David Stockton
Series: Church Around the Table

We’ve been trying to unpack this concept of Church Around the Table. We’ve been spending a lot of time talking about Jesus, which is a good thing. We talked about Jesus’ Last Supper and what was really going on in that moment. We are trying to get into us as Jesus’ followers 2,000 years later what Jesus was trying to get into his disciples in that last culmination meal with them, those last few hours he had with them.

We’ve been taking it really seriously and diving in. And we are going to continue doing that a little bit today. But today will be a little different. I’m trying to just make sure we don’t get all this stuff in our heads, but we’re going to have some pauses in our time together. I’m hoping that stuff will get distilled down into our hearts a little more today. So this might be a little bit slower. If you fall asleep, that’s okay, we’ll just go straight to your heart. We don’t need your brain anyway.

We’ve shared some concepts in this regard. We’ve shared some inspiring stories. But what I’ve been praying is that God will help you understand how this applies to you in your daily routine. There’s this phrase: What would Jesus do? It’s a good phrase; but one of my friends says it’s totally insufficient and actually a really heavy burden if we just leave the question like that. He says the true questions is: What would Jesus do if he were me, and he lived in the context that I live in today? It’s a little longer thought process, but it’s more valid. Because you are you and you are facing the things you face. You have the job you have and the calendar you have.

I want us to figure out what it could mean for you. At the end of this thing, I’m going to pray that Jesus would just show us what the next step is, because we are following him. He is leading us from being one thing to something much greater. It’s just one step at a time. So we’re going to try to do a little bit of that in our message today.

Luke 4 is where Jesus comes on the scene and he sits in the synagogue with all the other believers at that time. At one point he is called to the front and he’s given a passage from Isaiah and he reads it:

18
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19
    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And then he sits down and says,
21 …“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

He’s basically saying, “From now on you can judge everything in my life based on this criteria. This is what the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to do. Proclaim good news to the poor. Set the oppressed free, to heal people, to help people, and to let them know how much God loves them, that his favor rests on them.”

That’s what he said. And then, a little later on, John the Baptist—who was Jesus’ cousin—was trying to figure out, “Jesus, are you really the whole thing? Or are you just part of it?”

And Jesus said to him, “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who doesn’t stumble on account of me.”

Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim good news to the poor and to heal people.” And then, later on, John the Baptist was saying, “Jesus, is it really you?”

And Jesus said—same test—“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to proclaim good news to the poor and to help and heal people. And if you’re seeing these happen you know the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”

Then, as we get to that Last Supper, Jesus is basically saying to his disciples—in John 13; he washes their feet, John 14, 15, 16, is the discussion they had in that time, recorded for us. Jesus is saying, “The same Spirit that is on me is going to be on you. Therefore, the same measurements are going to be applied to you.”

The Spirit that is upon Jesus caused Jesus to walk in the way that he did. And the same Spirit now rests on us, thanks to the resurrection. And so the Spirit of the Lord is upon you and me to do what? To proclaim good news to the poor, and to help and heal people. That’s the transfer that was taking place in that moment. We’ve talked about that, leading up to this.

As we’ve gone through, we’ve talked a lot about the life of Jesus showing up. We’ve talked about a lot of giving body and blood and washing people. But this one phrase is constantly jumping out at me, saying, “Don’t forget me.” And I go on to the next one and, “Don’t forget me.” Because when we talk about Jesus, we have to remember that, one of the main things that he was about was proclaiming good news to the poor. Proclaiming good news to the poor. So, if you want to follow Jesus, then one of the things that should show up in your life, on a daily, weekly, monthly basis—however you measure your life: proclaiming good news to the poor. That’s what it means to have Church Around a Table. To proclaim good news to the poor.

So we’re going to unpack that a little bit; because, obviously, good news is kind of a funny word, and poor can be defined in a lot of different ways. First of all, let’s define the word poor. Matthew 25:31-40 in the Message translation (MSG):

31-33 “When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.
34-36 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what’s coming to you in this kingdom. It’s been ready for you since the world’s foundation. And here’s why:
I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.’
37-40 “Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King…

The Lord, as Allan Meyer talked about last week. The Lord of all.

