Christ’s Body

51. Reaching In, Reaching Out: Meals, Food, and Church

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I have taken a long hiatus from the blog to relax, rewind, refresh, and rest in Scripture this winter.  Thanks for sticking with me!  Here is the beginning of the final chapter of this e-book about shared meals as a Christian practice.  This, and the following weekly posts can help nudge you to think about the food ministry at your own church.

There are multiple approaches to food and hunger through food ministries in the North American Church. All do good things. Some give out food from a pantry or a cash gift card to a grocery store. Others prepare or organize a meal to feed new parents, the ill, the grieving, or the aged. Still others use a meal for evangelical purposes, always letting participants hear that God loves them. And some intentionally create a formal atmosphere more similar to the original practice of marrying the meal with worship and teaching. Some churches work alone, others together, often in partnership with local secular organizations.

I interviewed stakeholders from multiple and different ministries in an attempt to describe the scope of mission and vision where meal ministry is concerned, and to get a sense of how that is working out in practice.[1] Certainly, feeding the hungry is an action believers are called to do, no strings attached. But my visits were predicated on the desire to know if feeding someone a meal rather than sharing one around the table together were practices with different motives, possibilities, and results.

Going in, my intuition said that feeding people can become a community’s collaborative way of loving neighbor without necessarily bringing Jesus and the kingdom of heaven into the shared conversation. And this phrase shared conversation is critical. If the shared meal as a distinctive Christian practice was and is always about being around the table together in God’s presence, and giving voice and assent to that presence, then programs in which one can stop in to pick up some food (no shared meal), or come in and be seated and served by church members (a meal served but not shared between visitors and believers) is fundamentally different from the shared meals of the first century church.   The people providing the meal go away feeling good about themselves, about having met the physical needs of their neighbors, but with little to no acknowledgment that we are all hungry and in need of God’s grace-filled presence and provision, no different than my experience in Seattle with the unnamed and hungry homeless woman. (see post #18)

In essence, it is a fulfillment of the second commandment that may give little or no regard to the first, and as a practice it is not distinctively Christian because it misses this point: we should know the names of the hungry and share with them a meal and Jesus’ favorite mealtime teaching that the Kingdom of God is at hand. We must remember that a Christian practice is only a practice when it is done together, regularly, and with a focus on the presence of God and his kingdom. The meal, then, is meant to be an intimate shared practice, one which most of us must admit is an uncomfortable proposition because adding strangers into the mix intrudes on our personal space and plays on our insecurities.

It might be easy to become defensive at this point and insist that the shared meal of the first century church was shared among believers. But scholars contend that although the early church did meet for worship and teaching and the breaking of bread together, all were welcome to eat and hear and see God’s goodness, believers and unbelievers, Jews and Gentiles alike. These meals did feed the hungry, but they were not focused first and foremost on that goal. The emphasis was (and still should be today) on Christ and the kingdom.

Moreover, the distinctive Christian practice of hospitality is at play in the shared meal. The four components of hospitality outlined by Amy Oden elegantly describe how these meals should proceed. First, the greeting and welcome. Second, nourishment and dwelling together (food and Word). Third, a challenge to know God and live a life which pleases him (this is a most important component of the practice that is usually missing when a meal is not shared). Fourth, the sending back into the world fortified with Word and prayer as well as a full stomach. And so I set out to do this research because I wanted to find out what people and programs are doing and why.

Over the course of two years, I met with stakeholders, visionaries, pastors, and lay members of various churches-inner city, rural ones with membership challenges, and suburban ones with lots of resources. Several overlapping program characteristics emerged from these interviews, including the type of program and individuals carrying out the programming, as well as the ownership, faith basis, and sustainability of each program. My main goal was to try and identify the commonalities and substantive differences across programs, and see if the shared meal-as a Christian practice- was an ingredient in the recipe of various church food ministries.

In Post 52, we will begin to survey the themes that arose from these interviews. Stay tuned!  As always, your comments are helpful as I continue editing the book.  Use the LEAVE A REPLY box below!

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

[1] As part of the formal research process, interviewees were required to give written consent to be interviewed in exchange for guaranteed confidentiality.

