Feasting in the Kingdom

In one sense, the Bible is all about food and eating. This theme runs throughout Scripture, from the fatal bite in the Garden of Eden to the tree of life in the garden/city of the New Jerusalem (Rev 21–22). Meals play a prominent role in the history of salvation, including meals that mark the institution of covenants, sacrificial meals eaten in the presence of God in the tabernacle and temple, the Passover, and Jesus’ meals with sinners. When giving his disciples a commemorative ceremony that encapsulates the meaning of salvation, Jesus gave us a meal – the Lord’s Supper, Eucharist or Communion.

Some have criticized the Protestant tradition of forgetting the central nature of this meal. In writing my dissertation on Communion frequency in the Reformed tradition, I found that most branches of the Christian church have struggled to make the Eucharist a meal that everyone is regularly invited to, and participates in. Even in the Roman Catholic or Orthodox traditions, where the Eucharist is a central feature of worship, people have hesitated to attend this meal for various reasons.

In the wake of the liturgical renewal movements of the last century or so, the Lord’s Supper has been observed more frequently, and much valuable work has been done to try to reach an ecumenical consensus about the meaning and practice of Communion. What is sometimes overlooked is that this theologically charged ritual is a meal – involving food. Theologians have formerly argued strenuously about the metaphysics of this sacrament, while ignoring the fact that it is a meal. Theologians in recent decades have studied the sociological and eschatological aspects to the Eucharist as a meal as well. As a ritual meal, the Eucharist both defines and creates community; builds on the pervasive OT theme of God eating with his people; is partially fulfilled in Christ; looks forward to the wedding supper of the Lamb and shows us how the world will be in the consummation of all things. Enacting the eschatological feast here on earth, we eat and drink with Jesus, which helps to bring about what we were taught to pray: “Your will be done on earth, even as it is in heaven.”

According to Peter Leithart, this eschatological feasting aspect of the Eucharist shows us the “way things really ought to be.” (1) When we participate in the Eucharist, we are, in some way, enacting the kingdom. It is a foretaste of the wedding supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:6–9) and a partial fulfilment of the meals in the Old Covenant when the people “ate with God.” Abraham ate with the Lord (Gen 18). The elders of Israel ate in God’s presence on Sinai (Ex 24) as did the people of Israel in certain sacrifices in the tabernacle and the temple (Lev 7:11–38). Isaiah prophesies that all people will come and feast on God’s holy mountain:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples

a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,

of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. (25:6)

This connection between food and faith, sociology and eschatology goes back to the ancient church. The Didache, one of the earliest post-biblical Christian writings, puts it beautifully in its model prayer for the Eucharist: “Just as the bread broken was first scattered on the hills, then was gathered and became one, so let your Church be gathered from the ends of the earth into your kingdom, for yours is the glory and power through all ages.” The Eucharist unites people from various races, ethnicities, genders and cultural identities into the one loaf of the church. This theological reality lies behind Paul’s rebuke of the Corinthians (1 Cor 11:17–34). They were preserving the socioeconomic distinctions of their culture when practising the Lord’s Supper. Rich and poor were separated, the poor went hungry and the rich indulged themselves. Practising the Eucharist rightly should drive us to transcend economic and cultural divides as we pursue the tangible unity of the body of Christ.