{"id":742,"date":"2017-02-13T11:50:47","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T17:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedisciplemaker.org\/?p=742"},"modified":"2017-02-13T11:50:47","modified_gmt":"2017-02-13T17:50:47","slug":"the-bible-in-6-sentences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.navpress.com\/sites\/thedisciplemaker\/2017\/02\/the-bible-in-6-sentences\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bible in 6 Sentences"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Someone once challenged me: \u201cI bet I can tell you the whole Old Testament and New Testament in six sentences\u2014three for each.\u201d
\n\u201cYou\u2019re on!\u201d I said.
\nHe started with the Old Testament: \u201c\u2018They tried to kill us. We survived. Let\u2019s eat!\u2019\u201d
\nMy friend went on. \u201cNow here\u2019s the New Testament in three sentences: \u2018I love you! I forgive you! Let\u2019s eat!!\u2019\u201d
\nJean Leclerc offers the best definition of the gospel you\u2019ll ever hear: \u201cJesus ate good food with bad people.\u201d This was so accurate a description of Jesus that someone in his day composed a satirical jingle about him that went viral: he was \u201ca glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners\u201d (Matthew 11:19). Jesus\u2019 dining experiences became a lifestyle around which he formed a school of disciples, such that John\u2019s account of the Cana wedding suggests that the wine didn\u2019t run out until Jesus and the disciples arrived.\"\"<\/a>
\nAs much as Jesus loved food, people always came first. Sometimes he got so preoccupied with people that he forgot to eat (Mark 3:21,31; John 4:31). But the point remains the same. Jesus was killed because of his table talk and his table manners\u2014the stories he told and the people he ate with. Jesus and table so went together that the Pharisees used a table to trap him (Luke 14:1-24). Food is a reference point for Jesus even when he is not eating (see, for example, John 4:32). It was the table that shaped early Christian worship\u2014the Last Supper and the post-resurrection meals Jesus shared with his disciples. The infant Jesus is laid in a manger, from which the animals were fed; there is a table at the stable. At the very beginning of his post-resurrection ministry, Jesus suddenly appears in front of his disciples and asks, \u201cGot anything to eat?\u201d (John 21:5).
\nFood is the building block of our Christian faith. We are part of a gourmet gospel that defines itself in terms of food and table.<\/strong> Yet we find ourselves at a juncture in history where we have lost the table and reduced our \u201cfood\u201d to non-foods. Instead of setting another plate at the table and passing the food, we pass another program or pass another resolution or pass another law.
\nThe Pharisees lived by laws, rules, and exclusions. Jesus showed us how to live by love, grace, and inclusion. At the table we don\u2019t just feed people; we build relationships\u2014stories and memories. We associate people with the stories we hear of them, and the memories we have of them, especially sensory memories: the sounds, tastes, smells, textures, and pictures of them. These are the stuff of metaphors and narraphors.
\nWhen I want to tell my kids about the grandfather they never met, but am at a loss for words, I get out some Graham crackers, serve them some cheesecake, and tell them about the cherry cheese cake their Grandpa Sweet made from Graham cracker crust, Philadelphia cream cheese, and Del Monte canned cherries. In so doing, I am enculturating them into the Sweet family; I am connecting the dots between their stories, his, and mine.
\nIf we really want to learn someone\u2019s story, sitting down at the table, breaking bread together is the best way to start.<\/strong> First dates almost always involve a meal. As many business deals are sealed over dessert as over desktops. As we sit and eat together, we don\u2019t just pass food around; fellow diners pass bits of themselves back and forth as well, exchanging tales as well as condiments. I like any vegetable stir-fried. I like my chicken deep-fried. I like my table story-fied.
\n<\/a>
\nAt the table, where food and stories are passed from one person to another, and one generation to another, is where each of us learns who we are, where we come from, what we can be, to whom we belong, and to what we are called. When I spread apple butter on a biscuit, I am back at my Gramma\u2019s table, eating her daily baked biscuits with Granddad\u2019s apple-butter, straight from his copper apple butter kettle. One of my most cherished possessions and among the most beautiful items in my home, my mother\u2019s Bibles were bound to become battered and dog-eared, their covers blotched with coffee stains and their pages crumpled from tear drops, with all sorts of things falling from their pages. When I read from one of them, I am not necessarily reading the way she read, but because of what that book and its history represents, I am reading the Story with her voice, and with the same thrill and exhilaration as she had when she read it.
\nThe best in film criticism sends you excitedly back to the films. The best in biblical criticism should send you excitedly back to the Bible, not to start another critique but to re-enter the story on a wider and deeper level of comprehension.<\/p>\n

The \u201cFamily\u201d Table<\/h4>\n

An untabled faith is an unstable faith. A neglect of the table in our churches is echoed in our families and our communities.<\/strong> In his book Cooked<\/em> Michael Pollan shows that meals eaten out are almost always less healthy than foods cooked in; homemade foods generally have lower fat, salt, and caloric content. And yet we are eating out more and more, eating in less and less. We eat one in every five meals in our car. One in four of us eat at least one fast food meal every single day. US households spend roughly the same amount per week on fast food as on groceries. Sixty years ago, the average dinnertime was ninety minutes; today it is less than twelve minutes. And that\u2019s when we do eat dinner together, which is less and less frequently. The majority of US families report eating a single meal together less than five days a week. And even then our \u201cdinners together\u201d are mostly in front of the TV.
\nNo wonder the average parent spends only 38.5 minutes per week in meaningful conversation with their children. We are losing the table.
\nThis was brought home recently to the Sweet family when one of my kids invited a friend (let\u2019s call him \u201cHorace\u201d) to spend some days with us over the summer. After the friend left, I commented that Horace seemed somewhat uneasy during his stay in our home. \u201cWas anything wrong?\u201d I asked.
\n\u201cHe did feel a little uncomfortable,\u201d my daughter Soren offered.
\n\u201cWas it something we did?\u201d I asked.
\n“Sort of,\u201d Soren answered. \u201cHe said that he has never eaten with his family at a table, and so he wasn\u2019t sure how to act or what to do.\u201d
\nA Christian teenager, attending a Christian college, had never eaten a home-cooked meal at a family table.
\nThe media can be both a thermometer registering and a thermostat regulating the temperament of our culture. And much of our culture today reveals fragmented families with busy, out-of-the-box lives that don\u2019t conform to what is now considered \u201ctraditional\u201d mealtimes. Yet while shows like Modern Family<\/em> portray families that never eat together at the table, an increasing number of shows, such as Duck Dynasty<\/em> and Blue Bloods<\/em>, prominently feature family dinners, including prayers over meals and story sharing. It seems there is a craving for more intimacy in our lives and relationships. And if we can\u2019t get it in our homes, we\u2019ll at least watch it on TV.
\n<\/a>
\nOur culture is hungry for table time. And in this respect, popular culture is right in step with findings in socio-science that advocate for table gatherings. In fact, when sociologist Cody C. Delistraty culled the most recent scientific literature for Atlantic Monthly,<\/em> he discovered proof that the loss of the table has had \u201cquantifiable negative effects both physically and psychologically\u201d<\/strong> on our families and our kids. Here\u2019s what he found:<\/p>\n