The First Thing We Will Do

Over the holiday I gathered with some of my favorite people, my extended family, for a long weekend in Deep Creek, MD. Thanks to my mom, we’ve been doing this for several years now. I’ve always been very close with my brother and my sister and it is such a blessing that we all love the Lord. Each of us are married with three children, and the cousins also love spending quality time together. But we also have some different convictions about things. This becomes very apparent when we combine all our families in the same house and share one of the more meaningful feasts of the year together. Matt and I are Presbyterians, my brother-in-law and sister are associated with the Anglican church (ACNA), and my brother and his wife go to a non-denominational church. So you can imagine that we have some differing views about worship and some of the doctrines of the church. Since we are all passionate about our faith, these differences are certainly noticed. Along with this, we also have different ideas about food. All of us are passionate about health, and yet this is also manifest in different ways. There we were, one loving, thankful family, representing a gamut of nutritional and dining convictions. We have your strictly plant-based, as well as the organic campaigners, some with nut-allergies, the experiment to back off gluten, and your (a)typical mom who has free range chickens just because it’s kind of awesome. Mom came with the fresh, locally bought turkey ordered from the same dairy farm she gets her cream, butter, and coffee beans. Sometimes I get uncomfortable about all of our differences. Can we come together with our strong convictions and still truly enjoy one another’s company? How can we all feast together on Thanksgiving when we don’t even eat the same foods? Since we are all so vehement with the convictions that we hold, we certainly are not going to put them aside. There may even be some proselytizing going on, as well as some articulate reasons to defend our views. I had a wonderful time because I have one of the most awesome families around (speaking with a small bias here). I just enjoy being with some of the people who I love the most, who know more about me than most people, and love me anyway. We have a wonderful ability to move from serious, intelligent conversation, to silly outbursts of fun, to nunchuck lessons. And that’s just the adults. After Matt and I returned home and crashed for a minute, we saw an advertisement for a tropical vacation getaway. I immediately longed to be there, and felt a tinge of guilt that I am not content in my wonderful home. But I wondered if it was wrong to long for paradise. After all, that is what we are created for. That is what Adam lost, and what the second Adam has regained for his people. But for us it will be what Adam never did earn, the new heavens and the new earth in God’s expanded kingdom, serving him for eternity. That led to me thinking of the first thing we will do after Christ’s work of judgment. Throughout God’s Word we are encouraged by the marriage supper of the lamb, the great feast that we will have with our Groom on that day of consummation. “And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29). Isn’t it significant that the first event that we are promised to do on the new earth is a feast with Jesus and his bride? But we also see that many who thought they would eat with Jesus, who in fact ate in his presence, will not be invited. They will suffer terrible judgment.

Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. (Luke 13:27-28)

This all makes me look at my Thanksgiving meal in a proleptic way. While Christ’s bride will have the blessing of serving and worshipping our great Lord for eternity, it seems our first business is a feast of thanksgiving and celebration. We will be overwhelmed with gratitude for our great reward, the Bridegroom. There will be all kinds of us gathered together. And there will be no more tension, no anxiety over which foods to eat together. It will be a feast served up by Christ himself. The verses from Luke above are both encouragement and warning. I look forward to that great Day, but also am exhorted to hold fast to the truth. Doctrine is important. The teachings of the faith are important because the object of our faith is important. We want to feast with Jesus Christ. We want to recline at the table in the kingdom of God. In his book The Ongoing Feast, Arthur A. Just Jr. discusses how all Christian meals in the early church were “acts of table fellowship where Christ is present in one form or another to teach and eat with his people.” He goes on to say, “The table fellowship is itself an expression of the new age” (240). At my thanksgiving table, a bunch of sinners who love the Lord gathered to share in the blessings our God has lavished on us. In this act, we are actually looking forward to the great feast where Christ will call many from the east, west, north, and south to recline at his table.  Just quotes J. Jeremias, “The inclusion of sinners in the community of salvation, achieved in table-fellowship, is the most meaningful expression of the message of the redeeming love of God” (254). How does this affect your views of hospitality and Christian fellowship? Have you ever thought about meals with those in your church as proleptic? We know that the early Christians got themselves into some trouble during their love feasts. Part of the reason for their sinfulness was that they were not thinking of how the Christian love feast points to the great love feast that we will all enjoy together. Do we make that connection now? Do we even bother to eat together? Do we consider the presence of Christ at the table even now? Related articles: Proleptic Meals, The Cool Table, Eschatological Feasting