nourishment

#30. Remembering Jesus at the Table

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

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.

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

20. Two Birds! Repent!

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Two Birds for the Lamb

On the fortieth day after Jesus’ birth, and as part of the purification rites according to the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary take six-week old Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (Luke 2:23). It is an interesting paradox that this baby, Jesus, is likewise Joseph and Mary’s and God’s firstborn son, so this is indeed a day of celebration. Still, it also a day both marked by, and foreshadowing sacrifice. Joseph and Mary bring two birds- young doves or pigeons- to sacrifice, one as a burnt offering, the other as a sin offering (as prescribed in Lev. 12:8 ) to dedicate their son Jesus to the Lord God. The birds are acceptable if parents cannot afford a year-old lamb. And so, here we see the Lamb of God of Passover significance, born into such poverty that his parents can only afford birds for the purification rites.

 A Feast and a Mission

The next we hear of Jesus in Luke is when his family travels from Nazareth up to Jerusalem for the Passover feast when Jesus is twelve years old (Luke 2:42). They feast there according to custom. It is probable that Jesus had gone up with his family for Passover feasts in previous years, since the law required Joseph, as an adult male, to attend on a yearly basis. But at the age of twelve (Scripture is very clear here about Jesus’ age being twelve, meaning he was in his thirteenth year), an Israelite boy like Jesus would have been in the midst of preparing to take his expected place among the adult males of the religious community when he turned thirteen. Jesus tells his earthly parents that he just had to be in his Father’s house, a hint that Jesus already recognized and craved intimacy with a father other than Joseph. So, here we see a pre-teen Jesus celebrating Passover in Jerusalem with, perhaps, the dawning knowledge that twenty-one years hence at this same feast of bitter herbs and unleavened bread, and in this very city which he dearly loves, he himself, the firstborn and only son of God, will become the sacrificed lamb whose sprinkled blood will safeguard and deliver the lives and souls of all who believe. In the last week of his life, Jesus sends disciples ahead into the city to prepare the Passover meal at a pre-arranged location (Luke 22:8-12). I have often wondered where, in which house in Jerusalem, Jesus’ family celebrated their Passover meals in those early years. Could it be that their family returned to the same upper room year after year, much like we return to a favorite resort or restaurant when we visit a nearby city? Could this be the same room where Jesus spent his last supper with his beloved disciples?

 Repent and Bear Fruit

In chapter three, Luke turns to the ministry of John the Baptist calling out in the desert for people to produce fruit in keeping with a repentant life. The fruit metaphor is universally used throughout the Bible to signify an edible, life-sustaining seed-bearing plant which is deep-rooted, wisely pruned, and well-watered, thriving in its season and producing an abundant crop from year to year. Jesus also uses the fruit comparison, when he curses a barren fig tree (Matt. 21:19), when he claims that “no good tree bears bad fruit,” (Luke 6:43), and when he entreats people to graft their “branches” onto his “vine” to become and remain fruit-producing believers (John 15).

To think about:  what fruit is your life producing for the kingdom?  Where could your attitudes and behaviors use some watering?  Pruning?  How can your life be sweet, wholesome, nutritious food for others?

17. Willfully NOT Caring

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When our daughter left for college, my husband and I found our table manners slipping. With an empty nest, we both became exceptionally stretched, having taken on more and more responsibilities both at work and at church at the same time the health of our parents began a slow decline. Not surprisingly, our mealtimes suffered. I’d find myself standing in the kitchen too exhausted to be creative and too hungry to care. On more than one occasion we settled on having a bowl of Cheerios for dinner, only to discover the milk had soured because neither of us had had the time (or inclination) to stop for groceries in the past two weeks. Sound familiar? Well, this is not abundant living. Regularly sitting down at night for cereal, ordering a pizza that’s too costly, financially and calorically, or grabbing a sub sandwich, which completely transgresses our daily sodium limits indicates something’s amiss. It is subsistence living. These are not meals. As a little family of two, our garden was choking from weeds of inattention. We had fallen out of practice. So, we’ve recently pared down a few obligations and recommitted ourselves to healthier foods, intentional conversation and prayer at the table, to taking homemade soups and casseroles to our parents, and to inviting others and our parents over more often no matter how messy our home might be.[1] “Whether we are reluctant or eager, we should understand that hospitality was meant to be an opportunity, not an imposition.”[2]

Accordingly, at this stage of my life, when Jesus asks me what I want to nurture at my family table, and during the evening that follows, I find I want to grow six things: simplification, grace, gratitude, empathy, stewardship of the evening hours, and wisdom. I want my husband’s and my life to be less complicated, less filled with noise and calendars and exhaustion, and more centered on God, each other, our aging parents, our church family, and the stranger we usually avoid by pretending s/he doesn’t exist. Our table comfortably seats six people, yet almost always only two places are set. I pray for the room to let God into our packed, busy lives.

