Title: The
Lord’s Table
Subtitle: Rethinking
earliest Christianity’s center around the banquet table
Author:
Christopher Travis Haun for http://rethinker.net/ekklesia
Update: September
2008
Copyright: This
rethink may be distributed or reproduced freely so long as no changes are made
and no sale is made.
Feedback: Please
feel free to send any feedback on this rethink by email to
cthaun[at]rethinker[dot]net
Riddle:
If the
central object
in a Roman
Catholic Church
is
the
[sacrificial] Altar . . .
and if the
central object
in a
Protestant church
is
a Pulpit…
. . . what
was the central visible object
in the first
century churches?
(Imagine...
Think... Recall... Give up?)
Answer:
According to
history and archaeology, the central object which we would see most of the
first century house churches centered around seems to be a banquet table
Okay,
okay. So it’s not a picture of a first
century Roman or Jewish banquet table.
But it’s the best I could do for now with the help of
images.google.com. It makes my point
well with a modern flare.
Here below is
a picture which may resemble much more closely the table-based assembly of the
first century Passover Seder, the Last Supper, and the Lord’s Supper:
Thesis:
In my attempts to rethink what the
churches have become and what they once were, one of the most outstanding,
revolutionary, world-rocking facts that has been slowly revolutionizing my
conception of the local church is that the banquet table was probably the
central physical object their meetings revolved around.
Assuming church assemblies were
generally table-based, perhaps there are profound lessons to be pondered and
recovered. Changing the architecture of
the local church from an active-passive, pulpit-audience relationship to a
table changes arguably everything.
I am not suggesting that merely
having the saints assemble around a table is any guarantee that all problems
will be solved and the modern churches can once again experience the same
fellowship and benefits as the first-century church. However, re-architecting the local church
meeting to more resemble the first-century church architecture could be a
crucial step in the right direction.
Paradigms and Precedents:
The Jerusalem church…
(Acts2)
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to
the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe,
and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the
believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their
possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet
together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and
ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and
enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily
those who were being saved. . .
(Acts4)
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his
possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power
the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and
much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from
time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from
the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as
he had need.
Historically, the first localized manifestation of the church was in
Jerusalem. Having the greatest advantage
of apostolic leadership, they set the precedent. The believers were a combination of
Palestinian Jews and Hellenistic Jews.
They didn’t use the phrase “going to church.” They were the church. The question is what this church did when
they met together. They didn’t “go to
church.” They didn’t have a church
building that they went to on Sunday mornings.
Instead they met every day in the large public venue of the temple
courts and/or in private homes where bread was broken. They met in the rented upper room that the
Last Supper had taken place in. Their
time together, as a local manifestation of the church, was devoted to (1) hearing-understanding-applying
the teaching the Apostles passed onto them from the Lord Jesus and from the
Spirit who was “guiding them into all truth;” (2) fellowship meals, prayer, and
meeting one another’s’ physical needs.
There is some debate about whether “breaking of bread” refers
specifically to the memorial practice known as “the Lord’s Supper” or if it
refers to a communal meal, fellowship meal, love feast. It is my opinion that it probably refers to
both. Without blurring the lines so far
as to make the Love Feast and the Lord’s Supper identical to one another, I
would connect them intimately and recommend that the Lord’s Supper memorial
feast flowed naturally out of the Love Feast.
It would probably have been strange to the earliest Christians to have
one without the other. My main reason
for this recommendation is based on my understanding of the way the Passover
Seder of the Hebrews ties the fellowship meal with meaningful, symbol-rich
rituals meant to help the people never forget the redemption God wrought for
them. The connection between the
Passover Seder to the early Jewish Church is obvious. The Last Supper which our Lord had with his
twelve was a Passover Seder and it was modified into the memorial practice of
the Lord’s Supper—arguably the center of the early church life.
The Church in Troas
Acts
20 - On the first day
of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people
and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight.
There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were
meeting. Seated in a window was a young man named
Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he
was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up
dead. Paul went
down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. "Don't
be alarmed," he said. "He's alive!" Then
he went upstairs again and broke
bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. The people took the young man home alive and were greatly
comforted.
In Troas the local
manifestation of the Church had the privilege of hearing an Apostle. Paul, the Apostle, and these people wanted to
maximize the use of their time. Instead
of meeting on a Sunday morning they seem to have met in a private home. The home may have belonged to a wealthy
household since the church met on the third story of a large home. I find it fascinating that we do not see the
phrase, “On Sunday morning they went to church.” No: on the first day of the week (the day
the Lord had been raised) they came together to… to what? They came together to break bread. They came together as a church to have a
common meal together (and probably to celebrate the Lord’s Supper
together). Part of this meeting involved
listening to Paul talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. Paul seems to have talked all day and all
night, pausing only to heal and eat.
