© 2010 ALL SOULS CHURCH OF SEATTLE / INFO@ALLSOULSSEATTLE.ORG
HOW CAN I KNOW GOD? / AN AFFILIATE OF GRACE SEATTLE
It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the other garden plants and becomes a tree, so that birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.
MATTHEW 13:32
WHY A TABLE?
Hospitality is the practice of making friends and family out of strangers. Being hospitable requires intentional generosity to bless and benefit others––the giving of your home, your food, your love. It's sharing the gifts of family with people outside the family. That's why the gospel is about God's hospitality. He finds strangers and makes them his family. He invites them to His table––those jaded by religion, those who dismiss the church. The gospel of grace is not possible apart from a hospitable God.
It is this picture of the gospel that we hope to live out in West Seattle. Much of the Bible is about meals––Jesus' table fellowship with sinners, the Lord's table, and final marriage feast of the Lamb, to name a few. In fact, creation itself is a story of God placing us in a great house (or garden) full of food to enjoy.
Yet, as the proverb goes, 'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a fattened ox and hatred with it.' Meals are not simply for eating, they are the setting for deep communion and love––where true welcome and friendship are forged. And that's why our worship culminates each week in a meal, the Lord's Supper.
The free, generous hospitality of God is the backbone of the gospel, and it gives us an image of both our identity in Christ and what life can look like with Christ. We are to be a hospitable people, with open homes and open hearts. And it is around our tables that we learn about each other's lives, genuinely love, and cultivate opportunities to live out the gospel… the embrace of a welcoming God.