My first response has been to simplify our meals. I still make menus and shop ahead (a later post will have ideas), but our evening meal is far simpler than in days gone by, with fewer ingredients, less food (and less meat) overall, and a reliance on quick but healthy main dishes, with vegetables, salads, breads, and fruit to round out the menu. When we host others at our table, the idea is to dwell together in God’s presence rather than play at entertaining our guests. As a result, my new practice is to keep the meal simple enough so that all enjoy and participate at the table-even me.

I want us to invest our time in knowing God, and through experience of his grace, to practice being more gracious in serving family and stranger alike. I want God to know how grateful we are for the ‘Bread of Life’ in Jesus Christ, for this food that satisfies above all others. I want to stop pushing the awareness of the needs of others to a dark, dusty corner of my mind, and bring that certainty to the very forefront of my heart and my family’s awareness. I no longer want to insulate my mind with deliberate ignorance about the plight and sufferings of others, especially where food, and the impact of our own food and economic behavior is concerned. I want to invite the stranger to eat with us.

More than anything, I want to stop: wasting time and food, and willfully not caring. I want our evening meal to signify day’s end, and to mindfully help us transition into a night spent in God’s Word, in prayer, and in his presence as we actively participate together in the start of this new day. All of this will take the sort of wisdom only God can provide, and I want that for my family and the friends and strangers with whom we dine. I hope my “wants” resonate with you at this stage in your life.

There is a box below to leave comments, and a LIKE button to share if you find what you read helpful.  PLEASE!  Take a moment to give me some feedback, and/or start a conversation.  I am a TEACHER.  I welcome you into my “classroom”!

[1] It is critical to get over any pride or guilt about the condition of your home. When perfection is your goal, then you are not being a faithful host. Hospitality is about enfolding guests in love, comfort, and respite, even if they must share in the messiness of your life. Having a “Martha” approach to hosting a meal becomes more about “entertaining” than it does about using table time to invite, nourish, challenge and send your guests out prepared to shoulder the co-mission of Christ. Obviously, you don’t want to convey to guests that you are a slob, and that your home might not pass a cleanliness test from the public health inspector! Still, a little dust, and “things lying around” should never keep you from opening your table to others.

[2] Douglas Webster, Table Grace: The Role of Hospitality in the Christian Life (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2011), p. 11.

16. The Family Table: Like a Tended Garden

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By rethinking the order of a day, the supper hour has come to symbolize an exceedingly meaningful threshold to me.  Watching darkness advance through the kitchen window, making a simple meal and joining with loved ones, guests, or church family around the table has come to embody the real gift of greeting the new day ahead.  Not only that, but my attitude does a miraculous about-face: preparing or sharing such a meal is anything but a chore.  It is filled with an energizing, urgent expectancy for God’s presence and grace.  In short, it is a delight to anticipate a night of walking together with God in the cool of the evening as we share a simple meal that is both the final act of this day and an unfolding prelude to tomorrow.

It is a subtle shift in thinking and attitude and practice.  Our evening meal continues to nourish us as we lie down to sleep, so that we may arise refreshed and ready because the food and practices of the night before are used by our body and soul, physically and spiritually, to heal, grow, strengthen, and prepare us for the rigors of tomorrow.  So what we practice at night is foundational for how we greet tomorrow.  The evening meal opens a new day, and initiates us into all the promises the evening hours, as new day, hold. 

Think of the possibilities if you turn each night, in your mind and in your practice into a new day.  When you do, the shared meal takes on new significance, as do the hours between 7:00 and 11:00 p.m., so often wasted away in front of a television or computer because of our perceived need to wind down.  I believe that viewing each evening as God-given time for entering a new day can change our perspective on the practices of prayer, fellowship, meals, and study.  Suddenly, being still becomes both a possible and desirable practice-for every member of the family. You may be frustrated at this point at what seems my naïveté- I can’t possibly understand the crazy mixed-up world that your family experiences from the after-school bell until bedtime.  I do understand though, and I am telling you that your life and that of your family need not be that frenzied.  Later posts will address some of the ways our modern culture interferes with any intention to have a shared evening meal with a walk-with-God kind of evening, and how we can actively address how we’ve allowed the world’s intrusions to compromise our peace, rest, fellowship, and restoration.

