“Dinner’s ready!” is a familiar call heard in many households across America. When those words are heard, family members know that they are to drop whatever they are doing and come together for the family meal. Though family meals are becoming less and less common in our postmodern, fragmented, and harried society, traditionally they have been viewed as a symbol of togetherness and solidarity. As the well-known saying goes, “The family that eats together stays together.” All of us need to eat. But meals with others around a table play an important role in each of our lives. Meals are times when memories are created. Specific meals take place in conjunction with significant events—with various holidays, such as Christmas or Thanksgiving; birthdays that mark significant milestones in our lives; weddings and anniversaries, and even the passing of loved ones and close friends.
In both the Old and New Testaments, meals are at the heart of the story of redemption. The deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt is celebrated with a Passover meal. Following the exodus, God’s covenant with Israel is ratified when Moses and the other leaders of the Israelites feast in God’s presence on Mt. Sinai. “They saw God, and they ate and drank” (Ex 24:11). The prophet Isaiah describes the final day of salvation in terms of a great banquet, which God prepares for all of the nations of the world—a banquet of the richest food and the finest wine (Isa 25:6). During his ministry, Jesus regularly shares truths about the kingdom of God in the context of meals with his followers, social outcasts and those at the margins, and even his adversaries. He predicts his death during a final meal with his disciples. Following his resurrection, he then meets two of his disciples on the Road to Emmaus and reveals himself as the risen Christ while eating with them around the table (Lk 24:13-30). Finally, in the book of Revelation the apostle John describes human history as headed toward the “wedding supper of the Lamb,” when the great multitude will celebrate the coming of God’s reign in the new heaven and new earth (Rev 19:1-8; 21:1-4).
Why these many connections between meals and the biblical story? In their insightful book, Friendship at the Margins: Discovering Mutuality in Service and Mission (2010), Christopher Heuertz and Christine Pohl help to fill the gaps in our understanding by showing the importance of friendship as a Christian vocation. Eating a meal with others around a table is one of the most powerful demonstrations of mutuality and friendship. We tend to eat meals with those persons we like and with whom we have things in common. But shared meals also help to break down social boundaries and promote reconciliation between people. In Scripture, communal meals represent God’s presence. They are important times of healing and restoration. So, when our practices of communion (or Eucharist) are closely connected to our common meals, we catch glimpses into the nature of God’s kingdom.[1]
The association of shared meals with friendship, reconciliation, healing, and restoration is important for grasping the meaning of the gospel as well as the purpose of the church and its mission. Several times in Scripture, Abraham is described as being God’s friend (2 Chron 20:7; Isa 41:8; James 2:23). Abraham’s life is transformed by his faith in God. But the story of Abraham in Genesis links his election and blessing to keeping the way of the Lord “by doing righteousness and justice” (Gen 18:18-19). James is also clear that Abraham’s status as a “friend of God” involved a demonstration of saving faith through his works, which most certainly included the hospitality he showed to three strangers by welcoming them into his home and providing a meal (Jas 2:23-24; Gen 18:1-15).[2]
Jesus is the ultimate source and model of friendship, because he loves without limits or boundaries. When he eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners he is called their “friend” by his enemies—a description which is in no way intended to be complimentary (Lk 7:34). During the Last Supper with his disciples, which takes place in the Upper Room (Jn 13:1-17:26), Jesus calls his disciples friends rather than servants; and he defines friendship in terms of love (15:12-17). “Greater love has no one than this,” he explains, “than someone lays down his life for his friends.” Jesus’ linking of friendship with sacrificial love finds ultimate expression on the cross. This intimacy between Jesus and his disciples is most clearly demonstrated in the foot-washing ceremony (13:1-17), which is a “sacrament of friendship.” First, Jesus’ “laying down his robe” anticipates his “laying down his life” in friendship (13:4). Second, Jesus makes it clear in his exchange with Peter that one’s relationship with Jesus is dependent upon his or her willingness to accept his act of sacrificial love (13:8). Jesus’ disciples are therefore asked to both receive what Jesus offers and participate in his ultimate act of friendship. His modeling of true friendship means that if we really want to be called “friend” by Jesus we must also be willing to give ourselves freely in friendship without worrying who is on the receiving end of our love.[3] In the words of Heuertz and Pohl: "Jesus offers us friendship, and that gift shapes a surprisingly subversive missional paradigm. A grateful response to God’s gift of friendship involves offering that same gift to others—whether family or strangers, coworkers or children who live on the street. Offering and receiving friendship breaks down the barriers of “us” and “them” and opens up possibilities of healing and reconciliation."[4]
My purpose in writing this book largely grows out of my work as a home-based missionary—most recently with a team called the Marginal Mission Network, which is an arm of EFCA ReachGlobal in Europe. Although I am retired, I am still actively involved with this team, which has the goal of mobilizing the church to the margins and growing and inspiring the church from the margins. The Marginal Mission Network engages with people whom society tends to overlook and even denigrate—including persons with disabilities, the poor, immigrants, and other vulnerable people, such as trafficked persons, who are victims of injustice. The unfortunate reality is that the church often mimics society. Both covertly and overtly, the marginalized are often targets of an “us” versus “them” mindset which betrays our oneness in Christ and goes against the grain of what God is working to accomplish in the world. Even in our evangelism and efforts to help, the marginalized tend to be treated as objects or projects rather than fellow recipients of God’s friendship. True friendship is not possible when various people or people groups are considered to be “other” than us.
