of the Christian calling, but there are times for the community of believers, the ekklesia, to enjoy koinonia and intentional teaching to feed our spirits. This dinner party is just such an occasion. It is designed to nurture those already in the faith. To water seeds that have already germinated. That being said, here is a place where a comma is more important than a period. If the Lord is prompting you to invite someone who is not a believer, by all means listen to the Lord and not the author of this book. Perhaps you’ll want to explain near the end of the liturgy that communion is for all those who have put their trust in the grace of Jesus. At this point you may invite your guests to discern for themselves if they fit that description, and to assure them there is no judgment from you if they are not ready. Again, listen to the Holy Spirit for direction, God will lead you.

It is worth giving forethought to the invitation we extend to others to come and dine with us. While the who is important, more important is the why. How do we go about deciding on who to invite to the dinner party? The wisdom of Scripture offers guidance. Prayer. The still small voice of God. The Spirit’s prompting. The Scriptures also caution us to take inventory of our heart’s motives. Are we inviting people we find attractive and fun to be around because it bolsters our ego? Are we focused solely on people that we enjoy being around? Praise God if you enjoy being around your friends and family, and by all means keep enjoying these people as the gifts of God they are. But simultaneously remember that our hearts are to be open and soft towards those we find less agreeable or stimulating. For those of us with financial means, the Bible clearly states we are at times to invite those in who cannot financially return the favor. This is not a pity move or charity, but this is both a reflection of grace and a guard against misusing a dinner for self-promotion. There are no right or wrong people to invite; however, there may be right or wrong motives underlying the invitation. The good news is that God weaves his grace through our lives even as we harbor ulterior motives. Don’t get bogged down in a guilt trip. Stay free in Christ and keep listening to the Spirit. The Spirit will guide you moment by moment. Faith is really Spirit-infused improvisation.

Throughout the process of discerning who to invite and what food to prepare, try to embrace a posture of caring and not caring. Care who you invite, but don’t set your heart on any one particular person and say it has to be him or her or the dinner will be a failure. Let go of controlling things. Let’s make the bold assumption that in the end God will bring those he wants to bring. Similarly, as you plan the menu, care but do not care. Good food matters, but it doesn’t matter. The details and the prep are important but they are also not important.

If you like Excel spreadsheets and Google Docs, inviting people via email or text or social media, great, do what comes natural to you. Or if your thing is sending old fashion snail mail, invitations on homemade stationary with ink you squeezed from raspberries and turmeric, go for it. James Clear’s third law for creating good habits is to “make it easy.”[i]  Don’t let the minutiae be a killjoy. Too often we give small details a godlike power over our emotions. So as you work to become the type of person who hosts liturgical dinner parties remember the journey can be as important as the destination. Meditating on a theology of grace with friends around the table may start by rehearsing grace with yourself throughout the process of preparation.

But I believe I have got the cart before the horse.  

For many households this whole idea of having other families over to share a meal may sound like a good idea on paper, but when we pull out our Google calendars, we come face to face with reality. There is no room for this. Life is too busy. The world, our society, the culture, has planned our days for us. Sure, it has given us endless options, but that is the beguiling genius of Satan. Mass distraction has birthed a spiritual mass incarceration. Particularly mass distraction achieved through parading a bunch of good things in front of us and reassuring us that we are meant to enjoy them all.  A powerful spiritual truth perverted and converted into a deadly spiritual poison. A theology extoling the gifts of creation while ignoring the Gift-giver. What the Bible calls the “principalities and powers”[ii] of this world are the spiritual forces outside of us that collaborate with the sin inside of us to avoid Jesus at all costs. Perhaps the greatest irony and tragedy of history is that a religion bearing Christ’s name has been so devoid of Christ’s Spirit.  A largely counterfeit Christianity functionally taught the masses that the way to avoid Jesus is to avoid sin.[iii]  A religion of morality took over so that we can justify ourselves, and if we can justify ourselves, then we don’t need the justification Jesus offers. The cancer of this religion still pervades much of Christian culture. For our purposes here, I’d argue that for many who identify as Christians today, the way that these Christians see their faith playing out in the day to day revolves largely around a few sins that they don’t engage in. Their piety then is proof of their faith. There are numerous problems with this, but for our discussion the big implication is that these Christians have failed to see how all of life is revolutionized when Jesus is treated like who he really is-God. For if this Jesus really is God, then everything in our calendars gets reorganized.