This Will Take Much Practice

So, coming to the table for both common and sacred meals is more important than we recognize as the way to create space in our lives for God and each other.  In a way, time at the table cultivates a particular way of life.  It is a practice for all ages and for the ages.

Cultivation is a gardening term.  So, in one way, we can think of the table as garden, to be tended much like Adam and Eve were called to do in Eden, with care and devotion and joy.  If shared meals at home and church were a tended garden, what would you want to cultivate there?  What would you plant, nurture, and grow there to nourish and sustain your faith life and that of your family?  Remember, Jesus asks, “What do you want?”

 

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

15. Evening: the New Day Starts Now

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The truth is, we find getting together at the table (even just getting the food into the house) a practical challenge in a today’s world. In Eden, God invited Adam and Eve to eat all sorts of plant life.  God fed them well.  There was, of course, that one forbidden food.  Now, forbidden foods have a way of not being good for us.  A diabetic must avoid sweets.  Walnuts or shrimp are life threatening for people with a nut or seafood allergy.  But, Adam and Eve, driven by what Griffiths calls the vice of curiosity, made a fatal mistake for all of Creation.[1]  The intimacy we had with God was broken, and not until Jesus came- eating and drinking, suffering, dying, rising, forgiving our sins, and inviting us to the feast of the Lamb-did we have any hope for restored relationship with God.

The table, then, at home and at church (table and Table) is the place of invitation, nourishment, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, learning, growing, and going.  It is as much about relationship building and disciple-making as it is about food.  In both instances, we come hungry for food and companionship with one another and with God.  In both instances, we are invited and fed by something or Someone who had to die for us to live.  God’s Word fills us.  In both instances, we leave with a co-mission to go and do likewise for our neighbor.  And, in both instances, we can stand with Jesus and proclaim “that we live by ‘every word that comes from the mouth of God,’ because that word has everything to do good things, with real nourishment for body and soul.  With the eyes of faith, Christ comes to be known as that word, incarnate, embodied, the Word of God, present then and now.  Christ is then the invitation, the way we have of re-creating that living relationship of intimacy with God that the original humans knew in the garden.”[2]

 Rethinking the Practice of a Shared Evening Meal

I believe we need to be at the table each night, fully present and alive to the invitation, provision, and gratitude a meal together involves, with a keen insight that compels us to keep families knit together and to regularly weave strangers into our midst. In our homes and churches, the time spent at the table, especially in the evening, is never wasted.  It slows time down, it reconnects us with those we love as well as with the guest, it provides a shared training ground for life’s challenges, and it generatively introduces the next generation to the saving ways and nourishment of a life in Christ.  Perhaps most importantly, I suggest that it affords us the time for opening a new day together because the rhythms and predictability and rightness of the Christian practices transform the way we view the world and time.

Dorothy Bass considers how attending to the practices shapes a day in her book Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time.[3]  This book unlocked for me an entirely new perspective on how a regular “day” could flow.  Our modern notion is that each day starts at sunrise and continues until bedtime. However, a careful study of the creation story in Genesis 1 literally flips a day on its head; God created, there was night, then day.  In practice, then, a new day actually begins in the evening.  Can you believe it?

After Adam and Eve sinned, God was strolling in the garden in the cool of the day looking for them.  Evening was a time for walking with God.   Imagine the implications of making it a regular faith practice to restructure your “day” so that a new day begins as you get home from work or school.  Then you can consider the place of the evening meal as a shared practice from the ancient Jewish custom of beginning the new day in the evening.

Gathering family, friends, and strangers around the table for supper might actually be considered a corporate event for greeting the new day.  In other words, the evening meal is a threshold we cross together, a natural transition from the work and school day that is behind us to the new day ahead, filled with all of God’s creative possibilities.  At the evening meal, we gather together to be nourished, but not just with food.  We prepare to spend the evening walking and resting with God as Adam and Eve did, putting aside a day in which we may have done or said something we should not have, or failed to do or say something we should have.   God intends for the day to be done.  And at the table, together, we transition to a new day in Christ that is immediately ahead of us.