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38. Lamenting a Lost Practice

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Every Sabbath morning at the start of worship, my pastor invites us to the meeting. He makes it clear that our presence for fellowship and worship and praise is the intersection where we, the gathered, meet with one another, God the Father, and Jesus the risen Christ in the counsel and care of the Holy Spirit. As a result, I have come to embrace the notion that the congregation of believers- those who congregate for an encounter with God and for his glory- does, truly comprise a meeting.

Likewise, I think the earliest believers, despite all their ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity, viewed their shared meals together as a meeting, (i.e., as worship) and I like to imagine that they looked forward to these regular meals with great anticipation and joy. This is why I also think of their gatherings as meal-meetings, or what I also like to call fellowship meals, because I also believe the common shared meals and the meetings of the early Church were inextricably connected, not necessarily to the extent of actually being Greco-Roman meal-symposiums, but of at least having evolved out of that prototype.

Of course our worship today, particularly on the Sabbath, is much different, crafted around centuries-old liturgies, creeds and doctrines, not to mention overt cultural-sensitivity to people’s lack of time for multiple meetings in a week. Thus, compared to those first Christians, our worship is much more formal, and our meeting together for shared meals far, far less common. And, it is this general loss of the shared meal- in families and church families alike- that I believe is something to lament because the places at our dining tables are so consistently and symbolically empty.

Our tables are empty because we no longer view a shared meal as a fundamental way to also share the gospel, and because we are unwilling to share our lives in such intimate, selfless, and demanding ways as hosts, who take, thank, break, and give bread to others. But most of all, we should grieve because we are so distracted, and always, always in such a hurry to be doing something else. As I wrote at the start of this chapter, regularly breaking and eating bread together is a practice meant to make us think of Jesus, to recognize his presence at our meal fellowship, and to remember his incomprehensibly great love for us. Our determined failure to practice shared meals on a regular basis should make us stop and think about why we no longer eat together and what we’ve lost in the process.

~ Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

Please make comments in the LEAVE A REPLY box, and contact me if you need further information about using this text for a small group or Sunday School study, or as the theme for a weekend retreat.

36. For Heaven’s Sake!

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To the Romans, Paul wrote,

“One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man whose faith is weak eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, For God has accepted him (Rom 14:2-3). “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men. Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble (Rom. 14:17-21).”

Paul here addresses the schisms that arise when any one believer or group of believers makes demands of the entire congregation based on personal preference or historic tradition. For the Jewish Christian, it was anathema to eat meat sacrificed to foreign gods, meat often sold for public consumption in the city and town markets. To them, this meat was unclean. The Gentile Christians didn’t really care, to them meat was meat, and the origin of the meat they purchased did not concern them. Here we have one group, so obsessed with where the meat comes from (again related to their misguided notions regarding ritual purity) that they resort to eating no meat at all, whereas another faction just digs right in and eats it all.

Under these circumstances, the early Christians eating a meal prior to a meeting for praise, worship, testimony and prayer would find the meal itself so upsetting that they’d literally enter the post-meal fellowship with the gall of their disagreements stuck in their craw. And so we have Paul begging them to try harder to put the food nonsense behind them once and for all. We may scoff at the rigidity of some of the early believers, and the “whatever” attitude of others, but we encounter the same attitudes in church today when, for example, we disdain vegetarianism or the need for a gluten-free Eucharist without trying to understand the issues (to name just two). Paul is clear: we are commanded to put aside our personal preferences for the joy and mutual edification of the entire congregation of believers, and reconcile our differences because breaking bread in peace creates an atmosphere in which we can praise, worship, learn, and be sent in peace.

In Post 37, we tackle another hard topic: the risk of being open to any who would come.

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

A reminder: these posts are meant to be read in order, as together they make up an entire book on the shared meal.  Send comments using the LEAVE A COMMENT box provided.  This topic is an excellent one for adult Sunday School classes or weekend retreats.  Please let me know if you’d like me to help you.

32. Jesus Lives-to Eat Again!

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Post #31 finished up this book’s chapter about the meals of Jesus during his earthly life.  In this next chapter, we shift our focus to the meals  (and food fights!) of the first Christians.

Luke ends his gospel with two fascinating scenes. First, two of Jesus’ followers, having walked with a unrecognizable Jesus along the road to Emmaus, invite him to stop and share a meal. Again, Jesus steps in to act as host by taking the bread, blessing it, breaking it, and giving it to the other two, who immediately recognize this “stranger” as the risen Jesus. This act, of taking, thanking, breaking and giving bread is the same thing Jesus did when he fed the 5,000, and again at his Last Supper. It’s a repeated practice at meals designed to sear into our minds that Jesus is always with us as host, provider, and savior. In other words, regularly breaking and eating bread together is a practice meant to make us think of Jesus, to recognize his presence at our meal fellowship, and to remember his incomprehensibly great love for us.

The Emmaus scene ends with the two followers running back to Jerusalem to report to the eleven disciples that Jesus lives, and that they didn’t recognize him until he broke the bread. And, as the thirteen of them excitedly replay the story amongst themselves, Jesus suddenly appears right in their midst. The disciples, already on an emotional roller coaster are terrified (after all, it is still Sunday, less than twenty four hours since the empty tomb was discovered). So Jesus shows them his pierced hands and feet to try and calm their fears, and then asks, “Do you have anything here to eat?” (Luke 24:36-41).

Here stands the risen Christ alive, in the flesh, asking for something to eat, because the first thing he wants is to celebrate with them in table fellowship! This is Jesus’ way of convincing them he’s not a ghost, and this turns their fear into joy. In accepting and eating a piece of broiled fish, Jesus, who until now had always assumed the role of host at meals, accepts the hospitality of the disciples. First bread at Emmaus, then fish in Jerusalem- this is an echo of Jesus’ shared meal on a remote hillside when he commanded the disciples, “You give them something to eat.” (Luke 9:13)

Jesus leaves us with a model for our own meal ministry; Jesus will always be present at our meals, asking if we have anything to eat, and expecting us to be host to the itinerant, hungry, fearful, and doubting people in our world. By sharing a simple meal at our table, we break bread with others so that they too might recognize Jesus.

Next time, in Post 33, we will begin to scour Acts for clues about the meals of the early Church.

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

(Featured image: emmaus-art-3.jpg from http://heartofgaemmaus.org)

#30. Remembering Jesus at the Table

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As we get to the end of this chapter on the meals of Jesus, we find him celebrating Passover with his disciples.  This final meal of Jesus is perhaps the meal with which we are most familiar (Luke 22:7-38). Here we have Jewish pilgrims streaming into Jerusalem for Passover, a feast calling them to remember their salvation from their slavery in Egypt, and how God’s curse on the firstborn of the land passed them over when they sprinkled the blood of the sacrificed Passover lamb on their doorposts. In this regard, it is a memorial meal.

For Jesus, who repeatedly told his disciples the hour was not yet come during their three-year ministry, the hour has, finally, arrived. And Jesus explains to them how eagerly he has looked forward to this meal. He wants to celebrate together with his disciples one last time before he must suffer the pain, humiliation, and abandonment of the cross.

And so, they prepare and eat a Passover meal[1], in which Jesus instructs the disciples to remember him when they eat the bread and drink the wine at their meals. What will they remember?

  • They will remember the times Jesus healed people suffering from leprosy, bleeding, demonic possession, and paralysis.
  • They will remember his teachings to become servants working tirelessly on behalf of the hungry, poor, and vulnerable.
  • They will remember their own terror the night of a storm at sea, and the authority with which Jesus swiftly stilled the waters.
  • They will recall the many meals they shared with him, and the way he confronted sin and self-righteousness with repeated calls to repentance and humility.
  • They will remember that he told them about how these things (most specifically his life, death and resurrection) had to happen to fulfill Scripture.
  • They will remember this last meal with him, and that Jesus, as Lamb of God, was sacrificed to atone for their sin and reconcile them to the Father.
  • They will remember the pain of their denial and unbelief, and the wonder-filled joy that came when, just before returning to God, Jesus “opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45).
  • And, they will do this remembering together over a shared meal. “Jesus wanted his disciples and everyone who came after him to remember what they had together… what it meant to be together. How the things he wanted them to do could not be done alone.”[2]

When is the last time you sat at a meal with loved ones and guests and spent some intentional time remembering the Person and work of Jesus Christ?

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

Note: It is my prayer that you are able to savor these meal stories, and that, in time, you will begin to feel the Holy Spirit nudging you to make your meals count.  Praying over the “remember” bullet points above is a good starting point.  And, as always, if you like what you read, please go to the LIKE and SHARE buttons inside the blog and CLICK!!

[1] Because of differences between the Gospel narratives, it is not certain that this meal took place on the Thursday night of Passover week, as is often assumed. I prefer to treat the Last Supper as a formal Passover meal.

[2] Nora Gallagher, The Sacred Meal (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009), p. 24.

29. Meals for Prodigals

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Luke records several parables in chapter 15 about the lost condition of sinners and the redemption available following repentance. These culminate in the parable of the prodigal son, where Jesus describes a famously wayward son who returns home hungry after squandering his inheritance. By rights, his father need not take him back. But, this father has been watching for his son’s return, and sets in motion a grand feast to celebrate the son’s reinstatement in the family.

Here is a feast to note. When a lost loved one returns home with a changed heart, when s/he seeks forgiveness, our natural response should be one of joyful celebration through feasting. It’s a recurring theme throughout the meal stories in the Gospel of Luke; repentance, reconciliation, and redemption are available to all. Our place at God’s table is waiting for our change of heart, which is the catalyst leading to a reformed and responsive life, reenergized by eating the spiritual food Jesus provides.

Not long after preaching the “lost” parables, and getting closer to his last days in Jerusalem, Jesus finds himself in Jericho, peering up into a sycamore tree at Zacchaeus, the town’s chief tax collector. Looking him in the eyes, Jesus doesn’t bother asking Zacchaeus what he wants. Instead, Jesus tells Zacchaeus that he plans on staying at his house. One minute Zacchaeus is “lost” among the tree’s leaves, and the next he is jumping down with rejoicing. Immediately, another meal with “sinners” is in the works. It must have been a very happy meal indeed, marked by a festive welcome unlike any Jesus had experienced in the homes of the Pharisees.

Just imagine:  Jesus coming up to you and asking you to set a place at your dining room table for him!  What’s the menu?  Who else would you invite?  What would the table conversation be like?  Believe it or not, the day is coming when you WILL be seated at the wedding feast table with Jesus the bridegroom. Jesus the lamb of God.  The bread of life.  The Lord of your life.  Wow!  Jesus welcomes you, the prodigal, you, the sinner, with open arms, and the first order of business is a shared meal!

28. Your Table MINISTRY

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Not surprisingly, this latest meal (see post 27) infuriates the Pharisees and teachers of the law to the point that they begin to organize a hostile opposition to Jesus. Likewise, Jesus escalates his attacks in Luke 12 and 13, publicly warning followers about the hypocrisy and murderous intent of the Jewish leadership. Jesus speaks with urgency of a coming day in which there will be a great feast in the kingdom of God, and exhorts people to humbly repent and be faithful.

Not long after this, Jesus attends a Sabbath meal at the home of a prominent Pharisee. For the Jews, the Sabbath was a feast day, so this is no ordinary meal. “Whereas Jesus was explicitly invited to the earlier meals, now, although an invitation may be implied, none is narrated, as Jesus merely “went into the house”” (Luke 14:1).[1] Can you imagine the scene? These leaders have been plotting to permanently incapacitate Jesus’ growing influence amongst the Jews, and here he is, on a Sabbath no less, showing up uninvited for dinner and playing, supposedly, right into their scheme.

Luke leaves out details of the meal and proceeds straight to the events of the after-meal symposium/discussion. Knowing that the Pharisees and lawyers are watching him carefully, Jesus looks up to find a man with dropsy[2] standing in front of him. It is hard to think otherwise that this is a setup, especially because this unclean man appears in front of Jesus in the center part of the dining room reserved for the activities of the symposium, rather than at his feet where bystanders were tolerated. By way of providing a controversy for the after-dinner symposium, the host may have deliberately encouraged the man with dropsy to go stand in front of Jesus in hopes Jesus would dare to heal on the Sabbath.

In ancient times, dropsy was thought to result from a habitual overindulgence in food and alcohol, in other words, of uncontrolled appetite.  Luke implies a connection here between the physical greed of the sick man and the moral greed of the diners, portraying Jesus as the medium for healing in both cases. First Jesus heals the man with dropsy while arguing that anyone would rescue even an imperiled ox or donkey on the Sabbath. And, if that’s the case, why should saving a man be any different?   Interestingly, after Jesus heals the man and sends him away, the other diners uncharacteristically refrain from comment. Either they are sullen or bewildered by Jesus’ authority or both.

