We’ll continue our six-week worship series, Tasting Resurrection, this week by reflecting on lessons from the Gospel of John and a Netflix series called Chef’s Table. Each week focuses on a story from John and a chef featured in the first season of Chef’s Table. This week we turn to John 14.23-29 & Ben Shewry.
Outline for Tasting Resurrection
• April 3: John 20.19-31 & Massimo Bottura
•April 10: John 21.1-19 & Dan Barber
•April 17: John 10.22-30 & Francis Mallmann
•April 24: John 13.31-35 & Niki Nakayama
•May 1: John 14.23-29 & Ben Shewry
•May 8: John 17.20-26 & Magnus Nilsson
Ben Shewry was very successful yet not living a full life. He moved through a deep depression that lasted 8 months into a new way of living and cooking. He credits much of this shift to his relationship with a mentor named Lance Wiffin; a fisherman who supplies Ben’s restaurant. This exceptional supplier and cook have developed a meaningful friendship around their commitments to sustainability over profits. “I was in awe of his openness and honesty,” Shewry says. “His industry was facing extinction. He worked all the time, he missed his kids. It struck a chord with me. I realised I had to make changes, to repair my relationships, to make time for my family.”
Read John 14.23-29 .
One commentary reflects on this text in this way: “Jesus’ words in this passage of John offer his first followers and contemporary believers the possibility of a world in which hope overcomes despair, God’s presence overcomes anxiety about God’s absence, and in which the present holds in it the seeds of a fresh future shaped by love, not fear” (The New Interpreter’s Bible: Volume 9: The Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of John. Nashville: Abingdon, 1995 p. 754.)
Who in your life has offered you hope when you have been troubled or in despair? How has your relationship with that person felt “saving” for you? In what ways, if any, do you believe you have been this way for another person? How might the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life provide saving for you?