I wish there was a way to overstate this. For almost all Christians, the danger we face is less a temptation to do evil things, but rather to prioritize good things over the Good. Our contemporary lives are over-crowded, our days cluttered, our spirits clogged with the near endless possibilities of the digital age. Like everyone around us, we Christians have bought into the modern belief that we must make the most of all the opportunities, the experiences, the options, the potential for learning and fun that surround us. Enough is never enough. We are told to live our best life now. And if you believe this life is all you have, then this philosophical approach of binge living makes total sense. In our culture, we unquestionably believe that the best parent is the one that provides their child with as many opportunities as they can. We assume that individual growth and happiness are directly correlated to opportunities to learn and have fun and that it is the parent’s highest calling to ensure their child’s success and happiness. I am a parent and I feel this pull all the time. And I see parents who are ministers and spiritual directors whose lives are consumed with driving their children to and from sports and bands and clubs. Each child is a unique creation and each child is told to pursue their interests and individuality. There is much good in this, however, in the West this dogma is not rooted in biblical theology but in hyper-individualism, and it fails to see that at times what is best for the individual is to submit to and collaborate with what is best for the collective unit, the community. Culture and corporate interest will forever be playing on our fears with the message that you or your children are missing out in life because you are not participating in the latest and greatest club or trend. Listen now and I’ll bet you can hear that cultural voice within your own heart, the inner voice that says I’m missing out, or I should amount to more, do more, try more, enjoy more, learn more. To say “no” to good opportunities and new experiences seems foolish.[iv] We might agree that material abundance can lead to spiritual poverty, but certainly God wants us to learn and grow and do more things in the world even if he doesn’t want us to accumulate more things. Right? I think this is how many of us reason.

But pesky little Jesus argues that the way to the abundant life is the minimalist life. Even more than your money or possessions, he wants your time and attention. I have found incredible freedom in the philosophy of minimalism, but not minimalism as an end in itself, but as Jesus uses it, which is to say as a tool for calibrating the importance we impute to things in life (and not just things, but opportunities).[v] Jesus insanely said, “You must lose your life to save it.”[vi] Taken in the broader context of scripture, Jesus is clearly saying that your life is no longer your own to do with it whatever you please. As the famous catechism says, “I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.”[vii] And if this is true, then if Jesus encourages his people to prioritize prayer, the reading and study of the scriptures, feeding others in body and soul, and singing spiritual songs and hymns, then it is only logical that our lives fall into the rhythm and plot of this storyline. Our houses get built on this foundation. Our families grow as they are planted and rooted in this soil.

Brass tacks. God’ invitation to the abundant life involves prioritizing-there is no way around this. We are creatures with limited amounts of time, decisions on what we do with that time are inevitable. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”[viii] Pair Gandalf with the apostle Paul who says “all things are lawful, but not all profitable,”[ix] and the opening question returns, What are we rushing around to get to if we are not rushing home to sit around a dinner table with friends and family in celebration of the Maker of the universe?[x]

This is not about setting up a religious structure, but setting aside time to enjoy a relationship.

Think of it this way:

There are all kinds of activities I do with my wife throughout the week-some work related, some parenting, some recreational- all of which are spaces and places for us to connect. But then we also carve out special times to sit and talk, to be fully present and engage each other directly in ways that are harder to achieve when we are doing life’s other activities. We are present to each other in both, but my wife and I both know that we thrive when we prioritize and ensure that we have those uninterrupted times to be present in a special way.

The dynamics of our relationship with Jesus are similar to this. We thrive when we understand both that all of time is sacred space with God, and that there is a sacred to be experienced within the sacred, a time where time itself is born.

We can also think about it mathematically.  Since we know health is largely built on habits and habits on systems we put in place to reinforce the type of people we are and want to become, let us contemplate a very straightforward system for our families, one where the math reflects our deepest held convictions. Let’s say we have 112 hours a week where we are awake. What if we made the following 10 hours a nonnegotiable part of our weekday schedule? 10 hours, less than a tenth of our total time awake. So we are not even suggesting a tithe of our time.

Consider committing to the following as a family.[xi]

• Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday you set aside a half hour to pray together and to read and discuss the scriptures. It can be anytime of the day, morning, afternoon, or evening. But it becomes locked in, and the rest of life is built around this.

• Likewise, 1 hour each weekday to eat together and engage in quality communication- so we can truly know and love each other better- is locked in. Non-negotiable. For our family this is a sacred dinner time, 6pm. Maybe your family engages in a lengthy breakfast. Again, it doesn’t matter when you schedule it, but that you schedule it and stick to it.

• If you are married with children, a 2-3 hour date night once a week so you can focus some of your energy directly towards your spousal relationship.

This is a mere 10 hours a week, and although I know hundreds of Christian families, I know very few that achieve even this limited quality time together. That sounds harsh and judgmental as indeed it could be. I suggest, however, that this is primarily an observation and I raise it solely to spark reflection on the matter.[xii]

Imagine making these 10 hours the backbone of your family’s life? What would your children learn? What would this practice communicate to them? What incredible gift would you be sharing? And think of how your family’s courage to imagine and live differently could witness to the community God has placed you in?

And if, or maybe we should say when, soccer or band or robotics or dance or a board meeting or the men’s softball league comes into conflict, imagine the legacy you impart to your children and the world when you learn to say, “these are great things, but they are not the ultimate thing.”

All things are lawful, but not all build up. All things may even be good, but when the good crowds out the Good, we eventually become weary in our well doing. This is not a call to drop all the activities we love. God delights in soccer and dance, and desires us to enjoy what it is we enjoy. Rather, this is about unmasking our hearts and ordering our loves. This is about recognizing that so much of what we engage in is really taken from a script that society has written for us. We are already extremely liturgical people, whether we realize it or not. This modern push to be authentic is a ruse, for the path to authenticity has now been mapped out and has its own social norms and conventions.[xiii]

This chapter is an invitation to action, to restructure our lives in accordance with what matters most. Some people may argue that a prior work of the heart, an interior transformation, should be stressed as the starting point, otherwise we may fall back into the pit of ritual piety devoid of spiritual substance. Contemplative life first, activism and changing our structures later. But this way of thinking fails to see that our hearts and our actions live in symbiosis, such that each one is nourished and shaped by the other simultaneously. So there is nothing to master before moving on.[xiv] Right now will always be the time to begin.

___________________________

Chapter Endnotes

[i] Atomic Habits, by James Clear, page 139.

[ii] Ephesians 6:12

[iii] “There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.” Wise Blood: A Novel, by Flannery O’Connor.

[iv] There is enormous power to be harnessed through the use of positive constraints. What I mean by this is that in addition to the constraints that are naturally present and beyond our abilities-i.e.- I can’t move 10 yards of compost on my farm with a Yoda-like wave of my hand- there are constraints we can impose upon ourselves to channel our energies. These constraints are arbitrary in the sense that we make them up and we can ignore them if we like. However, if you know the kind of person you want to become or the thing you want to achieve then adding constraints to yourself can keep you focused on what it is that will lead you towards the destination you want to arrive at.

[v] Here again Jesus brings paradox.  Jesus can be seen as the source of minimalism and of endless abundance. Jesus the minimalist is evident as we contemplate the God beyond and behind the universe who in a very real way shrinks into the body of a human, taking on limitations. In fact, Jesus lived with less than many humans have- spouseless, childless, houseless, and though at times a crowd magnet, he restricted his intimate circle to a mere 12. He would go without food for forty days. He would turn the tables of the money changers and tell his disciples to give away all they owned to follow him. But he also multiplies the fishes and the loaves, and wines and dines with tax collectors (read: corporate CEO types) and prostitutes. He says he came to bring life and life abundantly. He blesses the woman who wastes expensive perfume on his dusty feet. He was ready to party, he changed no small amount of water into wine. Behold the paradox. The reverent iconoclast. The extravegant minimalist.