Again, Jesus uses a meal to teach about salvation as he masterfully takes advantage of the others’ silence to introduce his own after-dinner controversy (which implies he usurps the host’s authority). He directly challenges the way these men jockeyed for positions of honor at the table at the start of the meal, confronting the moral greed which compels a person preoccupied with status to manipulate others for the sake of social standing. Moreover, Jesus challenges the host to rethink his typical invitation list, urging him to invite people on the margins of society instead of his elite, status-seeking, self-righteous peers. Jesus teaches them that the great banquet in the kingdom of God will include people in desperate need of healing, those who are poor, crippled, blind and lame (Luke 14:21). What his dining companions fail to understand is that they themselves are “the spiritually poor-with nothing to offer for [their] salvation; the spiritually crippled-made powerless by sin; the spiritually blind-unable to see the truth about Jesus; [and] the spiritually lame-unable to come to God on [their] own.”[3]

These are lessons taught and learned at the table that should make us consider what we believe, and how we lead our own lives as a result of that belief. In a sense, our meals and our behavior at meals reflect what we believe, especially about Christian community and hospitality, as well as our attitude toward people on the fringes of society. The truth is, when we invite others to our table, we usually do so with the mindset of entertaining them rather than sharing the food of the gospel and its power to transform lives. We are hesitant to embrace total strangers at our family table, finding ourselves far more comfortable including only people we know well, and who happen to be a lot like us.

Perhaps it’s time to view our table as an active place for ministry. Do you know people who seem unable to come to God, blinded to his truth, or determined to save themselves all by themselves? Invite them over for a meal and watch God work!

~ Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

[1] John Paul Heil, The Meal Scenes in Luke Acts: An Audience-Oriented Approach, p. 99.

[2] Today, we’d call this edema, or generalized swelling of tissues related to a host of causes, including heart and renal failure, liver disease related to abuse of alcohol, sodium retention, and abnormal blood pressure. For example, women with breast cancer who have lymph nodes removed often suffer from lymphedema, a significant swelling of the arm related to fluid obstruction in the lymphatic pathway.

[3] Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table, p. 79.

27. A Woeful Dinner with Jesus

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Once again, Jesus is invited by a Pharisee for a formal meal (Luke 11: 37-54). From the start, and to the surprise of his host, Jesus is immediately confrontational by purposefully neglecting to wash before the meal (washing was not demanded in the law, but was an expected ceremonial act of cleansing in Pharisaic tradition). “[H]is surprising disregard of the ritual washing before a meal functions as the fait divers that sparks the dispute of this banquet symposium.”[1]

Jesus uses the opportunity of the table’s intimacy to launch into a diatribe against the vainglory of his host and dining companions. Can you imagine a more uncomfortable scene? Jesus pronounces woe on them all, calling them dirty, greedy, wicked, unjust, self-inflated, foolish, irresponsible, and bloodthirsty. The Jewish religious leaders and experts in the law find themselves in an indefensible situation, and their self-righteous anger mounts with each new invective from this itinerant (and unclean) teacher.

Luke does not make us privy to how this meal concludes. But, the message here is important. It is at these shared meals that Jesus calls sinners to repentance; the meals anticipate both the Last Supper and Lord’s Supper and are always concerned with the redemption of the lost. Furthermore, we should realize that not every meal we share with others will be a love fest. Sometimes, sin must be confronted, even with the knowledge that people will be hurt, insulted, and become angry. Not only that, but there’s every possibility that we will be the ones being shown our mistaken ways by others who love us.

We would do well to honestly consider how we live our inner life on a regular basis, and address those places in which our self-congratulation may very well be a woeful thing to our Lord.

In post 28, we will look at yet another of Jesus’ meals with Pharisees-this time when a man with dropsy just “happens to show up” while Jesus is eating.

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

[1] John Paul Heil, The Meal Scenes in Luke Acts: An Audience-Oriented Approach, p. 83.

