A Common Meal

here is my last link for Barclay Press.

1. A Common Meal for Common People

I almost considered doing a summary on the BP post – but instead I will do it here.

In writing, reflecting, these two weeks about thoughts I realized that much of my focus has been on practices of the church.  What we do as people in the church really makes a difference whether for the good or for the bad.  If we have the retreatist mentality – we will never change or transform anything.  The practices of a person in retreat are self-directed, on the defensive and not usful for Christ.  But there are other types of practices that are equally unusful, practices that “stand for nothing” or are not rooted in the person of Christ are also not usful for the Kingdom.

We have the ability to be dogmatic and judgmental pushing people away, we can also be totally non-dogmatic, pull everyone in and have no distinctions between us and them; in this case the church looks like the world.  In the first example the church looks like the lady on “trading spouses” insane, afraid and a caricature of itself.  Neither are Jesus’ followers – we can’t be either totally exclusivive or totally inclusive but only centered on the person of Christ and how he lived his life.  Practices focus on the real-life examples that Christ did, the church can turn many things into practices, practices that not only transform their own people but the world.  This was what I meant when I talked about Halloween, telling the truth, the sacrament of birth, and eating common meals together.  These are things that can be done by normal people, and find their root in the Gospel.  This should be no surprise, for Jesus was for the common people, after all this is who he spent so much of his time with – why are we afraid to do the same?  And is it legitimate fear?  We can begin growing our faith one practice at a time.