…will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’”

So, in this definition, the poor would be those who are overlooked and ignored. I married a lady fifteen years ago, in Brittany, she’s my wife. I live with her still today after fifteen years, which I guess is progress, something to celebrate in our world. But I live with her and I link my life with her. Prior to marrying her, I was not married to her for twenty-seven years. Seventeen of those years, I really, really loved myself. I thought a lot about myself and I considered myself more highly than I ought. I was just absorbed with myself. I really was. I thought I was great and if everything was going my way then everyone should be happy. And if they weren’t, I didn’t even know, because I didn’t think about them at all. It’s true. Just very arrogant, prideful, selfish, self-absorbed.

Then, at seventeen, Jesus started messing with my life. He started to say that he wanted to do a work in my life. I thought, Cool. You want to care about me? Well, I care about me, you care about me, this is going to be great. I’ve got God now thinking about me, and what I want, and how important it is.

But it didn’t happen that way. He actually saved me. When I talk about the salvation that Jesus brought into my life, yes, it’s true, he saved me forevermore. Yes, it’s true, he saved me from living a life not knowing my Maker, knowing my Father. He saved me from so many things that I didn’t know about; but, in that moment, he saved me from my selfishness and pride. And he started to all of a sudden make me care about other people. It was a radical thing for me. I really did, I started to care more about other people and the stuff they were going through than even the stuff I was going through.

I don’t get it right all of the time. But that was really important because then I got married. And I married someone who also cared about herself and not me. We kind of had this tug-o-war, where all of a sudden I had to care about her all of the time. She had feelings about everything all of the time. I didn’t have much space in my life for all of her feelings about what she was going through; because I had all my feelings about what I was going through.

So that was a big trip, and in some ways I would say she saved me again. God was saying, “Okay, David, it’s not working just me and you. I’m going to bring Brittany.” And Brittany is strong and powerful and she won’t put up with crap. I remember her just sticking up to it, and me having to adjust. It’s been an awesome thing.

All of that is to say that Brittany is someone who cares for the overlooked and ignored. She has taught me this in such amazing ways. And it’s funny because, sometimes it comes out where she doesn’t really care that much for people who aren’t overlooked and ignored. If you’re someone who’s not overlooked and ignored, sometimes you’ll be like, “I don’t know how she feels about me.” Just keep it there. Who knows? She doesn’t hate you or anything. Her life is just so driven towards the overlooked and ignored. She loves them and cares for them. I always describe my wife as, she’s like the real Peter Pan. She’s just looking for lost boys so she can teach them how to fly. It is absolutely true. I’ve seen it over and over and over again.

I feel like God has been constantly trying to teach me these lessons. What I’m sharing with you today is just from the deepest parts of me. I’m wrestling with this all of the time because I’m so prone against it, but I’m so in love with what Jesus is trying to teach me. And Jesus has been teaching me for years. He’s a great teacher, and I’m going to try to jam it all in and I’m not that great. So just bear with me on this. I’m going to try to give us some pictures, trying to distill this for how this can be expressed in your life.

I married Brittany, and we ended up building this house together. We moved in about 30 months ago, so we were building it before then. I remember her praying that this house would not just be used for us, but that it would also be used for others. I didn’t really know what she was talking about and didn’t care that much about it at that time. I just thought, “Whatever, as long as we get to live there it will be better than living in this master bedroom with all five of us.”

Just last week I woke up to lots of barking dogs, because we have a lot of them. And I was thinking about our situation. I remembered her prayer. Because, right now we live in this house with our three daughters, which is a lot of her fault, some of my fault but a lot of her fault. So there’s all of us living in the house now. We also live with two foster boys, which was a dream and a prayer of hers all of her life (and it became one for me, too). We also live with her mom. Her mom’s cool, so there’s no problem there. And then we also live with her sister, and she has a husband and they have five kids. Okay. You know? They have two dogs, the mom has two dogs, and we have two dogs. That’s not that abnormal, but that’s six dogs when you bring them all together.

And this guy, he’s working with the kids upstairs. I could understand if you don’t feel comfortable with this, but this kid is nineteen years old. He lived in California. And for some reason, he wanted to move in with us. He’s been with us a few months now. I’m trying to find something wrong with his brain. But he wanted to move in with us. So he lives in this little garage side room thing at the kibbutz that we call home. He’s loving it.

