{"id":25315,"date":"2025-06-03T06:52:21","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T10:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=25315"},"modified":"2025-06-03T07:06:44","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T11:06:44","slug":"25315","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=25315","title":{"rendered":"Christ Is the Host"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Let Us Build a House (All Are Welcome - 6vv) [with lyrics for congregations]\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/N9bOiAxwi4U?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Rachel Held Evans (1981\u20132019) retells one of Jesus\u2019 parables as an expansive invitation to come to God\u2019s table:&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus once had [a conversation] with a group of religious leaders at the home of a prominent Pharisee. \u201cWhen you give a banquet,\u201d Jesus said to his host, \u201cinvite the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed.\u201d He told them a parable about a man who prepared a banquet and invited many guests. When those on the guest list declined to attend, the man instructed his servant to go into the streets and alleyways in town and bring back the poor, the hungry\u2026. The servant obeyed, but told his master there was still room at the table. \u201cThen go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come,\u201d the master said, \u201cso that my house will be full\u201d (Luke 14:12\u201323). <strong>This is what God\u2019s kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said&nbsp;<em>yes<\/em>. And there\u2019s always room for more.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Evans shares the story of author Sara Miles, whose experience of Jesus through communion inspired her to start a food pantry:&nbsp;<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not only did [Sara] convert to Christianity, she devoted herself entirely to \u201ca religion rooted in the most ordinary yet subversive practice: a dinner table where everyone is welcome, where the despised and outcasts are honored.\u201d [1]&nbsp; Sara partnered with St. Gregory\u2019s [Episcopal Church] to create a massive food pantry, where the poor, elderly, sick, homeless, and marginalized from the community are served each week from the very table where Sara took her first communion\u2014no strings attached, no questions asked. With the saints painted on the walls looking on, hundreds gather around the communion table to fill their bags with fruit, vegetables, rice, cereal &#8230; and whatever happens to be in the five-to-six-ton bounty of food that particular Friday.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Evans honors Christ\u2019s transformative presence in the bread and wine.<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>I don\u2019t know exactly&nbsp;<em>how<\/em>&nbsp;Jesus is present in the bread and wine, but I believe Jesus&nbsp;<em>is&nbsp;<\/em>present,<\/strong> so it seems counterintuitive to tell people they have to wait and meet him someplace else before they meet him at the table. If people are hungry, let them come and eat. If they are thirsty, let them come and drink. It\u2019s not my table anyway. It\u2019s not my denomination\u2019s table or my church\u2019s table.&nbsp;<em>It\u2019s Christ\u2019s table.<\/em>&nbsp;<strong>Christ sends out the invitations, and if he has to run through the streets gathering up the riffraff to fill up his house, then that\u2019s exactly what he\u2019ll do\u2026.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The gospel doesn\u2019t need a coalition devoted to keeping the wrong people out. It needs a family of sinners, saved by grace, committed to tearing down the walls, throwing open the doors, and shouting, \u201c<strong>Welcome! There\u2019s bread and wine. Come eat with us and talk.\u201d This isn\u2019t a kingdom for the worthy; it\u2019s a kingdom for the hungry.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>===========================<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>From The Corners by Nadia Bolz Weber<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was 29 years old and 6 months pregnant with our first child when my (former) husband and I moved to dry land wheat farming country for his first job as a Lutheran pastor; a town of 5,000 people in Eastern Washington, several hours drive from anything like a yoga class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I remember thinking that since the town had a library, a gym and access to an NPR station, I could make a go of it.&nbsp;<em>Maybe<\/em>. I had, at this point in my life, only ever&nbsp;<em>driven through<\/em>&nbsp;a small town, never stayed the night in one, much less moved there without knowing a soul.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The two and a half years we spent there were not unhappy ones, my days busy with nursing a baby (and eventually conceiving and birthing a second), washing the diapers, making our meals (thank God for WIC since we made&nbsp;<em>maybe<\/em>&nbsp;25k a year), and hanging out the laundry on the backyard clothesline. The people at the church were kind folks, and I did my best to find a place for myself in a place I did not belong or understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was not unhappy, as I said, but I was profoundly lonely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which is why Sally meant so much to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sally was the town\u2019s earth mama, the one who knew how to make anything, grow anything, fix anything. Her home had a warm witchy feel to it, filled with herbs, knitting projects and laughter. She found bugs, especially beetles, to be beautiful, knew how to cut hair even though hers was so long, and had a stash of chocolate chips in a jelly jar she\u2019d pull out when I visited, knowing I have a sweet tooth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When this big city liberal tattooed smart mouthed very pregnant girl showed up, who was also somehow married to the new Lutheran pastor, Sally took me in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She taught me to knit, would watch the baby when I took a night class, and just about always seemed to be ok with me stopping by. Her home was a soft landing place. At Sally\u2019s I didn\u2019t have to be on my best behavior.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She loved me. And let the reader understand, I had done precious little \u201cpersonal work\u201d at this point in time. I was a LOT. But still, even in all my bossy anger, dysregulation and self-centeredness, she loved me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And <strong>that love was nothing short of manna. Manna; enough to make a difficult time feel survivable<\/strong>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m telling you all of this because last week in Boise, at the Red State Revival, I got to see Sally for the first time in 24 years and tell her, albeit inadequately, what she meant to me. I was too immature at the time to be as grateful for it as I am now. Some things only come after getting them wrong enough.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course she came bearing gifts: crocheted vegetables and something she\u2019d sewn that I couldn\u2019t identify right away. \u201cIt\u2019s a dead house fly!\u201d she said with cheer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And all I could offer her in exchange, was to say the words, \u201cThank you for loving me during a time when I really needed it. You\u2019ll never know how much it mattered\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She just hugged me for a long time, said I love you, and went and found her seats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\u2019s a verse in Hebrews that says,&nbsp;<em><strong>Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, I was the stranger &#8211; but Sally was the angel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I may <strong>not have felt as grateful as I should have at the time, but I can feel it now. We get to do that. We get to embody the gratitude we lacked when young (or the humility, or wisdom, or patience) and hopefully it leads us not just to expressing it when possible, but also to a sweet compassion for our younger selves who just did the best they could with what they had before they knew better.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Do you have a story about your one person who loved you when you needed it most?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Or a time when you got to thank somebody for something years after the fact?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019d love to read them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In it with you,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>-Love, Nadia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rachel Held Evans (1981\u20132019) retells one of Jesus\u2019 parables as an expansive invitation to come to God\u2019s table:&nbsp;&nbsp; Jesus once had [a conversation] with a group of religious leaders at the home of a prominent Pharisee. \u201cWhen you give a banquet,\u201d Jesus said to his host, \u201cinvite the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25315"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25315"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25320,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25315\/revisions\/25320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}