26. Self-Absorbed Hospitality

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Not long after the feeding of the thousands, Jesus and his disciples arrive at the home of the sisters Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42). Martha is clearly the one who invites Jesus into her home. As any host might, Martha undertakes the preparations, possibly for a meeting, but more likely for a meal. But, she makes the mistake many of us make; she overdoes the menu, fussing over the preparations to such a degree that she is unable to attend to the conversation of her guests. As a result, she is not fully present to Jesus and her resentment towards her sister, Mary, who is listening at Jesus’ feet, builds and festers.

Our meal hospitality too easily goes awry when undertaken with the wrong motives. True hospitality should function to unite people, and should be guest-focused. But, Martha is divisive and self-absorbed when she interrupts Jesus by entreating him to make Mary get up and help. Selfish hospitality is always about the host. “See how beautiful I’ve made my home. See what wonderful dishes I’ve prepared for you to enjoy. See how hard I’ve worked to get everything ready. See how good I am, and how much you should thank me, and how well you should think of me.”

Martha is worried and agitated by her attempts to provide the best possible experience for her guests. Jesus gently reprimands Martha for missing what Mary has discovered: there is only one thing necessary, and that is to sit at God’s feet and listen. This is the best food, the choicest portion. Recall that in Jesus’ day, the highest-status diners were often given the best portion. So, while Mary feasts, Martha chokes because of a prideful inability to deny herself the desire that her service be publicly noticed and lauded.

The lessons for us are threefold:

  • First, simplicity is the wisest path: we must not let grand motives undermine our full participation in and enjoyment of the meal process, because discipleship at the feet of Jesus requires our active presence.
  • Second, even when we invite others into our home for a meal, Jesus is the true host.
  • Lastly, our meal hospitality must be centered on the guest(s) and their interaction with the gospel of Jesus Christ; we must never selfishly divert attention away from Christ to ourselves.

A Personal Note: With summer nearly here, and an urgent need to watch over an ailing parent, I am scaling back these posts to 1x/week until autumn.  Please keep reading!  If you have fallen behind, each post is numbered, so you can start back where you left off.  With several hundred followers of the blog, we are reaching a wonderful threshold for discipleship across our individual churches!  PLEASE SHARE with your own church friends and family.

Thank you!

~Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

Featured image:  Google Images, aliuf6.jpg

21. Jesus Came Eating & Drinking

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Bread and Stones

While Jesus’ earthly ministry ends with a Passover supper, it formally begins with an extended forty day fast immediately subsequent to his baptism by John (believers in the early church often fasted as preparation for their baptism- we aren’t told if Jesus did). Fasting in the Old Testament was typically a whole-body companion to prayer, either as a demonstration of one’s yearning for God, or as an avenue for developing compassion for others (see David’s psalms and Isaiah 58).[1]

Scot McKnight defines fasting as “the natural, inevitable response of a person to a… sacred moment in life.”[2] Jesus’ fast in the wilderness surely was accompanied by prayer as way of preparation for the sacred and sacrificial role he was about to undertake. Try to imagine Jesus heading into the desert alone, to pray and fast and prepare for the enormity of what he was about to do. The Bread of Life refused bread. The Vine drank no wine. Coming from heaven, but as a fully-human being, Jesus must have been hit hard by the limitations of his embodiment, experiencing the physical, emotional, and spiritual effects of a forty-day fast in very tangible ways. He hungered after God his Father, and for the strength and peace to carry out his mission. And who shows up on day forty? Satan, of course. Isn’t it just like Satan to hit us in our weakest moments, and appeal to our biggest appetites? After forty days without food, Jesus’ encounter with Satan starts off with a challenge to turn stones to bread. But Jesus, fortified from forty days of fasting and prayer, is armed with the very word and Spirit of God to rebuff Satan’s temptations.

 Jesus Came Eating and Drinking

According to Luke, Jesus initiates his ministry of teaching and healing turning up first in Nazareth, then Capernaum. He heals Simon’s mother of a fever and she responds by getting up and making Jesus a meal. As he goes about Judea preaching, he stops at the Sea of Galilee and talks Simon into letting him use a fishing boat as a lakeside pulpit. In a very short time, Simon is astonished by both Jesus’ teaching and actions, and is convicted he must leave his fishing boat and the nets which catch real food to follow this teacher and learn about an entirely new kind of fishing and wholly different kind of food.  Much later, after Christ’s resurrection he grills fish for breakfast in this same place!

