Sharing the Christ story every week at the Community Dinner Church, continues to reveal the miraculous power of the living Word. On Tuesday’s we meet in a parking garage of an abandoned Woman’s shelter. People gather for food, community, and to hear the message. I always start the reading about ten minutes before we serve food, giving people the option to show up on time for the meal and miss the Bible story if they want. It still surprises me how many people come for the Word and are upset if they miss it. Sometimes, I share the Word multiple times in an evening for people who show up late and want to know what it was about. This week, I shared the story of Jesus being questioned about the Sabbath. Jesus and his followers have been sharing food and healing people on the holy day that they were supposed to abstain from work. The religious leaders, afraid of Jesus, and the authority God gives him, try to trap, and kill him.

“Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him.And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.”Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent.He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him (Mark 3:1-6).”

Telling people at the Dinner Church that Jesus breaks the religious law to care for people, calls it holy, and wants us to do the same is one of my greatest joy’s! As I share the story, people start to get out of their chairs and gather around me so they can hear. While the street is filled with the chaos of rush hour traffic, the garage becomes hushed with the holy silence of the Spirit. I tell a story about a friend of mine that grew up thinking that mowing the lawn on Sunday would be a violation of the Sabbath and that his family and church community would have excommunicated him if he did any yard work on the high holy day. Everyone nods their head in agreement. All my homeless friends can relate to weird, literal, fundamentalist interpretations, and applications of the Bible. It’s the water we all swim in. I close our time in prayer, thanking God for breaking the law to heal us. For doing good and loving us even when it meant his own destruction. I close the prayer as I always do. Asking God to protect everyone that is sleeping outside. That they would be safe, cared for, and comforted. When I finish, people thank me for the prayer and for the Christ story. The dinner starts with a line of smiling people that have been refreshed and reminded that they are created in the image of God. “Jesus finished by saying, “People were not made for the good of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for the good of the people (Mark 2:27-28 CEV).”

Michael Cox