Sunday Lunch is Ministry
Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, January 30, 2022
Look for the person on the edge who doesn’t get included, have them around your table. Look for the person who is very much ‘in’ but gets overlooked, have them around your table. Look for the person who hosts all the time but never gets invited elsewhere, have them around your table. Look at your pastor and their family—have them around your table.
What do you do when you need to cook for 30 people for a Sunday lunch? In our house, you get the cauldron out.
Before you start reading out Macbeth and building a pyre, it’s a large steel preserving pan that the group of students from our church we feed most weeks have dubbed ‘the cauldron’. Or maybe you got stuck in the previous sentence, because cooking for 30 people for lunch after church is alien, or superhuman, or unimaginable. I get that.
This wasn’t a normal Sunday for us, we’re in a church near one of the University campuses and about a third of our church is students. At the start of term in a September we, like most churches near a University, host groups of new first year students in a number of homes. We were hosting a student lunch that week and for one reason or another the other homes that students were going to were unable to have them, so we were catering for an unknown number of students, hence the many pots of cassoulet bubbling on the hob.
Helen, my wife, is an excellent cook and more importantly actively enjoys feeding people. She’s in her element with the challenge of figuring out how to stretch our food to go further. She’s also never knowingly under-catered so on this occasion cooked for 45. Go big or go home, I say.
We had 19 students that week, which meant it also fed our mid-week group, and a family in the church whose kitchen was out of action, and another family the following Sunday, with some spare to go in the freezer for one of those days your home fills with hungry people you weren’t expecting.
I don’t expect everyone to do what we did that day, or to have the space in your home to even make it possible. Those mass groups aren’t my favourite anyway, I’d much prefer 6 or 8 sat around one table enjoying each other’s company and perhaps a bottle of wine. But the principle should be a lot more normal than it is.
I’d like to reframe two things as normal that are less normal in Christian culture than they should be:
Adding an extra mouth to a meal should be a skill we learn.
You meet someone at church that week who’s new and want to invite them back for food to get to know them a bit better? That’s difficult unless you’ve either cooked for a bigger number of people deliberately, which is a wonderful thing to do but does tend to leave you with a lot of leftovers, or you’ve learned how to stretch a meal.
We feed our ‘Life Group’ every week, which I think is how this sort of thing works best, they’re mostly students or new graduates. We have at times had some lads who can really put it away—the sort of thing where you wonder if they are intending to eat again that week.
Regularly feeding large groups can get expensive if you just multiply up what you might cook for two of you, so you have to approach the meals a little differently.
-
God is a Se
Theologians have long referred to this perfection as God’s aseity, from the Latin a se, or “from himself.” The idea is that God’s existence is his essence. All other creatures exist by way of a Creator – they came into being by way of another Being, and therefore their existence is dependent and thus not a part of their essence. They do not have ens per essentiam, that is, being that exists by virtue of its own essence. This can only be said of God for God alone is a se – of Himself.
Paul, in Romans 1:20, tells us that there is something which he refers to as God’s divine nature. That is, there is something unique to God and about God that cannot be said of any other being. There is a Godness to God, what philosophers and theologians would call God’s essence (or an even more fun word to use, His quiddity – the whatness of God). Consider how Paul in Galatians 4:8 says that when we were unbelievers, we “were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods.” You can call yourself a god all you want, but there’s something about your essence and nature that belies the truth.
So what is God’s Godness? Humility pushes us to listen to God to find this answer since God in his transcendent incomprehensibility is infinitely beyond our limited capacity (much less, our fallen capacity) to grasp at knowing God ourselves. Again, quoting Paul, “For what can be known about God is plain to [all humanity]… who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1 verse 19 and 18, respectively). We need God to speak and speak in such a way that His word not only penetrates our unbelief but also creates within us true belief. And praise God, He is not silent.
As Luke records for us the words of Paul, “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; neither is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things” (Acts 17:24, 25). In other words, what sets God apart from all other beings is his independence. Properly, he is not dependent upon anything else (or anyone else) for his being. That’s the Godness of God. Notice how Paul emphasizes God’s creative power: He made the world and all things and He gives to all life and breath and all things. But God himself, says Paul, does not need anything. His essential independence requires that he is not even in need of his being. He simply is.
Perhaps the clearest expression of this is when God reveals to Moses his own name – a name, by the way, which God has not received from anyone else. This is the name God has Himself chosen and which he’s been pleased to reveal. Thus, it tells us a lot about who and what God is as God knows Himself. In Exodus 3 God reveals himself to Moses as “I Am who I Am.” First, the way in which God discloses this name, out of a burning bush and yet the bush was not being consumed, testifies to the nature of the name. Fire, in order to be, is dependent upon fuel to burn. Not so here. Here is a fire which is burning but is in no need of a bush to burn. The fire, as such, has being independent of the bush. The name then which God reveals from out of the burning bush is tied to this image of independence. “I Am who I Am.” His being is His being andHe does not need anything outside of Himself in order to be.
Theologians have long referred to this perfection as God’s aseity, from the Latin a se, or “from himself.” The idea is that God’s existence is his essence. All other creatures exist by way of a Creator – they came into being by way of another Being, and therefore their existence is dependent and thus not a part of their essence. They do not have ens per essentiam, that is, being that exists by virtue of its own essence. This can only be said of God for God alone is a se – of Himself.
This does not mean, of course, that God caused his own being. There was no moment where God came to be. No, as Francis Turretin writes, “True eternity has been defined by the Scholastics to be ‘the interminable possession of life – complete, perfect, and at once.’”[1] God’s aseity is indistinguishable from his eternality and immutability. He is unchangingly and infinitely and eternally alive! Pure Being and Pure Actuality.