Jesus next comes upon Levi in a tax collection booth. Like Simon, Levi is convinced he must repent and change his life. In short order, we see Levi giving a great celebratory banquet with Jesus as the guest of honor (Luke 5: 27-39). Now this is no ordinary meal, but a lavish banquet, the first of several shared- and truly radical- meals for Jesus in Luke’s account. The typical Greco-Roman banquet in the Hellenistic Mediterranean regions of Jesus’ day included a guest of honor as well as other invited guests, usually those familiar to the host, often those with whom one associated via one’s profession or guild.[3] So, it shouldn’t seem odd to us in any way that Jesus would attend a formal meal given by a very grateful Levi at which the other invited diners were also tax collectors (as a tax collector, it is doubtful Levi would have had many other friends or associates, particularly among the Jewish community).

Although there is some debate among scholars whether the Pharisees, scribes and other Jews concerned with ritual purity participated in this type of banquet to any significant degree[4], it has been proposed that these banquets, better known as symposiums, were derived from the Greco-Roman tradition generally conducted in a culturally-accepted and prescribed way throughout the Roman Empire. Many homes had formal dining rooms. Other larger public rooms could be reserved, and even the temples had dining facilities. Invitations were sent. Guests were met at the door and led to the dining area by servants who then removed a guest’s shoes and washed his feet. The social standing of each guest was demonstrated by the distance one’s assigned dining place was relative to the host. Couches or cushions were arranged behind low tables around three sides of the room, leaving a large central opening. Diners reclined on their left side and elbow with their feet away from the center. The guest of honor was given the place of privilege to the host’s immediate right.   In his Gospel, John is careful to include a description of his position at the Passover feast the night Jesus spoke of a looming betrayal. “Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?” (John 13:25). From this narrative it is clear that, with Jesus as host of the meal, and himself lying on his left side, John was occupying the position of honor to Jesus’ right.[5]

What’s more, in Jesus’ time, the reclining position was itself a posture which connoted honor; slaves and women were not allowed to recline. Servants and even uninvited guests would often stand along the outer wall watching the diners eat and listening to their discussions and entertainment. Others were allowed to sit near the feet of the diners where they might be able to scoop up crumbs or leftovers. It was also customary for the highest-status diners to be served the choicest (and most) food. As we will see, these issues of social standing, honor, and privilege at shared meals would be challenged by Jesus (and later Paul) on a routine basis.

The center area outlined by the reclining couches held the common bowl of wine, typically diluted with water and passed among participants as a shared cup after the meal. The tables were cleared away so that the central area could be used for the symposium itself, a period marked by entertainment, singing and instrumental music, debate, or lecture. The Greek tradition of symposium was generally considered to have evolved into nothing more than a hedonistic descent into drunken promiscuity. As the Romans adopted the custom, the symposium, though still thoroughly embedded with wine and entertainment[6], was ideally meant to function as time for participants to debate a pre-planned controversy or philosophical question, or for out-of-town visitors to give a speech. Today we might put forth a question about clashes in culture, morality, or worldview to be debated around the table after the meal, or we might invite a missionary on home leave to speak to us about her work.

Next time, in post 22, we will look at the Jewish eating and purity traditions of Jesus’ day.

[1] Scot McKnight, Fasting, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009), pp. xv-xvi.

[2] McKnight, Fasting, p. xx.

[3] The recent works of Dennis E. Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) and Hal Taussig, In the Beginning was the Meal, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009) are excellent resources for redefining first century church worship and fellowship activities in the context of shared meals, as well as understanding the place of the banquet in the ministry of Jesus.

[4] Craig L. Blomberg, Contagious Holiness: Jesus’ Meals with Sinners (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2005), p. 22.

[5] The 15th century mural of the Last Supper by Leonardo DaVinci shows the diners seated and standing along one side of a long table, illustrating both the artist’s creative freedom as well as how the social custom of reclining had died out by the 1400’s.

[6] The birthday celebration for Herod, in which Salome danced for the head of John the Baptist was likely such a feast-symposium (Matt .14:6-8).

Photo Credit:  www.biblicalarchaeology.org