In the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics in Paris, there
was a controversial show portraying the feast of the gods (le festin des
dieux), the Greek gods painting by Dutch painter Jan van Bijlert circa
1635-40[1].
Many Christians took offense assuming that it was a mockery of the Last Supper.
Whether the artistic director meant to mock the Lord’s Table or not, many
people found the show made them uneasy.

What we need to remember from this is the world that the
Lord’s Table was first found in. The Olympic show reminds us that the early
Christians were surrounded by many tables of drunkenness, debauchery and lewd
behaviour. There were many temples to the Greek and Roman gods that specialized
in feasting and sensuality.

1 Corinthians 10:

¹⁴ Therefore, my dear friends, flee from
idolatry. ¹⁵ I speak to sensible people; judge for yourselves
what I say. ¹⁶ Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give
thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we
break a participation in the body of Christ? ¹⁷ Because there
is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf.

¹⁸ Consider the people of Israel: Do not
those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? ¹⁹ Do I
mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is
anything? ²⁰ No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to
demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. ²¹ You
cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a
part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons. ²² Are
we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

In contrast to the tables to the other gods, our gathering
at the Lord’s Table is a reminder that we are called to a communal meal. We
participate in a remembrance of the body and blood of our God and the salvation
sacrifice that Jesus made.

Paul reminds us that the priests of Israel ate the
sacrifices presented at the altar. In Christ we have become a kingdom of
priests that are nourished by the sacrifice. We cannot be nourished at the
other tables of idolatry. We will not find another god that invites us to
eternal banquet in His Kingdom.

We are not called to a party based on sensual indulgence. We
are called to a family table with sensitivity, not sensuality.

This is a cup of thanksgiving and a loaf of participation in
the life Christ gives.

The relationship that God has with people is comparable to a
potter working with clay. The Artist has a particular design in mind and works
with the raw ingredients as needed. Like marred clay, we have often have
impurities and need to be worked over, reduced and reshaped to the intended
purpose.

This is not the only passage of Scripture that directly or
indirectly uses the analogy. Even when we read the Creation story about God
forming man from the dust of the ground, it’s not exactly the dust on your
windowsill.

Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian wrote about the
meaning of this text and said it is not dry dust, but rather “red earth
macerated, or mixed with water.”[1]
Into the mud formation known as humanity, God breathed life into us, and we
became living beings made in His image.

You might ask a potter, how old is that clay on your wheel?
The truth is that clay may be processed but it is not being created in a
factory. All clay is ancient and a key ingredient in the soil of our planet.

We are the product of red dirt and Holy Spirit.

If we apply the potter and clay analogy, God fashioned a man
to be a vessel containing Holy Spirit. But one vessel was not a complete set,
so God put Adam to sleep and fashioned Eve from the living being Adam. Like
Jeremiah’s idea, the man Adam was incomplete in one  sense, so God went to work to improve upon
the created being.

In how God is at work to shape us as a people and our lives
individually, it begs the question of whether we can be improved upon. Can the
marred clay be smooshed, dampened and reformed? Can something new be made from
the same ingredient? God had to put Adam to sleep and take away something from
him to fashion something much greater to better reflect the potter’s purpose.

Are you willing to let God put you to sleep, so to speak,
and take something from you that will only improve upon the purposes of life?

We know from the Adam and Eve story, that the entry into sin
marred their existence. More marred clay in God’s fashioning hands. To leave
them in a ruined state would not satisfy God. He would go to work on restoring
humanity to its intended purposes. In order for people to be reformed, they
would need to become pliable in the potter’s hands and willing to be changed.

John the Baptist was indeed a powerful, provocative and
influential teacher. Part of the strength of his message was in recognizing
that he was a forerunner. It was given to him to call people back to God in
preparation of the coming Messiah.

John belonged to a Jewish subgroup known as The Essenes.
They lived in the desert away from the city and believed that faithfulness to
God meant separating from the diluted and worldly Judaism they saw elsewhere.
That is why the description of John’s camel hair clothing, and his diet of
locusts and wild honey was recorded in the Scriptures. He dressed and ate like
someone who lived in the wilderness. Much of his ministry was around the Jordan
River, sacred to Israel and Judah as the place of crossing into promise. To be
baptized in that river was an acknowledgment of returning to God’s plan for his
people.

As crowds would travel to hear John, they would hear a
strong voice in a quiet place. Jesus would have made that journey and heard
John teach. How might Jesus in turn be influenced by having such a teacher and
proclaimer of truth?

Jesus’ message to religious leaders would become a
continuation of God’s prophetic message flowing from John’s mouth. It was hard
words for hardened hearts. However, the message of correction is always to
point to something or someone greater to watch for.

The world is based on the human dream of empire. We
will build systems, governments and business empires that provide a human
strength to accomplish the common good.

The Cambridge dictionary defines empire as, ‘a group of
countries ruled by a single person, government or country.’ It is Israel in
its formative stages wanting a king to rule, the way other nations are
governed. It is the notion that a king, queen, president or prime minister can
preserve the strength and develop the resource of the commonly shared identity.

Some read the Scriptures and think that the Kingdom of God
is an empire that needs a good king with a plan to overtake the world. But what
does this vision miss?

Empire misses most of the points that Jesus makes about how
we are to live. He came preaching the Kingdom of God as the anti-thesis to
worldly empire. He preached the ancient concept of Shalom, often shorthanded as
the word ‘peace’. But Shalom has more depth than a simplistic wish for
troubles to go away so we can be at peace and do our own thing.

“Shalom” was used as both a greeting and farewell. It
wasn’t just meant to wish a person a lack of war or struggle; rather, shalom
goes deeper. Shalom might be called the peace of the Lord. It is completeness,
soundness, wellbeing, complete reconciliation.[1]

Jesus is not the King of the Empire, but he is the Prince of
Shalom. How does Jesus call us to live at peace with God and bring completeness
and wholeness to the world we live in?

When we think about God’s grace at work in us as a
community, how are we being transformed from ‘empire thinkers’ to ‘Shalom
thinkers’? The grace that is greater than all our sin requires us to share
the responsibility for the sins that come from worldly thinking.

We see God calling to Israel to forsake the empire thinking
of Egypt and learn the shalom way of following a Shepherd’s voice. While empire
likes lots of pageantry and displays of power, shalom thinks about the
vulnerable first.

How impressed is God with our worship services and
inspirational gatherings? Even these can become nauseating to God.

God is not impressed
with showy spirituality that has nothing to do with establishing Shalom, his
Kingdom of peace and reconciliation. We can easily become the Pharisee in the
Temple with our victorious and self-righteous declarations. We can thank God
that we are doing better than the despicable sinners around us. And we can
completely miss out on the mission of God to become Shalom-makers.

But you may protest– we can get sidetracked with social
justice causes and miss out on the personal call to live a holy life!

What is it about us that wants to live in the world of
either/or? Either you focus on social justice causes or you focus on personal,
spiritual formation. Pick the side that you feel is singularly important and
put all your attention there. If we are to understand that sin is an
incompleteness, a missed target and a missing of the point, we will pick a side
and fail to see that we have sinned by settling for less than God’s best
intention.

Where is the sense of being called to both/and?

The grace of God that conquers sin is the grace of sharing
our responsibility to the least of these. God says that when you make yourself
clean and then turn your focus to being a Shalom-making community, God will
remove the Empirical stain of worldliness from us, and we will eat the good
things of the land– the very good things that we do unto others. God’s
blessing rests on how we love Him through the least of these.

In the end, if we resist God’s best intention, we will be
devoured by the thinking of Empire. We will sin because we thought God’s
mission was only about me and mine. God’s call is for us to be people of the
Shalom Kingdom.

If you belong to any type of minority group, you may see
yourself as an outsider or as an elite. You can wrap yourself in shame or you
can wrap yourself in pride. But neither of these wrappings clothe you
appropriately.

A life surrendered to God is wrapped in the healing garment
of God’s love. The virtue that we put on in the morning is the robe of Jesus.
He was stripped of his robe when he was crucified, and it is mysteriously
wrapped around sinners that come home to God.

The prodigal is given a new robe and welcomed back into the
family with forgiveness and reconciliation. Like the prodigal son, a
sober-minded disciple of Jesus returns from his ruination with an apology and a
self-judgment of unworthiness.

But how does the Father respond to the returnee? How does
God treat the child who makes their way back home after experiencing the fruit
of their rebellion? He runs to us and clothes us with affection. He celebrates
that we are alive again.

Can we see ourselves in the eunuch that
wants to please God? Can we see the love that the Father has for the outsider
and the minority? God proclaims a place in His House for every child to be
loved and remembered.

Let your Kingdom come, and your will be
done on earth as it is in Heaven. Every sin is forgiven in the Father’s House
when the prodigal comes home with a humble heart and wants to be restored.

It might be easy to think that since God has so much power
over Creation, that God always gets what God wants. We could assume a
fatalistic view of God that assumes what will be will be, because God’s desires
are always met by humanity. But is that really the case?

There’s something very beautiful that happens to Mary and at
the same time it is the very thing that will unravel her.

Mary was an Old Testament girl living with Old Testament
rules. Her familiarity with Hebrew history was replete with stories of God
sending angels and miraculous events. She knew that most of this was ancient
history. If she and her people were keeping track of time, they would know that
it had been four hundred years since God’s prophet Malachi had given a message
from God for Israel. Since then, God had been silent. So, what in the world was
happening to her? Why was an angel coming to her with a message from God?

Think about that. You’ve always lived a quiet life of
worship and lived a certain way that you had been taught. You are very devoted
to God, but this was something new.

This was way beyond new for Mary. All of Israel’s cherished
prophecies about the Messiah coming were suddenly becoming very personal for
Mary. She has a technical question. Since she was engaged to Joseph, how was it
that this baby was to be conceived? Why was this conversation happening with a
virgin and not a married woman? Unmarried girls are not supposed to have
babies. Shouldn’t this be a conversation with Joseph?

I wonder how many people never experience the best of their
potential due to constant comparing of themselves to those deemed more
successful or powerful?

God took a large number of slaves out of Egypt where they
were powerless and inferior and led them to a place where they could be free
and flourishing. But the closer they got to that, the more they squirmed by holding
on to the diminished view of who they are.

These were no ordinary slaves; they were chosen by God to
become great and help shape the entire world. As Moses led the nation to the
border of their new homeland, they first sent spies ahead to see just how good
it was going to be and what kind of battle lie ahead.

Everything that God promised was lying in wait for them, but
they were going to need courage. They were going to need to trust God to face
the giants. But instead, they chose to compare themselves to the enemy. We seem
like grasshoppers in our own eyes. Their self-image was more influential than
the dream God had given them.

Except for Joshua and Caleb. Two out of twelve could see
that the dream was the tipping point. With the slightest push from God, in just
the right place, history could be tipped.

Sometimes as a pastor, I must weigh the counsel of others
who say we cannot with the counsel of God who says we can. And then I must
choose my words wisely to stir up courage and faith in those who are afraid of
imminent failure.

Don’t give up on God’s dream by focusing on how small and
insignificant you see yourself to be. A little comparison of yourself to a
giant you face, will crush the dream God gives you. As a church, let’s not compare
ourselves and back away from what God intends for us.