[vi] Matthew 10:39 and Matthew 16:25

[vii] Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer 1

[viii]Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien

[ix] 1 Corinthians 10:23

[x] This question that I’m using as the book’s mantra was inspired by a TED talk I heard a long long time ago. I’ve tried to find it but to no avail. This is not an exact quote, but the woman presenting said something similar to this.

[xi] I’ve constructed this argument with families in mind, but the principle holds true for single men and women as well.

[xii]  Just to be clear, there is no divine inspiriation behind these numbers.  This is merely something our family has practiced and found to be enormously life giving. I offer it because I’ve seen how it has helped anchor our family in Jesus and served to deepen our love for one another. But without a doubt, your calling is to listen to the Spirit and obey what God is saying to you and your family. This process of this discernement is itself such an important part of our formation and so I don’t want to shortcut that through some kind of prescription. The numbers I offered simply felt like a good starting point for Christians in the American context to wrestle with.

[xiii] I have written this book for myself as much as for other Christians. I find the Christian life to be so difficult and confusing that it helps me to process it all by writing my thoughts down on paper. I’m writing the following words more as a journal entry in response to the difficult decisions my wife and I have recently made. It’s funny because although I know that it is unlikely that many people will read this, I still feel this pre-emptive need to defend myself. I feel like Melissa and I are doing something we know will upset our parents because it is not the way they did it and no matter how sensitively we articulate our views we are going to come across as holier-than-thou rogues. There are topics that produce knee-jerk reactions, sacred cows that are untouchable. 

Here is the topic of contention. Our children have approached us asking to play organized sports for the first time. Our son wants to do track and cross country, our youngest daughter, basketball. Now, I’ll table the complicated conversation around whether sports and their competitive nature are spiritually neutral, positive, or negative, though that is a fascinating conversation that I find almost totally omitted from the church (okay, real quick, my two cents is that in regards to our spiritual development, sports are an incredibly complicated matter, with numerous pros and cons, so I’ve found that the only “Christian” stances I’d be on guard against are those that whole-heartedly endorse or wholeheartedly reject sports). What matters in the conversation I’m forcing upon my reader here is the priority sports have over our modern lives. This is where I take real issue and have so many questions. And again I want to be clear that this is not an easy black and white conversation. The fundamental problem is that it simply is not a conversation the church is having.

You’ll see a theme throughout this book. The theme is this: the church is a joke. We Christians are a joke. We are downright horrible at practicing what we preach. Myself included. Anyone inside the church who doesn’t get this scares me. Everyone outside the church who gets this I sympathize with, but I also pity because the whole point of Christianity boils down to the fact that God saves hypocrites, and what could be more hopeful than that? Healthy Christianity is one that continually reminds itself it is a joke, which is an antidote to our propensity towards self-righteousness and brings needed levity, yet doesn’t wallow in resignation but seeks to be animated toward a life of God’s design.

I believe there are many reasons the church doesn’t have so many important conversations but top on this list is that people naturally seek comfort and following cultural norms is superficially so much easier than questioning them. And since the church is an institution that needs ongoing funding, it may prove very self-defeating to challenge your donor base to disrupt their habits and patterns and think outside the box. I’m going for the jugular here, sorry church. But I say all this because I care. Because I attend a local church and I see all my peers, adults in their 30s and 40s running around pulling out their hair and everyone too busy to be together and everyone managing their mental health alone and I simply don’t believe it has to be this way. I’m not saying life won’t inevitably be hard. Cancer will strike randomly because it’s a jerk. The economy will hit us below the belt. But there are things in our control that could ease life’s pain and ground us in meaning and love that we forfeit by just going along with culture’s script. A truly imaginative and honest conversation about how we as a family and we as the local church engage in sports may be the most important conversation the modern church could have. No hyperbole here. 

My challenge is for families to seriously consider how to prioritize a half hour of scripture reading or prayer together and 1 hour around the table sharing a meal together over everything- including sports. To keep repeating myself: In no way is this similar to the old school fundamentalist methodology of demonizing certain activities! If you love sports, by all means, find a way to play them! I love basketball, and I find ways to play. What we are bringing to the light here is how we prioritize and organize our lives. When Jesus said, “you can’t serve God and money” he wasn’t saying you can’t make money or that it is wrong to like money. He was saying one or the other has to take the ascendency. And you don’t have to be a social scientist by training to look around and see that Christians, like everyone else in America, have given sports a pride of place and decided to squeeze God (and quality family and community dinners) into the margins, the left over spaces. I’m taking the liberty to be forceful and push an uncomfortable point. This is a horrible strategy for book sales I’m sure. But I’m ratcheting down on this matter because I sincerely believe if we have the courage to engage in difficult conversations and make difficult decisions, the rewards will be more than make up for the discomfort.

In our household the conversation is taking this form. This year we are not going to enroll the children in sports. In the big picture, we feel our time together is short and we cherish our evening family time of reading and movie watching as both a rest-filled space and a space where important spiritual/developmental conversations are happening. Conversations that if we forfeited that time to sports or other extra-curricular activities, we are not sure if they would be had. Sure, other conversations and character building could happen via a sports team, but comparatively we believe more relational growth can be fostered by our activities at home around the table. We also feel that keeping our evenings clear of sports allows us to practice better hospitality and host more people for dinners.  Again, I know my friends would argue that the sports teams and other parents function as a community. That makes total sense, and I don’t doubt that these relational ties have meaning, but I’m not convinced that the these communities that arise around sporting events and teams do the best job at facilitating holistic relational health. Again, I’m not faulting the sport. I’m arguing that the way we organize ourselves and the sporting activities could be adjusted to foster deeper community.

For so many families, children start their involvement in sports in early elementary and continue through high school. Depending on how many children a couple has, this often means one to two decades of life are dominated by transporting children to and from sporting practices and events with the concurrent reality of interrupted and scattered dinners and a general inflexibility to casually gather with neighbors and friends because the calendar is full. This is an enormous commitment of time that people just seem to fall into without a lot of forethought. As we contemplate potential involvement in sports we are glad that the elementary and middle school years were not spent in the busyness of sports mania and we communicate very openly with our children about how saying yes to one thing inevitably means saying no something else.  It is also important to remember that pre-teen children have different spiritual formation needs than adolescent children. The teenage years are a season of transition, marked by incremental increases in opportunities for children to autonomously explore the world, for putting into practice the faith that has been cultivated by parent and child alike over those first 13 years. Exploring or engaging in sports in the high school years may make more sense when viewing it all from the perspective of spiritual formation. But even then, maintaining a secure relational bond via family meals and a solid diet of scripture and prayer continue to be an obvious foundation for spiritual health.

This chapter is an invitation to action, to restructure our lives in accordance with what matters most. I included my journal-like rant not as blueprint for what other families should do, but as a window into another family’s life, just to show that there are options.  I could have omitted this bit and trusted that the reader would find time to host their own liturgical dinner party without overthinking their whole life. Maybe you like your calendar and don’t experience much overwhelm and don’t feel disconnected from those you love. My wager is that most of us want more out of life. And if so,  why not put it all on the table. We can’t do the same things over and over again and expect different results.

[xiv] I heard an Elizabeth King quote on a podcast that ties in perfectly here: “Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.”  In other words, decide, go forth and do. Don’t let your feelings guide you. Or from the middle of a sonnet penned by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

“Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells

Crying what I do is me; for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: that keeps all this goings graces;

Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—Christ.” 

/Come hear /

We are entertaining the idea of entertaining and of doing so to the beat of a liturgical rhythm. What would it look like to be a people who gather around food material and food spiritual in perpetuity? For maybe behind all this wining and dining lies one of God’s delightful secrets. The goodness we enter into circles back to enter into us. This is undoubtably why God gave humans the sabbath and encouraged Israel that much was to be gained from ritual and rhythms.

The amazing potential inherent to ritual and liturgy is not some kind of special wisdom God reserved for Israel alone. Cultures across the globe and spanning the centuries have recognized its value. I love the way Puett and Gross-Los describe it in The Path: What Chinese Philosophers can Teach us about the Good Life, “We tend to think of ritual as something that tells us what to do, not as something transformative. But by participating in ritual you can take on roles that diverge from your usual ones- a ritual that allows you to construct a new reality.”[xv] It seems that in America we have drawn the conclusion that rituals, which consist of intentionality and commitment, are incompatible with being a truly free person. We shun ritual because we think it restrictive of our liberty but we fail to see that what we understand as our liberty is itself a bounded reality, where perhaps none of our thoughts or our desires are fully our own. We have misunderstood the nature of our freedom and missed what those from ages past saw, whether the Israelites or ancient Chinese, which is that we are intricately interconnected to the rest of creation in such powerful ways that if we over-emphasize our uniqueness, our freedom, or our individuality, we pull away from reality and fall into delusion. A place where we do the greatest harm to ourselves and others. For Laozi, the heart of the Way is embracing the interconnectedness of all things. In Taoism, the more we see the world as differentiated, the further we are from the Way. In Christianity a parallel logic is at play. The more we think of ourselves as distinct from the rest of creation, as independent from it and from the Creator, the more our hearts are darkened. The end of Romans chapter 1 spells this out plainly.  

Our aim then is less to decide if we want to participate in rituals or not, but to determine which ones will allow us to construct a reality that reflects God’s kingdom and will. We can verbalize all kinds of spiritual goals and ambitions, but “we don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.”[xvi]  This is about habit formation. Liturgy is habit formation. And habit formation is transformative. Some describe habit formation as a type of self-creation. It is no surprise that so many self-help books turn the spotlight on our habits.

As Christians, our views on the matter are more nuanced. We believe our spiritual transformation is a rebirth, a new act of God, something we can’t produce, but something bestowed upon from the outside. We call it grace. Theologians have rightly seen that it involves imputation. Yet if you comb through Christian literature, perhaps most importantly the scriptures, you can’t help but witness all kinds of talk that makes it sound like prayer, fasting, studying the scriptures, gathering with the saints, contributing to the needs of others and doing justice are habits we adopt which in turn shape who we are. Maybe you’ve read a book on spiritual disciplines. Did you come away like I did, feeling like here are some grounding practices that can’t help but to reorient my mind and heart? So which is it? Do our habits assist in our transformation, or is our transformation an accomplished fact, achieved by God fully and we simply don’t experience it all the time because we have flesh?[xvii] The Bible’s answer is both. Once again, our task is to dwell in the tension, not run from it or attempt vainly to resolve it.

We’d do well to abandon Western, linear thinking—which distorts the Christian life into either: (a) a progression that starts with us doing the rituals and results in sanctification, or (b) a stationary place where we have been saved completely so there is no room or need for further practice because, in linear logic, the destination has been reached.  But the Bible is so much more interesting than that. We get curve balls, circular thinking, stuff like, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12).  A favorite theologian of mine once wrote that sanctification is “the art of getting used to our justification.”[xviii]  He loved to emphasize how our salvation was so completely outside of us, so thoroughly the work of God’s magic in Christ and not the product of our best morality, our highest cognition, or humblest motives. And yet he too admitted that we are not without a role to play. We take up this “art,” this artform, this task of getting used to grace. The Come Union liturgy is just such an artform. We listen to the Spirit and the scriptures to imagine and design rhythms we can join in on together to rehearse the gospel.  It is spontaneous and fluid and flexible even as it conforms to schedules, patterns, and the mediums of our day-to-day existence. Maybe the final desire is that when we glance back from our deathbed over our allotted journeys around the sun, the most striking patterns that emerge shine with God’s grace. 

I think of my wife Melissa’s grandmother. The unwanted blight of Alzheimer’s darkening her final years. Yet as all other memories dissolved into the disease’s terrible abyss, the one thing she could recall were hymns. Collectively rehearsed weekly, sometime sung privately, a heritage that remained even when she could no longer remember Melissa’s name. They could still hold hands and sing together.

For Melissa’s forefathers and foremothers knew that an indispensable part of the ritual was to come and hear. They remembered Paul’s plea to the Romans, “And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?”[xix]  Come and hear the good news. Hear it preached. Hear it prayed. Hear it murmured. Hear it in grief and rejoicing. Hear it everywhere in between. But there might be no form of hearing that quite compares to hearing it sung.

When ordinary words, with their definitions-the limitations of what they can convey- are put into a melody, conformed to notes within octaves, notes that can be bent and harmonized, something new is unleashed. Words that are sung become more vivid or more bleak. Music pushes words even closer to the realities they speak of. Music is a kind of enhancement drug.

Nothing compares to it. Years ago I got together weekly with a couple of friends to pray and share a breakfast. One of the friends is an amazing artist, a fine arts major who became a finish carpenter who sold pieces at local art galleries on the side. The other friend is a singer-song writer. I remember the fine arts friend saying, “man, I would trade my art skills to be a musician in a heartbeat. There is no higher artform than music.” I remember this because it resonated so deeply with me. I immediately chimed in, “Amen! Me too!” I have less than no musical ability, but there is nothing I enjoy more than listening to good music.

At some level everyone seems to know this. Some people are just really good at articulating this mystery. Like Cornel West, who wrote, “Music at its best...is the grand archeology into and transfiguration of our guttural cry, the great human effort to grasp in time our deepest passions and yearnings as prisoners of time. Profound music leads us--beyond language--to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.”

A memory I have permanently etched in my brain is of a time I visited this small rural church with a cousin of mine. It was a Sunday evening service on a warm Autumn day, and from our wooden pews facing north, the setting sun cast rays of golden light through the western windows as a simple and small choir sang “Come Thou Fount.” It was angelic. It felt transcendent, like an out of body experience. There was a perfection in the moment, an absoluteness in the truth and beauty of the lyrics that made the rest of the world melt away. For over two decades now, that memory surfaces whenever I hear “Come Thou Fount.” I can’t quite re-live the experience, it was not and is not something I can fabricate. But even now the song brings back pieces of that memory, as well as an echo of the feeling that accompanied it. And that is often nourishment enough for me.

A recent joy of mine has been watching my teenage son become a huge fan of Lecrae and of every artist on the Reach Records label. These hip-hop artists are immensely gifted but the power of their work lies in the fact that they have married their gifts to the highest Good. They are rehearsing the gospel. They have formed a liturgical canon that is profoundly shaping my son’s life. Sharing the gospel through music seems to be the most potent method of sharing. Again, I don’t have a clear explanation of why that is, but I can witness that it is. Music extends the reach of the words. Reach Records is judiciously named.

As you create liturgical patterns in your household or host Come Union dinner parties, think about what songs you would like to include. Generate playlists for background music when people arrive or for when folks are milling about at the end of the evening. I’ve included the lyrics to a couple of my favorites in this book, but insert whatever ministers to you into the evening. Maybe you are blessed with musicians to lead your group in song or even to write new songs. Maybe no one in your party is particularly gifted. It doesn’t matter. Take turns sharing favorite songs and artists and listen, enjoy, and participate in the gift of music as you are led by the Spirit.

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Chapter Endnotes

[xv] Puett and Gross-Los,The Path: What Chinese Philosophers can Teach us about the Good Life, page 23.

[xvi] “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” Atomic Habits, Jame Clear, page 27. This is my favorite quote from Atomic Habits to share with others, and the one I have meditated on most since I read the book.

[xvii] I’m using the word “flesh” here as the apostle Paul does. In Paul’s theology, the Greek word sarx (translated “flesh”) is loaded with meaning. It refers not only to our mortal body, but to our whole being or self that is spiritually dead and alienated from God. It is the post-Adam natural condition of humanity, where we are enslaved to the powers of Sin, Death, and Law.

[xviii] Gerhard O. Forde, in the book Christian Spirituality: 5 Views of Sanctification, edited by Donald L. Alexander. Page 13.

[xix] Romans 10:14-15 

/Come taste/

“Humans invented cooking before they thought of nutrition. To be sure, food keeps us alive, but that is only its smallest and most temporal work. Its eternal purpose is to furnish our sensibilities against the day when we shall sit down at the heavenly banquet and see how gracious the Lord is. Nourishment is necessary only for a while; what we shall need forever is taste… Food is the daily sacrament of unnecessary goodness, ordained for a continual remembrance that the world will always be more delicious than it is useful.”[xx] 

The late Robert Capon penned these words in his classic The Supper of the Lamb. I have seen him quoted in countless books about food and I will follow suit. My wife and I routinely hand this book out to people because it is one of those works of art that suffers injustice if described, it must be experienced. Go buy this book now.

