The Poor Serve You Lunch on Sundays

By Tony Gatewood

How often have we heard pastors communicate from the pulpit the importance of attending church and ensuring we keep the Lord's Day sacred? "God wants his house filled! Bring all of the gifts into the house of God!" I've heard it, and you've listened to it as well. I get it. Where else do you find a Christian community? With the advent of COVID, we've seen churches decrease in size and attendance wane in the church. Again, as the church, we continue to blame the congregation. Churches are downsizing and letting go of staff. If only we would just come back and fill God's house again.

Here's the problem. Not everyone can make it on Sundays. Do you know that restaurant you would love to go to afterward with your friends or your church small group? You probably love going to get some Chinese food or some Mexican food. You may enjoy Thai or plain American food. Wherever you go to eat, someone is serving you that food. Someone is washing those dishes, and someone got there while you were worshiping God, drinking coffee in the foyer, and bringing your children to Youth ministry. You see, people experiencing poverty serve you lunch on Sundays. Yes, those sacrilegious folk who get you Boba tea on the Lord's Day ensure your drink stays filled, all for a few extra dollars in tips.

Going to church on a Sunday morning is a luxury afforded to middle-class, salary-earning Westerners. Again, Sunday morning services are for the privileged, not the marginalized: the wage worker, the 3rd shift worker. Jesus looks at this through the eyes of talking about the Sabbath. Here's what Jesus has to say in Luke 6: 1-11:

6 One Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands, and eat the kernels. 2 Some of the Pharisees asked, "Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?" 3 Jesus answered them, "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions." 5 Then Jesus said to them, "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." 6 On another Sabbath, he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man whose right hand was withered was there. 7 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. 8 But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, "Get up and stand in front of everyone." So he got up and stood there.9 Then Jesus said to them, "I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?" 10 He looked around at them all and then said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He did so, and his hand was completely restored. 11 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.

Here, we have two instances of Jesus doing "unlawful" things on the Sabbath, letting his disciples "work" by eating food from kernels and "healing" someone. It seems the Pharisees are Jesus' paparazzi, watching his every move, even watching the behavior of his disciples. The Pharisees are, as we know, a group of legalists of Jewish religion and society. Think of them as the Tea Party Movement of the Republican Party or the Congressional Progressive Caucus of the Democratic Party. These are your most zealous, religious idealists of how American society should run. There's a prominent following for each group, and they all have a major influence. Pharisees were no different, and they felt Jesus was a threat to their image of life as they know it. Jesus is a third-party candidate for the Kingdom of God movement, and no one wants to waste a vote on third parties, am I right?

Jesus is asked, "Why are you doing what is unlawful?" What law was being broken? Were Jesus and his disciples stealing? No, this was permitted under the law. The Pharisees, however, said that Jesus "broke the sabbatical law." Well, we know that keeping the Sabbath was a part of the Ten Commandments:

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work; you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens, and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. There, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

- Exodus 20: 8-11

Charlton Heston brought down those tablets to a migrating nation to share the goodness of God, only to see the future nation of Israel in full debauchery with a golden calf. Interesting how context plays a pretty important role in understanding the words of God. The Pharisees are referring to this law. They're saying, "Jesus, you have to keep it holy! No work! Look how thorough God is about this. Friends, daughters, servants, cows, or foreigners?"

Same thing with the healing of the man in the synagogue. Jesus isn't supposed to be healing anyone on the Sabbath! The Sabbath?! Perish the thought.

Let's be honest, the Pharisees aren't trying to keep tradition alive in this passage. Look at how they respond to Jesus at the end of Luke 6, They were furious at him and began to "discuss what they might do with Jesus." I don't think I need to tell you how this ends. Arrested. Tortured. Cat-of-Nine-Tails. Crown-of-Thorns. Cross. Crucifixion. Death. They wanted him silenced forever. But they failed. Amen?

Jesus shared about King David eating priest bread in the temple, and of course, this would piss off the Pharisees. David the KING! And they are waiting for the returning, prophesied King, not podunk Jesus from Nazareth. But Jesus declares he is "The Lord of the Sabbath." The Oxford dictionary says that Lord means "someone or something having power, authority, or influence; a master or ruler." Jesus is saying, "I set the terms of what is lawful and sabbath-worthy, not you." He also is saying, "I am a greater ruler than David."
I imagine that moment in Black Panther with T'Challa and Killmonger. T'Challa is beaten up in their death match, and Killmonger provokes the Wakandans, "Is this Your King? Is THIS YOUR KING???"

So, what does this mean for Sunday? The holy day for rest, when it happens, how it happens, and who's involved in it is determined by the will and pleasure of our master, Jesus, in whose hands God put all authority. To me, it is bloviated nonsense to preach about people not in your Sunday service when you are served on those days by some of the poorest people in our world. It is downright Pharisaic.

Jesus said, "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."

Here's my ideal church future, one that I hope to plant one day. I want a church made for man, not man for the church. What if we put more time into service between Monday through Wednesday? That church only gathers once a month; the rest of the time, we are in community groups. Sundays are community gatherings all across the town you live in. We have a general message given, but the community comes together in each other's homes and has a meal, chooses what type of worship they'd like, loves their children together, and serves their community. Then, we pick a day monthly to gather as a whole community; people can schedule that time off. Maybe you don't get to have a long service together.

