Coffee Shop

There's more to coffee than coffee

It’s just a coffee shop on a high street near you. It’s full of buzz, bangs and bags of shopping.  Hissing steam and the smell of fresh coffee accompany the shoppers as they sigh into their seats to recover from a ‘big shop’. Just ordinary people doing ordinary things together on a Saturday afternoon. One table explodes into laughter alongside other tables where heads are bent close together in deep conversation. It’s just a coffee shop on a Saturday afternoon, isn’t it?

Looking around the shop you see two young adults in an alcove tentatively stretching out their hands towards the other and revelling in sustained eye contact over coffee. Just behind you are a mixed group talking football and laughing at the comical mistakes that lost their team points during the week.  In the window another table is occupied by three mothers who have escaped from home to meet up and agonise about their children as well as boast about their progress. Then, at a single table sits old Harry in relaxed contentment in front of a pot of English breakfast tea. Harry is eavesdropping on all the conversations above, letting each one tease his own forgotten memories back into life and greeting each with a settled smile. Even the occasional arguments echo in Harry’s memory with a nostalgia for his once busy home.

Jesus delights to be with people

It’s just another coffee shop on a busy high street on a Saturday afternoon. But you and I have missed something. At those tables, in many shapes and in many stories sits Jesus himself. Proverbs 8.31 reminds us of something we easily forget: that Jesus likes to be with people and delights in their presence.[1]  In his own lifetime Jesus enjoyed what we Christians call ‘table fellowship’ with ordinary people. Well, our coffee shop is full of tables and filled with ordinary people. I believe that it is highly unlikely that Jesus would have stopped enjoying such occasions since His resurrection. In fact, the risen Jesus can now be that hidden presence at every table in every coffee shop in the world and many more tables besides. We know that because Jesus promised at his ascension that he would be with us always, until the end of time.[2]

So, now you know. In that coffee shop you can find Jesus. Perhaps we could play a game now of hide and seek for Jesus and have another look around together. Let’s start with the football fans laughing at their desperate team and yet still hoping. You can hear their frustration being turned into laughter through a kind of trench humour that tells you that the game is less important than the friendships around the table. Success in this group is not measured in goals but in the goodness of the group and in the ease they experience in each other’s company. Jesus is found in such ordinary exchanges when they are seasoned with respect, understanding, affection and humour.[3]  Because these men look out for each other and care in that no nonsense male style, we can say that they form a community of friends. It’s a small step then to recall that Jesus promised to be with us whenever two or three are gathered in his name. Does that make each coffee table a potential church? You can decide.

They swing like a pendulum between pride and fear

At the next table the three mothers are engaged in careful listening to each other’s family experiences. You can hear the waves of care for their children expressed in worry, anger and delight. They are hungry for advice and for wisdom, eager to describe issues where they feel out of their depth and relieved to share some helplessness in raising their children. They swing like a pendulum between pride and fear as they speak about their children. They share their fears about the world their children will inherit and ask each other how they can protect them from things beyond the home. The risen Jesus is inside that conversation precisely in the worry and self-sacrificing care of those parents. Their tension resonates with the parent in Jesus’ story of the Prodigal Son who had to wait with agonising longing for his son to come to his senses. Those three mums are living that Gospel through their hope, anger and fears for their children. They are also shepherds of loving kindness in their families because they mirror the image of Jesus in John’s Gospel[4]. That messy love and parental yearning reveals that the risen Jesus is present at the table and, like a golden thread, Gospel wisdom is running through their conversation.

By listening in on many conversations you soon recognise that coffee tables easily turn into confessionals. Voices are lowered and anxious glances exchanged as phrases like “can I tell you something?” or “I haven’t told this to anyone but” are spoken into the sacred space between two friends. Such moments open up the vulnerability required for the beginning of healing. When a friend speaks out of confusion and helplessness and is really heard by their friend they are touched with the presence of Jesus too. Jesus got into a lot of trouble from the authorities for talking to the wrong people and touching them with healing. When Jesus touched lepers, they were clean and no longer alone but part of a community. When a friend, with tender compassion, touches my deepest hurts and fears I too am somehow cleansed and better connected to life and to my future. I will walk out of the coffee shop with a lighter step, shoulders back and ready to begin again. I have left some of the heaviness of life behind with the dregs of the coffee. Every human being, whether they know it or not, is capable of healing and reconciling others to a more integrated and realistic way of life.

Confessions can happen anywhere

In this broad sense there are probably more confessions made in coffee shops than there are in churches these days. These are not sacramental confessions of course and no ordained priests are involved. But ‘loving listening’ and honest feedback are being dispensed every day in our coffee shops, and here’s the key point - it happens because Jesus is present in the people. So, let’s all take the promise of Jesus seriously and at its face value, “I am with you always, until the end of time” even in coffee shops. If we could take that one promise seriously we might see the world transformed through the eyes of Jesus and His Gospel.

[1]"I was rejoicing in the inhabited world and delighting to be with the children of men". Proverbs 8.31 ESV. This is a phrase that is often attributed to Jesus.

[2] See Matthew 28.20

[3] These four words spell out the acronym RUAH which means Spirit and breath in Hebrew and is similar in Arabic. More on that later.

[4] Look at chapter 10 of John’s Gospel and count the ways that parents are like Jesus as a Good Shepherd.