We tend to forget that Jesus identified himself with the marginalized and was himself marginalized. When Philip tracked down Nathanial and exclaimed that he had found the Messiah spoken of by Moses and the prophets and that he was “Jesus of Nazareth,” Nathanial asked rhetorically, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (Jn 1:1:45-46). This was a perfectly natural question to ask. After all, Nazareth was a poor, nondescript town, far removed from the centers of religious, political, or economic power and influence. Philip’s response is as transformative for us as it was for Nathanial and the other disciples: “Come and see.” Jesus healed the sick, lame, and the blind. He shared the table of friendship and fellowship with social outcasts, and he instructed his disciples to do the same. Seeing Jesus at the margins means identifying with the least of these. It involves experiencing his healing presence in places of weakness and vulnerability rather than in centers of religious, political, or economic power. This does not mean that God has a “preference for the poor.” Most certainly, God’s grace is for everyone. But one of the underlying themes of this book is that the embodied grace which we celebrate in the Lord’s Supper gravitates toward the most unlikely and unseen places in ways that run counter to our worldly preoccupation with wealth and power.[5] Two other writers, Kris Rocke and Joel Van Dyke, describe God’s creative work of grace in this way: “Grace is like water—it flows downhill and pools up in the lowest places.”[6]
Nowadays, in our Western culture, the meals that we share with family members, friends, or coworkers rarely have the depth of meaning that they had in the social world of Jesus’ day. When our practice of the Lord’s Supper is divorced from an awareness of its original cultural and historical context, it is therefore difficult for us to fully understand why Jesus chose a meal as the occasion to describe his ultimate sacrifice. Ironically, the Lord’s Table, which celebrates our common experience of God’s grace, is often a source of controversy and disagreement over how to interpret and practice it. While some of these disagreements over details such as the meaning of the elements are important, the real tragedy is that the Jesus meal itself has become a sign of division rather than our unity in Christ.[7] It is essential that we recover the Lord’s Supper as a community celebration. Most significantly, when we break the bread and drink the wine (or juice) together we are asserting the reality of the new creation in Christ, affirming the inclusiveness of God’s kingdom, and anticipating the day when God’s present and ongoing work of restoration, justice, and reconciliation will ultimately prevail. “The Supper,” then, is basically a condensed summary of the story of God’s redemption. Rightly understood, it embodies the radical countercultural nature of the gospel.
Meals are an essential part of our daily lives. This is why, in the Christian community, meals are a central symbol of God’s kingdom. Jesus gave the Last Supper to announce the coming of the kingdom through his death and resurrection. Our community meals are therefore connected to Jesus’ meal(s), just as the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist, remembers his ultimate sacrifice and anticipates the final festive banquet, which celebrates God’s healing presence through all of creation. When we pray, “Thy kingdom come” followed by “Give us each day our daily bread” (Luke 11:1-2), we are asking for the blessings of God’s future kingdom to be partially realized in the present. We are not only praying for our needs as symbolized in the bread. We are also praying for and with those in the wider Christian and human family who are in desperate need. As N. T. Wright reminds us, we cannot pray for God’s kingdom to come unless we ourselves are prepared to live this way.[8] God’s grand story of redemption has to motivate and inform our particular stories, both individually and corporately. This, I would suggest, is, in large part, what it means to proclaim, or “perform,” the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Cor 11:26).[9]
This book explores these and other concepts, which are rooted in Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples—and subsequently in the church’s practice of the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist. As the subtitle indicates, my focus is on the three interrelated themes of “new creation,” “hospitality,” and “hope” in Christ. These three themes comprise the “new covenant,” which is anticipated in the Old Testament and realized in the New Testament community through Jesus’ death and resurrection. This has significant implications for the life of the church.
(From the Preface to The Supper: New Creation, Hospitality, and Hope in Christ. Eugene OR: Wipf and Stock, 2019)
[1] Heuertz and Pohl, Friendship at the Margins, 80-83.
[2] See Jipp, Saved by Faith and Hospitality, 5-6.
[3] O’Day, “I Have Called You Friends,” 23-24.
[4] Heuertz and Pohl, Friendship at the Margins, 30.
[5] See Leong, Race and Place, 143-44.
[6] Rocke and Van Dyke, The Geography of Grace, 1
[7] See Wright, The Meal Jesus Gave Us, 39.
[8] Wright, The Lord and His Prayer, 13-33.
[9] As Michael Gorman points out, the “proclamation” of Christ’s death means that in both its life and preaching the church must reflect the cruciform love of the Lord. In this sense, the church embodies or “performs” the gospel. See Cruciformity, 234; and Apostle of the Crucified Lord, 269, 589.
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