We have a chicken. We used to have eight, but we have coyotes that come around, so we’re down to one. It’s not funny. We also had a goat at one point. And to describe my wife even more—somewhere in Phoenix there was a goat that was born to a mama goat and the mama goat rejected the baby goat. Which is sad, right? And the person who was there to witness that, for some reason in her mind thought, “I should call Brittany.” I still have no idea how that happened; but all I know is this goat was overlooked and ignored, literally, and this person said, “I’m going to call Brittany.”

And I came home one time and there’s a little baby pigmy goat. For the next two weeks, every two hours, the goat needed to be fed. So all throughout the night, “Here you go, baby goat.” So God is just laughing at how self-centered, self-absorbed and prideful I am, and here I am, years later, at 3:00 a.m, feeding a baby goat a bottle inside my house. And loving every minute of it. Not true. Loving when I’m in the right mind, ever minute of it.

I’m not saying that this is what the Lord’s calling us to. Please. Do you hear me? Do not do this! Do not do this. But God has led me step by step on a journey to where now I can check off some these. Somehow I’m learning and I have to rely on the grace of the Lord. We have to take breaks from time to time.

We were sitting with our daughters last Sunday night and they’re saying, “Hey, you know. Whenever this works out this way, can we just take a break for a little bit?” I was telling them, in thirty months of living in this house, twenty-six months we’ve had someone living with us. That’s only four months of building this house and getting to enjoy it just ourselves. And then I told my wife to stop praying. No, I didn’t. I didn’t say that. Thought it. But didn’t say it.

Caring for the overlooked and ignored, even baby goats sometimes.

Isaiah 58 (MSG) is the Old Testament perspective, but it’s kind of saying the same thing:

6-9
“This is the kind of fast day I’m after:

So the people were fasting with no food and thinking that God was so pleased with them because they weren’t eating. And God was saying, “Look, if you want to know what really is important to me, it’s not that you don’t eat food, it’s this:

    …to break the chains of injustice,
    get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
    free the oppressed,
    cancel debts.
What I’m interested in seeing you do is:
    sharing your food with the hungry,
    inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
   putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
    being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on,
    and your lives will turn around at once.
Your righteousness will pave your way.
    The God of glory will secure your passage.
Then when you pray, God will answer.
    You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’

So in this passage, “care for the poor,” is care for the exploited, the oppressed, the hungry, the homeless, the cold, the in-debt, and also those maybe in your household that are overlooked or ignored or neglected, whether you’re willing to admit it or not.

So what we’re going to do right now is to be quiet for about forty seconds. And I just want to see if God might be able to bring to mind someone in your life that could be described as overlooked, neglected, or any of these other things; and for you to take a mental note of what God might be speaking to you. Maybe someone’s already come to mind. That’s fine. Just begin to pray for the person and begin to ask God, “What can I do?”

I pray Lord, that we really would hear from you. Amen.

So now that we’ve described who the poor might be, I want to talk about how do we present good news to those people? Is there some way we can learn what might be a first step or a simple step—or start the creative process between the Spirit of God and you, and maybe your wife, or your roommates, or whatever, how we can begin to walk this out.

Hebrews 12:18-24 (TPT) is going to be the beginning of diving into this. We’re going to take some more distilling moments as we go through this, as well. This is good stuff right here. You should read this every day, or at least every time you’re sad.

18 For we are not coming, as Moses did, to a physical mountain with its burning fire, thick clouds of darkness and gloom, and with a raging whirlwind. 19 We are not those who are being warned by the jarring blast of a trumpet and the thundering voice; the fearful voice that they begged to be silenced…

This is the writer of Hebrews in the New Testament harkening back to the library of Scripture where we learn that Moses was out at this mountain called Sinai one time, and God came near to the people of Israel. He came as this big fiery cloud that sat on the mountain, and he spoke in this powerful, thunderous voice out of the cloud and spoke to the people. And all the people were like, “Ahhhh! This is freaky!”

And God was saying, “Come up to me. Come up here.” And the people were like, “No! Moses, why don’t you go up there, because it’s scary up there.” And then Moses went up there, and we learn in Exodus 33 and 34 that Moses had this deep, intimate, powerful moment with God. For forty days he was with God experiencing the love, compassion and kindness of God, in the midst of all the power and wonder that was taking place.

So he’s saying “We’re not this, where we need to be afraid. What we have come to is this:

22 …we have already come near to God in a totally different realm, the Zion-realm, for we have entered the city of the Living God, which is the New Jerusalem in heaven! We have joined the festal gathering of myriads of angels in their joyous celebration!