Read More
Related Posts: -
5 Things To Know About Church Child Sex Abuse Scandal In West Lafayette, Ind.
Written by Holly V. Hays |
Tuesday, December 7, 2021
Church leaders were aware of the abuse for nearly five months before informing the congregation. Immanuel elders were made aware of the allegations — broadly, not necessarily in detail — in April 2020, after one family confronted Olivetti about abuse and reported to the Indiana Department of Child Services, according to church records…Despite recommendations from the committee appointed to advise the elders, the congregation was not notified of the abuse until September 6, 2020.A West Lafayette, Indiana, pastor could potentially be removed from office following an investigation into his handling of allegations of sexual abuse within his congregation.
Jared Olivetti, who is the head pastor at Immanuel Reformed Presbyterian Church, and other elders who served in 2020 are under investigation by the denomination and are facing religious charges at the national level, according to multiple interviews and documents obtained by IndyStar, after the elder board intentionally kept quiet allegations of abuse involving eight children from six families.
The perpetrator, a teenage boy, is a relative of Olivetti. The pastor failed to recuse himself despite the clear conflict of interest and shaped Immanuel’s internal investigation. (IndyStar is not indicating the relationship between the two to avoid identifying the boy. The Star does not name minors unless they are charged as adults.)
Here are five things you need to know about our investigation into the handling of abuse at the West Lafayette church.
‘No sanctuary’:A boy sexually abused up to 15 kids. His pastor relative protected him.
The head pastor was aware of abusive behavior as early as October 2019
Olivetti was made aware of inappropriate behavior toward two children from the congregation in October 2019, according to internal church records obtained by IndyStar, when the boy was seen reaching down the back of a child’s pants and again when he allegedly propositioned another child and touched their chest without their consent.
Apparently unknown to Olivetti at that time was the fact that the boy had already begun seriously abusing children from at least two other children, according to church records.
Church leaders intentionally delayed notifying Presbytery of the allegations
In a July 2020 meeting with Joshua Greiner, a pastor at neighboring Faith Church West, Olivetti said elder meeting notes regarding the allegations were going to be kept in a separate record from notes that would otherwise be shared with Presbytery.
Read More -
7 Aspects of the Nature of Marriage According to the Bible
The legal nature of earthly marriage, while dissoluble due to sin, is meant to exist until death parts a couple. Legality also implies consequences for failure, such as we find in the Old Testament where Hosea’s marriage to the prostitute Gomer was a warning to Israel not to play the harlot with the Lord and instead return to him and be faithful. If Christ were not faithful to his bride, the church, he would be liable to judgment, which is impossible (Heb. 6:13; 2 Tim. 2:13). The union between Christ and the church is indissoluble—believers are beloved by Christ and forever belong to him.
We have received a lot of questions on the Beautiful Christian Life Facebook page regarding what constitutes a legitimate marriage in God’s sight. Here are seven questions and answers on the topic of the nature of marriage according to the Bible:
1. Can people be married in their hearts?
Nowhere in the Bible does it state that a true marriage exists where people agree in their hearts that they are husband and wife. In the Bible there is always a legal aspect to marriage. This is why a certificate of divorce had to be issued if the marriage was dissolved under the Mosaic covenant (Deut. 24:1-4; Matt. 19:7-8) and why Joseph was going to quietly divorce Mary after he learned she was pregnant, as there was a marriage contract in force even though their marriage had not been consummated yet:Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. (Matt. 1:18-19)
Waiting for a period of time between the signing of the marriage contract and the actual consummation of the marriage was common practice during the time of Joseph and Mary’s betrothal. In his book Backgrounds in Early Christianity, church historian Everett Ferguson writes the following about Jewish marriage in the first century:
The marriage was a contract between families. It was effected in two stages: the betrothal (or ‘acquisition’ of the bride) and the wedding proper (taking the bride into the husband’s home). The betrothal had the legal force of marriage and could be broken only by divorce (cf. Matt 1:18-19).” It was accomplished by the bridegroom paying the bride-price (or part of it) or delivering a deed. The customary written contract (ketubah) included the husband’s duties to his wife and the sum due her in the event of a divorce or his death” (p. 74).
The bride in all her special adornments was joyfully escorted to the groom’s house for the wedding ceremony. Along with the pronouncement of seven blessings, the marriage contract was read at the ceremony, which took place under a canopy (huppah). The wedding was then celebrated for seven days (Ferguson, p. 74).
2. Why do we have to sign a piece of paper to make a marriage legal?
People wonder why a man and woman have to sign a document in order to be married. In the Ancient Near East, in which biblical history took place, a written document was commonly associated with covenants. According to Ligonier Ministries,The signing of a piece of paper is not a matter of affixing one’s signature in ink to a meaningless document. The signing of a marriage certificate is an integral part of what the Bible calls a covenant. Biblically, there is no such thing as a private marriage contract between two people. A covenant is done publicly before witnesses and with formal legal commitments that are taken seriously by the community. The protection of both partners is at stake; there is legal recourse should one of the partners act in a way that is destructive to the other. (“God’s Will and Your Marriage,” part 1)
Christians are called to obey governing authorities. If there are laws regarding marriage in the country where a Christian man and woman reside who are seeking to marry, they need to obey them as long as they are not disobeying God in doing so:
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. (Rom. 13:1-2)
3. Does having sex with someone equal marriage (the “two become one flesh” passages)?
Some people think that two people are married if they have had sexual intercourse with each other based on the two-become-one flesh passages:“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Gen. 2:24)
Read More
Related Posts:
