Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table
Jesus has come for losers, people on the margins, people who’ve made a mess of their lives, people who are ordinary. Jesus has come for you. The only people left out are those who think they don’t need God: the self-righteous and the self-important.
If we reject salvation at the margins, if we reject those whom God accepts, then we reject the grace of God.
God is ready to embrace us. In one sense we are far from God. But in another sense, God is very close to us
In you, O Lord, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame! In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me, and save me! Be to me a rock of refuge, to which I may continually come; you have given the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. (Ps. 71:1–3)
Only God is self-sufficient. We are creatures, and every moment we’re sustained by him. Even our rebellion against him is only possible because he holds the fabric of our universe together by his powerful word. Our shouts of defiance against God are only possible with the breath he gives.
We are the spiritually poor—with nothing to offer for our salvation; the spiritually crippled—made powerless by sin; the spiritually blind—unable to see the truth about Jesus; the spiritually lame—unable to come to God on our own.
God’s grace is the foundation for the Christian community.
Our attitude to the marginalized is to be shaped by our experience of God’s grace to us.
We’re called to follow Christ into a broken world.
Jesus bore the judgment we deserve, so that repentant rebels can experience the coming of his kingdom as good news.
We find in Jesus a pattern of suffering followed by glory. Followers of Jesus must follow the same pattern. Our sufferings aren’t redemptive, but we are called to follow Christ’s example of sacrificial love and service.
The Lord’s Supper is a call to God to act in keeping with his covenant: forgiving us, accepting us, and welcoming us to the Table through the finished work of Christ.
The cross humbles us all as we see the extent of sin, and the cross exalts us all as we’re welcomed into God’s family.
The resurrection of Jesus is the promise and beginning of the renewal of all things, and the future is a physical future on a renewed earth.
We need to begin our interaction with people with a question much more often than we do.
We mustn’t fear others’ pain or hide our own, for Christ is with us even if we don’t always recognize him.
Christ’s resurrection is the promise of a new world.
The glory, power, and wisdom of Christ, says Paul in 1 Corinthians 1, are seen in the shame, weakness, and foolishness of the cross.
The message of the Scriptures is that the Christ had to suffer and die in order to redeem.
Some of us have to learn that our guests matter more than our hospitality. Our aim is to serve, not impress.
Martha is distracted from hearing the Word of God by anxieties.
The reason we are sent out in mission is that all authority has been given to the Son. The world was without God, but now it’s claimed in Christ’s name.
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