This is what heaven is like. God is not super concerned about the election cycle that is happening. Heaven is not going, “Oh, yi yi yi.” I know we are. But right now, in heaven, the holiness of God is being celebrated because nothing on earth could never change that.

23 And as members of the church of the Firstborn [Jesus] all our names have been legally registered as citizens of heaven! And we have come before God who judges all, and who lives among the spirits of the righteous who have been made perfect in his eyes!

We are being made perfect in his eyes. Yes! And then this:

24 And we have come to Jesus…

Not to that scary mountain. We’ve come to Jesus.

…who established a new covenant with his blood sprinkled upon the mercy seat; blood that continues to speak from heaven, “forgiveness,” a better message than Abel’s blood that cries from the earth, “justice.”

So how do we preach good news to the poor? We’re able to come to them and speak out a message of forgiveness. Forgiveness instead of justice. Contrasting that Mount Sinai mountain with all that power, we have the babe of Bethlehem, that was born into this world soft and kind. And then he walked among us, not with heaviness. Full power though, but the power was not to condemn. The power was not to provoke. The power was not to hurt or punish. The power was to heal and to forgive.

In Isaiah, it speaks of Jesus. It says “as a smoldering wick he would never put out and a bruised reed he would never break. He came with a softness and lightness and a kindness to the poor—whether they were poor in their relationship with God, poor financially, poor physically, poor in their righteousness. Whatever they were poor in, he would come around them with kindness and a message of forgiveness. It wasn’t a forgiveness that forsook justice. It was a forgiveness that was born out of him laying down his life to produce justice.

In that moment when he took on all the sins of all humanity—the most disgusting, horrific, murderous, raping sins—he took them on his body. Out of that came a message of “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing.”

Preaching good news to the poor is coming around the poor. They already know that they’ve failed. They are already wallowing in their own shame and guilt. They don’t need us to point it out. They need us to come and show them a path of forgiveness.

There are these two books that have taught me a lot along these lines. One is called Tattoos on the Heart. It’s a Jesuit priest. If you want to check it out later, the story is amazing, the writing is beautiful. In it, he says,

“Here is what we seek: A compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.”

I would add just one little phrase:

And then we should lend our own shoulder to carry the burden for a while.

Because, as we go to approach the poor, which we know Jesus wants us to do, the Spirit of God is upon us to that end. We shouldn’t look at the poor and see them in their sinfulness, see them in their poverty, see the bad decisions they made, the way that they’re carrying themselves, the way that they are speaking out. We have to come to them and not judge them. God’s the judge.

We come to them and we provide forgiveness. We come to them and we stand with them in their poverty. Instead of saying, “Wow. Look at all that heaviness all over you. You’re not carrying it right, you should carry it like this;” we just say, “Hey. Do you want me to carry a little of that on my shoulder for a while? Let’s walk together.” This is what it means to preach good news to the poor.

There’s this phrase I’ve been chewing on: “Empathy must be stronger than condescension.”

I’m a master at condescension. I am. I’m awesome at it. Always have been. I have to fight it all the time. I’m so good at it. I can just see it coming. It’s something the Lord is constantly having to work on in my life. It’s something that I basically have a limp that I’ve had to learn to limp with, and make sure I don’t live into it. The opposite of condescension is empathy. Empathy is foreign to me. Empathy in the sense of being able to put yourself in another person’s shoes to feel what they feel from their point of view.

Just last night one of my kids was having a real pathetic moment. And I was just like, “I don’t want to feel what you’re feeling, because you’re crying and moaning and groaning and whining. I want you to feel what I’m feeling.” But that wasn’t true because I was actually starting to get stressed because I was like, “I’ve got to preach tomorrow and I’ve got to get my message together and you’re over here moaning and groaning.”

And I just felt like the Lord was saying, “Go there!” I was like, “Argh!” And I did a horrible job of it. But I tried. I just sat on the bed and said, “All right. Tell me what’s going on.”

“You don’t care.”

Already? I haven’t even started! “I want to hear what’s going on.” It’s crazy.

Here’s a few more things to finish. This comes from a different book called The Gospel Comes With a House Key. That’s pretty good. In this book, this former lesbian, now follower of Christ, Rosaria Butterfield, is describing some of her experiences with something she calls radically ordinary hospitality. This is good stuff. These are meaty, so you’ve got to buck up. Everybody sit up straighter a little bit—if you need to stretch a little bit. We’ve got some long phrases here, but it’s the distilling process.