Taste is what we shall need forever. God made the world delicious. This makes me think of a talk I heard by chef Dan Barber, an eccentric personality in the local and organic food scene whose Michelin-starred plates boasted the highest quality produce dressed down to highlight their essence. In his edgy and intense way, he insisted that he cooked the way he did not to be healthy, but because he is a hedonist. I think a number of folks like myself were drawn to Barber’s rhetoric because it transcended the popular false dichotomies that we must choose between good tasting food or healthy food. Naughtiness or nourishment? How about both?

I’m one of those people who is a low level jack of some trades, master of none. As you’ve noticed by now, I’m certainly not a real writer. I’ve spent most of the waking hours of my adult life out of doors, hands caked with bacteria from the soil and sweat accumulated on brow and other areas not to be mentioned. After restlessly jumping around from biology to art to sociology to history during my undergraduate years, I went on to earn a Masters of Divinity, only to decide that my calling was not to a local church but the local food movement. I functioned as a type of local activist through a non-profit urban farm I founded and directed. After 8 years with this organization called Eighth Day Farm, Melissa and I sought a change, so we bought land out in the country, turned the farming thing into a homestead hobby and opened an outdoor wedding venue. Yet we look back with much fondness on those years with the urban farm. While those were financially lean years, the experiential and social capital gained were priceless. Wealth has many metrics, and we found that friendships constituted the treasure we most valued. A beautiful group of largely artists and educators surrounded us in those years and sowed their resources into the fledgling organization and our family. In turn, Melissa and I sensed a strong calling to foster community wherever we could, and over the course of a decade, welcomed 17 housemates. Melissa also made into policy a 6pm open-to-all dinner invitation. There was always room around the table for whoever might show up.

It is through this history, not intellectual speculation, that I can say with conviction and confidence that nothing anchors us or provides stability as much as sitting down together each weeknight at the table- no matter what the crisis of that day, week, or season of life. We all came from different walks of life, with a diversity of poverties, but whether you were financially broke or suffering from depression, the table was a space where so much of that pain temporarily melted away before the goodness of breaking bread together. It didn’t hurt that Melissa was and is a good cook.[xxi] (Nor did the fact that we had ridiculous amounts of fresh produce from the farm at our disposal alongside money we received for food stamps because we were well below the poverty line). The food was delicious. Taste is what we shall need forever. But the best meal eaten in the privacy of yourself just can’t be the best meal. We need to taste with each other. We need to taste through each other’s eyes. To see others delighting in the goodness of all that is—this is blessing upon blessing, and I believe it is in these moments of shared joy and pleasure that we approach what it means to be fully human, fully alive, holistically satiated.

What are we rushing around to get to if we are not rushing home to sit around a dinner table with friends and family in celebration of the Maker of the universe? Or put another way, I heard Kevin Kelly say on a podcast, “You can find no better medicine for your family than regular meals together without screens.”

What follows are 8 meals from friends in our community. These meals can be paired with the 8 meditations if you like. We tried to offer not just a single, main dish, but a guild of recipes to form a robust dinner. Of course, do whatever you like here, take whatever you like, leave behind whatever you don’t. These are like writing prompts. Go forth and make the stories your group desires to taste. Potlucks are always exciting. Themed dinners don’t get boring. Don’t limit your options, keep the door open, and let your table be filled.

“He goes to the potluck supper, a dish from each house for the hunger of every house.”

Wendell Berry, from The Mad Farmer Poems

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Chapter Endnotes 

[xx] The Supper of the Lamb, Robert Farrar Capon. Page 40.

[xxi] I once heard a talk with Barbara Kingsolver where she elaborated on how the professional women in Europe she knew didn’t deem the long preparation involved in sharing and hosting a dinner as a kind of domestic chore reflecting a misogynist culture, but undertook it with pleasure as artwork and entertainment.