I don’t know about you, but this was a revolutionary idea for me, that nighttime be less a time of recovery and more about active preparation.  For me, getting home from work was always about wrapping myself in the comforting insulation of house and family.  It was a way to hibernate and shield myself from the outside world, to recover from this day, and to literally shed this day’s responsibilities.  In doing so, getting a nightly meal on the table always seemed just one more obligation in a long day’s to-do list that included work, laundry, packing lunches, helping with homework, paying bills, and church committee meetings. Next time we will dig into this idea of new day like hungry teens into a pizza!

Julie A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT ALL THIS!  IT HELPS AS I W RITE AND REVISE 🙂

Featured Image credit:  K.Richardson, 2016

[1] Paul J. Griffiths, The Vice of Curiosity: An Essay on Intellectual Appetite (Kitchener, Ontario: Pandora Press, 2006). In this short treatise, Griffiths discusses the darker nature of curiosity as a means to owning and controlling knowledge for power, the same kind of appetite Adam and Eve gave into.

[2] Cathy C. Campbell, Stations of the Banquet (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2003), p. 13.

[3] Dorothy C. Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000).

14. A Significant Motif

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So, we can see that as a custom, the regular, planned, healthy shared meal at home is difficult to accomplish on a consistent basis without someone being intentional about it; the family supper and the church family supper are less common events in these days of compressed and multi-layered schedules.  But, if we consider the shared meal (especially the evening meal) as a practice, in particular a Christian practice, it then has the potential for both common and sacred relationships in the daily lives of believers.  So even though it may often seem like a lost practice, we should at least consider if it is an important practice in need of attention, intention, and restoration; it is time to explore why eating together matters.

People must eat, and every single thing we eat was once a living entity as plant or animal.  So there is always this built-in truth that for us to eat and live, something else must be sacrificed.  It is interesting that Jesus started his ministry not with fortifying food, but a fast.  In Matthew 4 Jesus fasts forty days in the wilderness.  Now, a forty-day fast will leave most humans at death’s door, famished, literally starving.  How fitting that Satan’s first tempting volley is to entice Jesus to eat bread.  While it feels both farcical and predictable that Satan would dare tempt the Bread of Life with earthly bread, we must remember that Satan knew that Jesus was both man and God, and appealed here to Jesus’ human need to eat. But, Jesus responds, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:4)[1]

There is a significant motif here that must not be missed.  Where do Christians come together, on a regular basis to be nourished, satisfied, and sustained?  It is at the Table.[2]  At this Table, we eat the bread that is Christ’s body, and drink the cup that is his blood.  Someone has died so we might live.  It is a central Christian practice for believers to share this meal, as it confirms and affirms our identity as God’s people living out our faith in a family of believers. In the early Church, Paul puts it this way: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16 NRSV).  Paul emphasizes the shared nature of Communion.  In a way, it is the family meal for the people of God.

In our sacred meals at church, we live out, again through shared practice, the saving grace of Jesus Christ.  Side by side around this sacred Table we are invited in our hunger to partake, in our wounded-ness to be healed, and in our loneliness to be a welcome part of the Body.  As one Body we look inward to Christ the Word, remember who he is, the sacrifice he became, and the grace with which he’s invited us, and we eat together. As we leave this Table, still side-by-side, we are forgiven, fed, and fortified to look outward beyond the Table, our eyes opened to see Christ in one another, and to take his gospel to a hungry, wounded, and lonely world.  Our shared meal at the Table “is specifically an act by which we are enabled to discern the world, to see and respond in a manner that is consistent with the reign of God.  Our vision for the world is renewed and we are oriented with the will and purposes of God…[it is this] Supper [that should] foster a capacity to see and act with courage, integrity, love, and justice in the world…”[3]

In a curious way, this suggests what should also happen at home. We meet around the common family table to be fed, a shared meal for our physical body, as well as sustenance for our social and familial needs to connect, and also, because for Christian families, to share God’s Word, that is, Christ the Bread of Life, is to grow together as a family in intimacy with God.  This is the true ‘tie that binds’ and strengthens us two and three times a day to do God’s work in a hurting world.  So, in daily meals at home and common meals at church we practice all that it means to consume both our daily bread and God’s Word in one another’s company.  In return, we benefit from all the shared meal has to offer-a safe place to BE- to belong, be heard, be nourished, be affirmed, be forgiven, and be taught.

