Author: Ekko Church

The fragrance of fresh bread fills the room. New wine chimes as it is poured. The cool evening air trickles in from the windows while He looks at each face, each illuminated by candlelight, as they sit around a colorful array of food.

When we see Jesus at the table with societal misfits, imagine Him sharing in the delight of the freshly baked bread with those around Him. Imagine the crumbs that may have fallen into His beard or His smile as He tastes local wine.

The way He looks each of them in the eyes, those often labeled as greedy, dirty and rejected, those unseen, even hated in their communities. These are the precious people Jesus welcomes as friends to the table. They begin to share their lives and their stories with the Son of Man.

Imagine their excitement as they whip up their favorite recipes and study His face as He takes the first bites. It is the first time they feel at home in their lived experiences. They loosen in His presence, experience profound solace in His friendship.

“Few acts are more expressive of companionship than the shared meal… Someone with whom we share food is likely to be our friend, or well on the way to becoming one.”

— Tim Chester

An Ekko member once wrote of covenantal living: “To me, this is the greatest miracle—to find home—to be able to abide, to be able to contribute toward building a home for others.”

At Ekko, in the practice and light of the Gospel, we are reconciled through Christ and drawn together by Christ.

We find friendship with Him.

But it doesn’t end there.

Out of the overflow, we begin to make space for the other. Much like the story of Zacchaeus, who finds utter acceptance and grace in the presence of Jesus, we can’t help but respond with grace, generosity and love.

Sunday Supper is one of the ways we practice this Zacchaeus-moment in our body.

More than sharing a meal between members and visitors, it represents the community, friendship and hospitality we get to share. Because we were once welcomed, we now welcome. 

“They committed themselves to the teaching of the apostles, the life together, the common meal, and the prayers.”

— Acts 2:42 (The Message)

So whether you have been a member for a long time, or are a newly minted Orthopraxis grad (Ekko’s introduction to discipleship), we who have been welcomed, now get to make room. We get to participate in what God is doing.

And we learn to save a seat at the table for other brothers and sisters like Jesus often did: at the table. 

She presses through the unforgiving elbows. Fighting through the resistance of bodies and noise, feeling the harsh eyes and sharp comments as she fumbles through the crowd. Her body is cumbersome with embarrassment, but she’s getting closer now. She can almost hear it. His faint voice, unhurried and gentle. Quiet and constant through the cacophony of voices. Desperation quickens in her spirit as she falls to a crawl. Careless, heavy feet drill into her fingers and hands. If she could just touch His robe, even just the hem.

She stretches one last time, and at that moment, when her fingers meet the fabric, everything in her changes.

She’s still clutching her stomach when her body begins to experience this foreign, yet familiar stillness for the first time in 12 years. It is as if all the static in the world suddenly became quiet.

“Who touched me?” she hears. The crowd loosens around Him.

She is still on her knees when His eyes meet hers.

Often, we don’t find ourselves in moments of desperation like this unnamed woman who is fighting to meet Jesus on the road. But we have all felt a similar yearning in our spirits for a connection with Him. Some of us have been those in the crowd watching others have this moment with Him and found ourselves curious and inspired wanting our own experience. Some of us believe and know that we could have that connection, but our lives are too loud and too imposing; the crowd too large. We are altogether too far, too tired and too busy. We have too much work, not enough time, no one to watch the kids whose fingers are sticky again – all legitimate things that pull us in all different directions.

With anything from anxious thoughts to indifference jostling around us like jutting shoulders in a crowd, we shuffle through life, straining to hear what God is saying. Where we can’t quite make out what He’s saying or where He’s going. Too tired to wrestle through the distractions and noise to reach Him.

But we all crave that moment, don’t we? That moment, when everything silences around us, where the crowds part like fog melting away in the afternoon, and we are met with the tenderness of God calling to us, “Son.” “Daughter.”