“Living out radically ordinary Christian hospitality means knowing that your relationship with others must be as strong as your words. The balance cannot tip here. Having strong words and a weak relationship with your neighbor is violent. It captures the violent carelessness of our social media-infused age. That is not how neighbors talk with each other. That is not how image bearers of the same God relate to one another. Radically ordinary hospitality values the time it takes to invest in relationships, build bridges, repent of sins of the past, to reconcile. Bridge building and remaking friendships cannot be rushed.”

“Just get better.” “Stop feeling what you’re feeling.” No! But taking the time. Here’s another one:

She’s describing the first moment she encountered what she called radically ordinary Christian hospitality:

“I breathed hard and hoisted myself out of my truck, nursing a tender hamstring from my morning run. I waded through the unusually thick July humidity to the front door of these Christians and I knocked. The threshold to their life was like none other. The threshold to their life brought me to the foot of the cross.”

Hallelujah, right?

“Nothing about that night unfolded according to my confident script. Nothing happened in the way I expected. Not that night or the years after, or the hundreds of meals we had together, or the long nights of Psalm singing and prayer, as other believers from he church and university walked through the doors of this house as if there was no door. Nothing prepared me for this openness and truth. Nothing prepared me for the unstoppable gospel and for the love of Jesus made manifest by the daily practices of hospitality undertaken in this one simple Christian home. Long before I ever walked to the doors of the church, the Smith home was the place where I wrestled with the Bible, with the reality that Jesus is who he says he is and eventually came face-to-face with him on the glittering knife’s edge of my choice sexual sin.”

Way to go, Smiths! Way to go, Smiths! Way to go, Smiths! And the last one:

Radically ordinary hospitality describes those who see strangers as family and neighbors as the family of God. They recoil at reducing a person to a category or label. They see God’s image reflected in the eyes of every human being on earth. They know that they are like meth addicts and sex trade workers, they take their own sins seriously, especially the sins of selfishness and pride.
They take God’s holiness and goodness seriously. They use the Bible as a lifeline with no exceptions. They practice radically ordinary hospitality. Those who practice radically ordinary hospitality do not see their homes as their own, but as God’s gift for the furtherance of God’s kingdom. They open doors. They seek out the underpriveleged. They know that the Gospel comes with a house key.

And one last thing from Acts 28 (MSG) as we close:

30-31 Paul lived for two years in his rented house. He welcomed everyone who came to visit. He urgently presented all matters of the kingdom of God. He explained everything about Jesus Christ. His door was always open.

Again, I’m not telling you to do something specific here. I’m just saying that we’ve got to begin to understand what this means to live out radically ordinary hospitality. To live out the love of Christ in this world. To proclaim good news to the poor.

Let’s pray:

Jesus, I do pray in this moment that you would continue to distill some of this. Not only would you bring to mind the people that you have given to us, that you are putting on our radar, that you are assigning to us, just like you assign people to Jesus. But Lord, I pray that you would also stir in us some creativity of how we could begin to be hospitable, be empathetic, be compassionate—not just concerned, but compassionate. And you’d help us know that it’s going to take time. There’s no quick, easy way to do this.

I wrote this during the music time during first service. I just want to share it, in case it applies to some of you. Not only are we called to do this, but the beauty is that Jesus has done this for us. He left glory to come and enter into our pathetic state, and to feel our pain.

“The blood of Abel and all the others cut off by the knife of sin or burned by the fires of injustice cries out because the guilty are left unpunished and wrongs are not made right. But in Christ crucified, forgiveness and justice happen. All the wrongs are made right by the forgiveness and healing released by Jesus’ sacrificial love. You might think today that no one cares about you or loves you or whatever sacrifice for you, but the scars in Jesus’ hands and feet speak a different word.
There will come a day when you and I will see those scars. The Bible teaches we will see Jesus as a Lamb who has been slain. But you can feel his love today and forgiveness and healing can start right now.”

Jesus, please come close to those who don’t know you. Lord, please, for those who are willing to admit that they are poor in their relationship with you, they are poor in righteousness, they are poor in so many ways, I pray that right now they would cry out to you and you would answer with the full weight of your love and salvation would come. And they would become new creations, robed in your righteousness, and they would really know what forgiveness is. I pray this in your name. Amen.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

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