In short, the table and the Table both share the common elements of a Christian practice: we are invited to partake of what only God can provide.  In gratitude we are nourished and formed into more godly people for work in God’s kingdom.  It is beautifully simple.  At least, it should be.

Let’s Eat!  Together!

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

[1] Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, where Moses reminds Israel of the manna God provided to quell their hunger in the desert that they might know that life depends on every word, in particular the Ten Commandments, that comes from God’s mouth.

[2] For the purposes of this book, Table refers to the sacred meal of the Lord’s Supper, while table connotes the place where any common meal is shared.

[3] Smith, G.T., A Holy Meal: The Lord’s Supper in the Life of the Church, p. 74.

11. What ARE You Sharing with Others?

~ This Side of the River ~ 2 Comments

Instead of moving into the next chapter on the shared meal, I thought it might be a good time for DESSERT: to REVIEW the notion and nature of the Christian practices, and give you some discussion questions to think and pray through.

Christians are in training, actively practicing particular behaviors that lead to a mature faith and Christlike attitude.  Training takes intention-we need to plan it into our hours and days.  It takes submission, obedience, and sacrifice.  More than anything else, our training takes time.  When our life is already too crowded with a full schedule, we must learn to discern where and how our time is being misspent-as individuals and as a family.  We don’t “make time” for the disciplines and practices; only God makes time.  Instead, we shift our attitude and priorities.  We whittle down here, plan better there.  But mostly, we give our time to the Lord and ask him to help us use our waking hours in ways that honor him.

We have seen how our individual attention to the spiritual disciplines and our shared participation in the Christian practices forms us in our faith into the holy living to which we are called.  They strengthen us to live in a world that is not our final home, to share Christ’s gospel with joy, and to serve God and neighbor out of a delighted obedience.  This is a humbling yet energizing way to live one’s life in sacrifice, thanksgiving, and hope.  Not a life that is all about “me” but one that is focused intentionally on the believing community of “we”.

The early Church that formed out of persecution and dispersal in the first century was marked by the things believers had and did in common.  In our hyper-individualized society, it is difficult for us to comprehend the necessity and power of such communal or shared practices.  Those historic Christian practices formed the essence of our shared practices today, particularly those of worship, prayer, and Holy Communion.  Still, other practices, like that of the shared meal among believers, are no longer a regular part of our life in common.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. The thesis of this chapter is that growing in your Christian faith requires sustained practice. List here some individual spiritual disciplines you do now to grow in your faith.  What do you like about each one?  What makes it hard to do them consistently?  What discipline do you NOT do now that you would like to incorporate into your daily walk?  Why?
  1. Discuss the nature of the spiritual disciplines and the Christian practices. How are they alike?  How are they different?
  1. Life often goes too fast, and we begin to feel as if we are running aimlessly on a treadmill going nowhere. How can attention to the disciplines and practices give you a new sense of purpose and direction and peace?
  1. If your life is simply too crazy-busy, take some moments to ask why. List here those things that take up most of your day/week.  Is there anything you and/or your family consistently do that could be put aside?  Done differently?  Ask yourself what you do, then ask yourself what you want, and consider how these answers differ.
  1. Have you ever given much thought to the shared Christian practices? Why is it important that you and your children are present in corporate activities like worship, prayer, Holy Communion, testimony, and confession-forgiveness-reconciliation?  What does it mean if you are routinely absent from these practices (either mentally or in your physical presence)?
  1. The next chapter will discuss the notion and nature of the shared meal as a distinctly Christian practice. Jot down your week’s typical meal patterns/schedule and with whom they are shared.

Please share your thoughts-it helps me as I continue to write the back chapters of this book to get a sense of what you think, what you do vs. what you wish for.  Thanks! You can click on SHARE to send to friends, and write in the Leave a Comment box below.  

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

(featured image credit:  High Tea in China.  K.Richardson. 2016)

10. The MEAT of a Christian Practice

~ This Side of the River ~ Leave a comment

In the last post, I introduced the idea that our customs are not the same thing as a practice, and promised to sketch out the common elements of a Christian practice.

