Angie Tunstall describes the weekly Sabbath meal she practices as part of her work with Urban Expression Eccles.
As a small Urban Expression (UE) team of two here in Eccles, we practice a weekly Sabbath meal each Thursday evening with those we find ourselves ‘doing life’ with.
Sometimes there are just two of us. However, sometimes all the seats around the table are filled with neighbours, family, friends, other ‘UE-ers’ or other houseguests.
Over food we share a simple liturgy introduced to us a few years ago by friends in Urban Expression Bristol. We share life (and faith for some) around the two questions:
- What is life- giving for you at the moment?
- What is bothering you?
As we share our table, there is always a sense of Christ in our midst; sometimes found in robust theological conversation, sometimes in being people of difference, sometimes in the week’s joys and sorrows.
One night, Christ was recognised not least in our asylum seeker guest. She shared with us food from her culture, and gave juice from her food bank parcel to a young 10 year old guest (who took great delight in lighting the central candle!)
We had no common language, no common theology, maybe not even a common faith; but we re-enacted Jesus’ table fellowship, taking bread and wine as we remembered what Jesus did and said.
Towards the end of the meal we lit individual candles and passed them on to another with words of affirmation and for some prayer.
More about Urban Expression
From the Urban Expression website:
Urban Expression is an urban mission agency that recruits, equips, deploys, and networks self-financing teams pioneering creative and relevant expressions of the Christian Church in under-churched urban neighbourhoods.
To find out more about Urban Expression and to see what is happening in your area, visit the Urban Expression website.
Images taken from the Urban Expression Facebook page.