"Did Jesus eat double egg and chips? I doubt it. But He appears to be ready to eat with anyone if they wanted to eat with Him," reflects Viv Thomas.
Viv Thomas lives in London with his wife Sheila. He has written six books around the areas of leadership and spirituality. Viv is the Preaching Pastor at St. Paul’s in Hammersmith and has travelled the world preaching, teaching and helping Christian leaders lead well. He has two Masters degrees and a PhD from the University of London.
I was brought up in poverty. My father died of heart disease when I was seven, leaving my mother with the responsibility of bringing up two energetic boys. She was overwhelmed by the job and also overwhelmed by alcohol. It is difficult to imagine writing from my lovely house in London but we were so poor we had straw on the floor in two rooms instead of carpets. Winters were bitter. My brother and I accidentally broke a window (maybe it was me), and that window remained shattered for years. When the wind came off the Irish Sea in sub-zero temperatures, we shivered all night. Many nights, I slept fully clothed. Occasionally, I would take an old pram and go and collect wood my mother had noticed while walking the streets from pub to pub.
I had two recurring daydreams, one around money and the other around food. The dream around money was if I had all the money out of the pockets of the people walking down the main street I would be rich and safe. The dream around food was more general. Much food all of the time was the dream, and I would fantasise while drooling outside cake shop windows.
The day came when social services came to take my brother and I away for a few weeks while my mother had a break. I was afraid. We were driven to the other side of town and pulled up outside our new temporary foster home, where our foster mother was already at the door to greet us. It was years later that I discovered she was more afraid of us than we were of her.
When we were settled in the house, our foster mother turned to me and asked the food question: ‘Would you like double egg and chips (french fries)?’ Of course, the answer was ‘yes.’ I had entered paradise. Not one egg but two. This was a place of abundance and generosity. My foster mother’s invitation to me was that she wanted to show us love and hospitality; so come and eat.
Many years later, I went on a sabbatical and became a student at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada. The joy of the sabbatical was the time and space to think, reflect and listen. One student took advantage of it all and developed a wonderful piece of art, which I will never forget. I never actually saw his work, but he told me what he had done after the event. He went to an art gallery in Vancouver and put two tables together, covering them with a red cloth. On the table he placed two beautiful place settings. He added two wine glasses and a plate with bread on it. He then placed four two-metre-high poles around the table, putting paper mache images of his own face on top of each pole. He painted the masks and then put words on the back of them. ‘Money’, ‘lust’, ‘family’, ‘school bully’, ‘envy’ and other words were displayed on the mask. When the gallery was opened, he sat at one of the chairs leaving one chair free. As people came around the display, he invited them to sit in the other chair to eat with him ‘in the presence of his enemies’, quoting Psalm 23, which goes on to say: ‘You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever’ (NIV). The invitation from my artist friend was to eat and drink with him in the presence of his enemies.
So we have two invitations, both to do with food and both to do with the body.
All I learnt from my early church experience regarding my body was that it was dangerous and will get you into trouble. But everything about salvation is related to the body. Did Jesus eat double egg and chips? I doubt it. But He appears to be ready to eat with anyone if they wanted to eat with Him. He seems to have enjoyed eating.
There is something important here. We are saved through the body of an incarnate Christ who does the work of salvation through His body. His body hung on a cross, died, rose from the dead and ascended to a transformed life. His invitation to the disciples in Matthew 26:26 was: “Take and eat; this is my body” (NIV). This invitation is open to us now. This is an invitation to participate in a celebration prepared for us in the New Creation. This is when all things are brought together under the rule and reign of Christ. We will be celebrating all He has done through His body and all of what we have done through ours. As we anticipate that day, we hear His early morning call across the lake after His resurrection: ‘Come and have breakfast.’