Practicing The King's Economyنموونە

A Community of Love

We believe that God calls each of us to aim our economic lives at the potlucking community, where everyone gives and everyone receives. Throughout the Bible, we see that God gives us feasts to which everyone is welcome as one of the key practices to begin creating such a community.

Just getting people gathered together and sharing food, stories, and life doesn’t sound like economic justice. But the Bible makes clear that the practice of feasting together creates a community capable of caring for the marginalized and embodying just economics.

Finding a way to welcome those who are poor and broken and ethnically different from us to the potluck feast shapes us to become people capable of welcoming the economy of God in all its justice, righteousness, and peace. Every road to the economy of the kingdom runs through the creation of community. Thankfully, Jesus gives us just such a community and welcomes us to embrace it through concrete practices of togetherness, including the feast.

I was writing about this idea shortly before putting my kids to bed one night. My boys, Isaiah and Ames, were in their bunk beds. Our daughter, Nova, barely one year old, crawled up onto Ames’s bed.

Ames said, “Novey wants to sleep with me, Daddy. I love her. You sleep with me too. I love you, Daddy.” I crawled into the bed, and then Ames said, “Put your arm around Novey, Daddy, so she doesn’t fall. I’ll put my arm around her, Daddy.”

I teared up right there lying in the bed, realizing what a parable of God’s invitation to a community of love this was. The love between Rebecca and me, like the love of the Triune God, brought these people into the world. And now they are in love with us and with one another.

Community means responding in childlike prayer to the God who first loved us: “Come be with me, Jesus. Watch out for my friend. I love her. I’ll watch out for her too.” Community flows into us and through us, straight from the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This truth lies at the heart of the King’s economy. May we enter into it with joy.

What misconceptions might you have about community or feasting together that keeps you from cultivating community around you?