“Ever since Jesus Christ sat
at table with his disciples, the community at the table of Christ’s
congregation has been blessed by his presence…The Scriptures speak of three
kinds of community at the table that Jesus keeps with his own: the daily
breaking of bread together at meals, the breaking of bread together at the
Lord’s Supper, and the final breaking of bread together in the reign of God.
But in all three, the one thing that counts is that “their eyes were opened and
they recognized him.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life
Together, Fortress Press, 2015 (Reader’s Edition), page 46.
“When He had reclined at the
table with them, He took the bread and blessed it, and breaking it, He began
giving it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him; and He
vanished from their sight…[after they returned to Jerusalem] They began to
related their experiences on the road and how He was recognized by them in the
breaking of the bread,” (Luke 24:31, 35).
“Day by day continuing with
one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were
taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart,” (Acts 2:46).
Luke, with a physician’s eye
for detail, perhaps pondered the similarity of what he wrote in Chapter 24 of
his Gospel and Chapter 2 of Acts. Not only is Jesus Christ present in the
institution and continuance of the Last Supper in the Upper Room (Luke
22:1-23), but He is also present on the road to Emmaus as well as in those sharing
life together in Acts. Furthermore,
since Luke was a companion of Paul’s, he may well have considered Paul’s
teaching, “Is not the cup of blessing which we bless communion in the blood of
Christ? Is not the bread which we break communion in the body of Christ? Since
there is one loaf, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one
bread,” (1 Cor. 10:16 – 17).
God’s people are meant to eat
together. When we eat together we love it; we love the time together, we love
the food around which we gather, we love the conversation, we love getting to
know each other, we love trying dishes from other families, we love the
laughter – when we eat together we experience life together. One wonders why we don’t eat together more often,
why we don’t do it as a way of life.
When we eat together we
testify that we are the people of God, the flock which Jesus Christ has
purchased by His blood. When we eat together we announce by our actions that we
are family, that we share a common life in Jesus Christ. When we eat together
we make time for one another and in making time for one another we declare that
our brothers are sisters are important to us, important enough to take time to
be with them, important enough to place them above other demands of life, to
place them above the demands and expectations and callings of the world. When
we gather around a table for a meal we not only partake of the meal, we partake
of Christ and of one another and we partake in expectation of the Marriage
Supper of the Lamb. There is the cacophony of the world, and then there is the
melody and harmony of the Kingdom of God – when we gather together with our
feet under the King’s table we live in unison with God’s Kingdom and the Kingdom
of His Christ, rejecting the world’s chaos, noise, demands, facades, and false
promises.
Life
together in Christ is implicitly a rejection of life joined to the
present age, the present world order. The present age, which is passing away,
says, “Live this way!” Life together
in Christ says, “No, do not live that way, live in this Way, live together in
Christ as one bread, as one body.”
In baptism we explicitly
reject the way of the present age, we testify to our death with Christ and our
death to the present age; in coming up from the waters of baptism we declare
our joint resurrection with Christ and our deliverance from the present age.
Just as in drinking from the cup of koinonia we drink not just individually but
collectively, so our individual baptism is joined to the baptisms of all saints
in all times so that we partake of the one great baptism of death and
resurrection, that of Jesus Christ. We are all passing through the Red Sea in
Jesus Christ – and if we could see time from eternity we would see not myriad
individual crossings of the Red Sea from bondage to redemption, but rather one
great people of God in Christ crossing together in Christ, one great multitude
which no man can number translated from darkness into the light and life of
Jesus Christ.
Such as we are in Christ, so
should we live.
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