We’ll conclude 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 we have focused on a story from John and a chef featured in the first season of Chef’s Table. In our final week we turn to John 17.20-26 & Magnus Nilsson.
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
Read John 17.20-26 and listen for Jesus’ prayer for unity among his early followers.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes of community: “Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him/her a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and if we are fortunate, with ourselves” (Life Together, 26-27).
Chef Magnus Nilsson says we’re called to make the most out of whatever we have. Many outsiders look on at the desolate setting of his restaurant in rural Sweden and think he has very little to work with as a chef. Yet, he celebrates the place he finds himself as a chef and invites his community to do the same. Magnus has become part of his community and reflects it in his work as a chef. He intimately knows the place from which he cooks. Similarly, Jesus intimately knows God and wants us to do the same. Jesus longs for us to see the abundance around us that can sometimes appear on the surface to be scarcity.
How have your “ideals” about unity in Christian community shifted as you have actually been part of a Christian community?
What is something that you can celebrate about the place you find yourself in Christian community today?