There are some people who make you want to love your neighbour better, and Jon Thompson is one of them. He grew up as a third-culture kid in Ecuador, and today he’s a pastor just outside Toronto, a fellow Ontarian, in a city where the whole world lives on the same street. So when Jon writes about the difference between living among people and actually being with them, he’s writing from real, lived experience. And friends, his words stopped me right in my tracks. How many of us have quietly kept our distance from the very people Jesus pulled up a chair beside? Jon’s words are a brave, tender, deeply needed invitation to stop retreating and start showing up the way Jesus always did. Pull up a chair, friend. It’s a joy to welcome Jon to the farm’s table today…

Guest Post by Jon Thompson

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At the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, I was walking through my local grocery store in southern Ontario with no clue that we would be living in lockdown longer than most people in the world.

The crisis truly came home for me in the fruits and veggies section.

I remember thinking, all of this is real, and then I remember coming to the vegetable section. I looked at the plastic bag, and I looked at the vegetables, and I thought, how in the world am I going to do this? If someone has coughed or breathed on the vegetables—or on the bags—then I can get whatever this thing is, right?

In that moment, I suddenly realized that my world was not the same.

I did not feel safe.

I didn’t know how much of another person’s presence would make me sick or even kill me.

Their presence—my association with them in the same room—could deeply affect me or my family’s health, even our very lives. 

Now don’t read the above politically. This was before we knew what we know now—good, bad, exaggerated, tested, and proven.

My point is that a great number of religious Jews felt this way when being around “sinners” and non-Jews. Presence, let alone relationship, they taught, could spiritually contaminate you. This was the common view held 2,000 years ago. And today, as things have gotten darker, many Christians who claim they have been saved by grace don’t fully believe this but instead hold to views held by our religious great-great- grandparents. 

It is one thing to see beauty; it is another to cross bridges instead of burning them.

It’s another thing to preach and see those we don’t feel comfortable with get saved.

“…God calls us to more. He says don’t just live and work alongside these people but go and eat with those people. He tells us to be in relationship with them. “

It’s a whole other thing to give the gospel and just cross the bridges, heading back over to our side after we are done.

It is even another thing to obey God and not just preach but settle and live in Nineveh, Babylon, in some hostile modern city. But we must take that very last step. It is one thing being willing to go, and another when you are called to stay and to live, but God calls us to more. He says don’t just live and work alongside these people but go and eat with those people. He tells us to be in relationship with them. 

Let us admit there is a vast difference between among versus with. And let us also admit that Jesus was always eating with people. Over those meals, he broke down barriers and shattered expectations. He shows what it is like to love your neighbour. And in those moments he reveals who he is and what he is calling people into. 

There is no better way to check out the Christian faith than with food and Jesus.

If you took the time to read about every meal Jesus had with others in the Gospels, you would see quickly that Jesus calls us to be with others, to be with those who are not like us, to see the power of hospitality, and furthermore why it is a problem to connect exclusively with those we are comfortable with. Jesus loved to associate with a broad cross section of people over food: normal people, flagrant sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, farmers, fishermen, housewives, artists, the intellectual and religious elite. Again, Jesus shows us why we reach out broadly to those around us. 

The religious leaders of the day were upset about Jesus eating with sinners because they taught purity was connected to association. If you ate, spent time with, lived with people that were not following God’s standards or other religious standards, you were saying it was okay, and thus you would be tainted. Like a virus, like COVID-19 or a cold, you would catch it just by being around people.

But Jesus never excused anyone’s sin by associating with them. This is key.

Many Christians have started to act and believe that association equals justification of worldviews and sin. It does not.

Over these encounters and meals, Jesus still called sin, sin. In the encounter between the religious leaders and adulterous woman, Jesus makes it clear that the religious leaders were hypocrites, and he calls the woman to go and sin no more. Jesus did not care about ceremonial cleanliness. He calls out all parties. How can you be salt and light if you don’t have relationships with those who are lost?

“How can you be salt and light if you don’t have relationships with those who are lost?“

Again and again we are tempted to give in to the darkness by separating ourselves from the world. We all have struggles, and we should not place ourselves in areas we cannot handle. But many times separation is an easy excuse to ignore relationships. It is easier not to have the hard conversations.

Are you willing to be like Jesus in our current repaganizing and pluralistic moment whether or not revival comes?

Will you risk disappointment or discomfort for the sake of getting to know those who need Christ?

Are you willing to spend time, have relationship with, and talk to those in your community? 

The gospel is a pivoting gospel; it moves in multiple directions to so many different people, and so must we.

“The gospel is a pivoting gospel; it moves in multiple directions to so many different people, and so must we.”

People might say no to relationships.

They might mock you, persecute you, or try to seduce you back to one of the many forms of worldliness.

Pivoting is hard.

Reaching out to many, knowing that most will not say yes might be difficult, but God has placed us in this moment.

Whether it’s a Muslim having a dream about Jesus, a university student listening to a Christian Oxford professor discussing the historical validity of the resurrection, a sick person being loved, cared for, and prayed over by a Christian nurse, a sermon by the preacher, or a deliverance that breaks the power of darkness, the point is that in our pluralistic, multicultural, and socio-economically diverse world, love, we need to be willing to cross the common ground we share with our neighbours.

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A Deeply Life-Giving Conversation: BellTower Stories

Ann Voskamp and Jon Thompson discuss Jon’s new book, Presence: Resilient Witness in Times of Retreat and Revival. Come join us in BellTower Stories, up in the 1896 bell tower our little Village Table church, as “the bells are the voice of the church, with tones that touch and search.” (Longfellow)

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