Maybe the first experience of the love of God happens in your home, and the second experience happens at a large gathering. Wouldn't that change our churches from being entertaining to being integrated into our community? Can't you smell the mission of God being intentionally dispersed to affect our communities? Since they're not coming to church anyways, maybe the church needs to come to people and not just for post-service meals.

Tony Gatewood has just joined Servant Partners staff. He lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Posted on October 25, 2024 by Servant Partners and tagged Tony Gatewood.

Hush Up

Part I

Hush up, little girl, don’t cry!!!

There was a little 5 year old girl playing in her room with her dolls

She goes to sleep and wakes up a woman

Her step-dad tells her…Hush up, little girl, don’t cry!!!

The little girl does drugs now

Her dealer tells her

Hush up little girl, don’t cry

The little girl gets locked up

The police man tells her

Hush up, little girl, don’t cry

The little girl gets a boyfriend that beats her up

He tells her

Hush up, little girl, don’t cry!!!

The little girl is homeless now

She walks the street, talking to herself

Hush up, little girl, don’t cry!!!

Part II

The Lord says to me,

Come to me, little girl, cry, cry, cry!!

Come to me with your sorrows

I keep track of all your tears

I put them in your bottle

Vero is a homeless advocate and a member of First Love Community Church of East LA. She is a girl who was lost and now is found.

Posted on October 25, 2024 by Servant Partners and filed under Poetry and tagged Veronia Duran.

ASG Art Narration

In June, the Servant Partners world converged in Oaxtepec, Mexico for our All-Staff Gathering. This was a time of rest and inspiration. One source of both those goods was the art we enjoyed around our meeting space. We at The Mural wanted to share these pieces with you.

Andy Singleterry led us through a reflective Bible study in I Kings 19. In the first half of that story, Elijah visits four locations and interacts with four characters; Cayla Sanderlin made these four paintings, each one representing one of the locations. They marked stations around the room so that participants could imaginatively circulate through the places, joining Elijah on his journey.

A meaningful, powerful sign of hope in urban ministry is organic growth breaking through the pavement. Matt Hayashida depicted this familiar occurrence in this piece.

One of the dramatic success stories in Servant Partners’ advocacy history is our partnership against a toxic oil drilling site in one of our Los Angeles neighborhoods. (You can read about this story in Jen Blue’s chapter of Voices Rising.) Cayla Sanderlin told this story through the medium of cut paper.

Our hospitality team devised a way for all the Servant Partners sites and departments to contribute to the beauty of our space. Each team was sent a page with seemingly random swishes of white space against a black background and asked to fill the space with photos or art that represented their ministry. When we came together at ASG, all those pages fit together like a puzzle to make this composite representation of our organization. Here you see the white-on-black model, a drawing of dance and movement by Jenira Bremner, and the completed piece.

Posted on October 25, 2024 by Servant Partners.

Rest and Play

By Andy Singleterry

“You are what you produce.” No one ever says that, and most people if you asked them explicitly would deny that they think this way. Yet, so many of us act as if this were true. We define ourselves by our work and accomplishments. When we introduce ourselves, what key truths do we cite by which new acquaintances can best understand who we are? Where humans used to talk about their families or their homelands, we usually talk about our jobs.

Quick – what’s the opposite of work? I don’t know what word popped into your head, but likely it was one of these two: rest or play. Have you ever thought about that? Work has two opposites. Rest is the internally-oriented opposite of work, what one does for one’s restoration rather than making something of the world outside oneself. Play is the externally-oriented opposite, doing something in the world but not aiming at some outcome beyond the play itself. If work and production is all that matters, both rest and play can seem like wastes of time. Among such work-centered people as ours, they can seem counter-cultural. Yet, in our wiser moments, we know that we need them.

Rest, play, production, wasted time . . . all these themes have been on my mind recently. As Editor of Servant Partners Press and The Mural, I had planned to produce four issues of our zine in 2024. The Servant Partners All-Staff Gathering happened in June, a chance for us to play together (among other activities) and I had planned an issue on the theme of Gathering and Convening, using some of the artwork from the conference and asking some staff to reflect on the experience. Then, around now, I planned an issue on the theme of Sabbath and Sabbatical. One of the perks of working for Servant Partners is a lengthy sabbatical every six years – I’ll be concentrating on schoolwork and some other writing for the next year. So I and some others would produce some pieces around this theme. And through my year away, I planned to have a guest editor so that The Mural would keep going, producing another four issues without me.

But “the best-laid plans of mice and men / often go awry.” My key partner in making The Mural, who has designed and published everything we’ve done in the zine, had moved on from Servant Partners. He was holding onto his work with SP Press as a contractor, but that production ground down to a slow trickle as his primary work got up to speed. Eventually, he acknowledged the truth of his situation and called his time with Servant Partners to a stop. Thankfully, he has moved on to produce valuable work for a vital cause.

So, we are collapsing our two planned themes into one issue, Rest and Play, and then we’ll be taking a break for a year. We know that this is a counter-cultural step, a challenge against our culture’s fixation on work. But we believe that, in God’s provision, it’s not a waste of time but a restorative, recreative choice for meaning.

Andy co-leads the Servant Partners site in San Jose, California and is Editor of SP Press. He is the author of The Gifts for the City.

Posted on October 25, 2024 by Servant Partners and tagged Andy Singleterry.

The Reluctant Returner

“When I look at the life of Moses, I find so many similarities between our lives. I want to speak to our returners, relocators, and remainers to encourage you and invigorate you with my testimony as I step into Servant Partners as a faithful, but reluctant returner.”