We need these moments to connect with Jesus, where you break through the restless thoughts and red lines on the map and looming deadlines to touch the edge of His robe.

To abide with Him and to know that you are seen, heard and known.

To be refreshed in His presence.

To actually hear what He’s saying.

This is what Kavannah Nights are for: it’s us creating space to engage with God.

And just like the unnamed woman in the Gospels, it requires us to fight through our fatigue, our apathy, our contented spirits or busy schedules in order to reach out, even to crawl, to connect with Him as a body.

Because we need Him. We need to connect with Him — especially when the resistance is high and we are tired or numb. As disciples of God, we need time to abide with Him, to worship Him individually and corporately to download His heart, to remember who He says we are and to engage in what He’s doing.

“Daughter,” He says to the unnamed woman with a smile, His hand outstretched bringing her bruised body to her feet. He is everything and nothing she hoped He would be. In His presence, she is healed, but more importantly, she is seen and known.

Kavannah Nights, Ekko’s Worship and Prayer Nights, will take place on the first Fridays of June (6/1/), July (7/6), and August (8/3) in Ekko’s summer season.

They will begin at 8 PM at Ekko Church.

It’s hard to recall what each of the art pieces looked like, what songs we sang or even what words were exchanged that night.

But though the details are often fuzzy to recollect, you can always remember what it felt like at the end of Orthopraxis. The undeniable joy settling in the air, the tight hugs, the co-mingling of new faces and old—of pastors and members and those who hadn’t decided yet. It was like the tangible shifting of the seasons, like the first day of spring.  

That night, everyone had a story to tell, and some expressed theirs beautifully through the art of creative mediums. Without words, they could articulate what forgiveness looked like, what redemption felt like, what this season meant for them; and without further explanation or descriptions, we inherently understood. Because, here at the end of Orthopraxis, we had experienced it too.

Amidst the buzz of excitement and festivities, there were moments when it began to click into place as we looked around the room: that the healing and restoration we might have experienced individually were actually woven into a grander narrative of stories. Here, between the gallery walls that proudly displayed the visual and audible stories of our blossoming tribe, we all began to realize we shared in it together. That the old has passed, and the new has come.

Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! 

2 Cor. 5:17 (MSG)

That night, we weren’t just celebrating the end of Friday night meetings or the end of readings and homework. We weren’t even celebrating the fact we could now become a member or serve here at the church we’d grown to love so much.

We were celebrating the beginning of something new. Individually and corporately.

At Ekko, Orthopraxis is the introduction for those embarking on a lifetime of discipleship with Jesus. The reason why we celebrate its end with food and festivities and with the sharing of testimonies and stories is not that it marks the end of a season, but because it marks the beginning. The beginning of a life-long discipleship with our Lord.

Just as a bar/bat mitzvah symbolizes a son or daughter’s “age of maturity” and marks a shift in their lives where they are now responsible for what they have learned, Orthopraxis Celebration is the time where our tribe recognizes each person who has participated in this process of discipleship, looks at them square in the eye, and says, “We believe you can look more like Jesus.”

But Celebration isn’t just for the graduates.

Celebration is for the members too.

It’s in the discipline of celebration that we begin to find ourselves reminded of how we first came to the Lord, how we began to learn how to forgive and heal, how we began to become who God dreamt we would be. You see, it is when we celebrate the beginning of someone else’s season that we too are drawn back into the grand Story that God is writing in the here and now. God begins to reignite the memories we had when we went through our own introductions of discipleship.

“We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn’t mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It’s a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them.”

— Donald Miller

It is in celebrating one another that we are reminded that we, too, are called to a lifetime of discipleship.

That we, too, still need God’s grace and mercy.

And that we, too, are on a journey of looking more and more like Jesus.

You are invited to celebrate with our Orthopraxis graduates on May 18, 2018. You can RSVP for Celebration here; all friends and family are welcome to attend. Dinner will be served. Come dressed to impress!