"At the table as nowhere else we are made aware that true life is in mystery and not in management. At the table there is now worry about members or budget, but only the reminder of meaning given that we don't have to explain or manufacture. It is overpowering, when we reflect on it, that all the key verbs in that drama have him as subject and not us. We are the subject of no important active verbs at the table. He took, and he blessed and he broke and he gave to us again. It is his table; we are welcome guests and we don't fix the menu or pay the bill."
Brueggemann, Living Toward a Vision, page 143
It's such concise theological guidance that makes this book one of the very best things Brueggemann has written - and it's amongst his first publications. His words come as such an effective antidote to the veiled selfishness that passes for our ecclesial activism, programmatic evangelism and missional (miss)-management. I wonder when evangelical activists will recover the real drama of God's mission, really and truly embodied and proclaimed in the broken bread and poured wine shared around a table that is not ours? In a digitally experienced and ICT expert culture, the simple enactment of breaking bread and passing a shared cup becomes a proclaimed Gospel, a gift of grace so framed in mystery and profundity it is scandalously enigmatic to minds used to more sophisticated encounters with virtual reality and impatient with the gift and demand of a Real Presence.
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