Let’s start with the idea of customs.  As an example, meal customs are informative.  Why did Jesus recline at meals?  Why did the Jews wash their feet before entering the dining area?  Why did Jesus tell the story of the man who threw a banquet for friends who were no-shows?  As we will see in subsequent posts, the meals that Jesus attended were shaped by the influences of Greece and Rome, as well as Jewish tradition, and, as a result, diners’ behaviors were circumscribed by particular customs.  A fundamental question for us is how did Jesus’ first followers move from those religiously and socially-traditional meals into the practice of the first century church in which shared meals were an integral part of the worship experience?

If a Christian practice is an activity that is regular, shared with other believers, and designed to strengthen our common life together as Christians, then it might be helpful to try and sketch out what I believe are the common elements of a Christian practice on our way to showing how the shared meal qualifies as such a practice.

As noted, there are several distinct Christian practices which we do together in Christian community, including worship, prayer, fasting, Sabbath-keeping, stewardship, the Lord’s Supper, forgiveness, and, as I claim, the shared meal.  The common elements of these Christian practices are invitation, provision, gratitude, nourishment, and formation.

God invites us into a particular practice whether it is worship or prayer or a shared meal.  We are invited to enter the practice by entering into God’s and one another’s presence, entering into rest and restoration, and entering into community and communion with God and one another.  Thus, there is always a kind of prologue to each practice, in which we mindfully enter into the practice by divine invitation to do so.  From the perspective of a shared meal, we accept God’s invitation to take time out to eat and share and rest together at table and in God’s presence.

There is an element of mutually beneficial provision in each of the practices.  We are individually and corporately provided for with charitable care and concern out of God’s grace and abundance, paradoxically finding in each practice an opportunity to serve as a way of providing for others.  We commit to praying for others, we fast together in lament and petition for a particular provision, and, when we worship and share in the sacred meal of Holy Communion, we realize God’ provision for our own life through Jesus’s life, death, resurrection and coming consummation.  Moreover, we learn, with grace and humility, to accept others’ service to us despite our ever-undeserving state.  Most importantly, God provides this time that we may to set it aside for Himself, others, and for our in-common well-being.

Each of the Christian practices contains the attribute of gratitude.  There is nothing we practice together which does not raise up an unquenchable desire to thank God as the source of all things good, and praise him for being our Creator, Savior, Counselor and King.  When we share a meal, we say grace before eating because we are so grateful for God’s ongoing presence in and provision for our lives, and for the food before us that will fuel our service to the kingdom.

The Christian practices nourish us by both feeding and satisfying our physical, emotional, and spiritual hungers to the point that we, in turn, are energized and able to serve God and neighbor.  We often enter into a particular practice with a mindset that there must be “something in it for me.”  The reality, as is often the case in our Christian walk, is that God intends the practice to show his glory, and create in us as the body of Christ the deep love and sacrificial posture we need to love him and serve our neighbor.

Lastly, the Christian practices all share the element of formation.  The profoundly formative nature of the practices is nearly beyond comprehension.  The practices introduce us to the kingdom of God, then reinforce and direct our discipleship.  We begin to grasp that all the Christian practices are inter-related, and that the more we practice them simultaneously in community, the stronger the weave of our life in common together.  To put it another way, the practices of the first Christians give us a firm anchor in how to live out our common lives (Acts 2:44).  Moreover, the practices act as a compass to direct us-in Christian community– along a path of growth and maturity in our faith, what we often call our ongoing development in Christlikeness.  It is the daily practice of our shared prayer, worship, meals, Sabbath-keeping, and forgiveness that leads, over time, to human flourishing- for ourselves and those we serve- to God’s glory.

Finally, then, we can ask if, in the lives of Christians, the shared meal is simply a custom handed down from earlier generations, or if Christians should view it from a faith perspective as a Christian practice.  It has always been a universal custom for people to eat together, no matter what their belief systems entailed.  As far as family and church family are concerned, it seems to me that we treat the shared meal as custom, easily shaped by the culture and the times, when it may actually be meant to be approached as a central communal practice in the Christian home and in the Church.  The shared meal, like other Christian practices, embedded with invitation, provision, gratitude, nourishment, and formation has the deep potential to fortify and direct our individual and common lives in ways that might surprise us.  So, it is to the notion of shared meals as faith practice we wll turn next time.

Thanks for sharing this space!  We are steadily moving into the MEAT of the shared meal as Christian practice!  There is a button below to :LEAVE A COMMENT.  I would appreciate hearing what you think.

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

(Featured image photo credit:  K.Richardson. 2016)