This church in Troas has a close resemblance to the Church in
Jerusalem. They met together to eat and
to devote themselves to the apostolic teaching.
The
Church in Corinth
I have written you in my letter not to associate with immoral
people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the
greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this
world. But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who
calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a
slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. What business is it of mine to
judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. "Expel the wicked man from
among you."
Is
not the cup of
thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of
Christ? And is not the
bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we,
who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf... Consider the people of Israel: Do
not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? … the sacrifices of pagans are offered
to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons.
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have
a part in both the Lord's
table and the table of demons.
… your meetings … when you come together as a church…When
you come together, it is… the Lord's Supper you eat…For I received from
the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was
betrayed, took bread,
and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body,
which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This
cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in
remembrance of me." For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim
the Lord's death until he comes. Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord
in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of
the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.
For anyone who eats and
drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment
on himself…So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other.
The
letters of the Apostle Paul to the believers in Corinth are some of the
earliest writings of the New Testament collection. We see a glimpse of one of the very earliest
churches in action. The fellowship meal
played a central part of their life as a church. In the fifth chapter they were not
discouraged from eating with the nonbelievers.
They were encouraged, however, to not allow a person who claimed to be a
believer (“a brother”), who was guilty of some habitual sin, and who refused
repentance from the sin to enjoy fellowship around the table with the other
believers.
In
the tenth chapter we see a glimpse into the sharing of the cup of wine and the
sharing of a single loaf of bread as being important to this community. The principles involved in eating and drinking
the Lord’s Supper at the Lord’s Table are compared with the principles of the
Jews eating lambs sacrificed at the temple altar and compared with the food
offerings made by the pagans to their gods.
The language and concepts are difficult for our 21st century
English minds. Attempting to not get
inundated by the minutia, the main point here, I think, is that when the
believers participated in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper at the Lord’s
Table, they were “having a part” (a Hebraism suggesting fellowship, membership,
belonging, union, a “communion”) with the Lord Jesus and with one another.
In
the eleventh chapter, there is more than ample room for suspecting that the
central purpose of the church as it assembles (“come together as a church”) is
to eat the Lord’s supper. This chapter
doesn’t force this conclusion but it definitely lends its self this way,
doesn’t it? Three times in this chapter
we see the phrase “come together” (synerxomai). Whereas we moderns in the English tradition
tend to say, “we go to church,” it seems Paul may have preferred the phrase,
“to come together as a church.” He
writes as if the connection between coming together as a church and eating a
real meal (not a snack but a meal, a diepnon)
are totally natural.
Galatians
Galatians
2 gives an interesting glimpse of how the Apostles and the believers of
first-century Antioch used to practice church life. When Peter visit the Gentile church in Syrian
Antioch, a rebuke was needed because his eating practices had changed.
When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed
him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. 12Before certain
men came from James, he
used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw
back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who
belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy,
so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. When I saw that they were not acting
in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them
all, "You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How
is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? We who are Jews
by birth and not 'Gentile sinners' know that a man is not justified by
observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith
in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by
observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified. If,
while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves
are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! If I
rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker. For through the law I
died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ
and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I
live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not
set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the
law, Christ died for nothing!"
I
suggest that this adds to the idea that to visit a church in the first century
was to sit at a table with them and eat with them. Some nuance of the hypocrisy of Peter and
Barnabas not eating with the Gentile believers transcended hypocrisy. Their behavior was contrary to the gospel its
self: The fact that both Jews and
Gentiles are justified by faith rather than by the observance of Mosaic Law
(which forbade Jews to eat with non Kosher Gentiles) means that Jews should eat
with Gentiles when they “do church” together.
Peter
The
warning in 2nd Peter 3 about false teachers in the Church suggests a
glimpse that normal church life involves feasting with one another.
.
. . there will be false teachers among
you. . . They are blots and blemishes,
reveling in their pleasures while
they feast with you.
Again,
part of the normative life of the first generation Christians involved feasting
together.
Jude
writes something which echoes Peter perfectly:
For certain men whose condemnation
was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless
men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny
Jesus Christ our only sovereign and Lord… these dreamers pollute their own
bodies, reject authority and slander celestial beings. …
These men are blemishes at your
love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who
feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind;
autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead.
Although Jude was not an Apostle,
it is probably safe to assume that he had close association with many of the
Apostles and had some leadership role in the earliest church. He writes to a church to warn them about
dangerous teachers-leaders. In the
process he makes the connection seem quite natural between the life of the
early church and their “love feasts”—their communal meals.
The Didache
14:1-2. On the Lord’s own day gather together and break bread and give thanks
[eucharisthsate], having first confessed your sins so that your sacrifice may
be pure. But let no one who has a
quarrel with a companion join you until they have been reconciled, so that your
sacrifice may not be defiled. . .
9:1-10:2. Now concerning the
Eucharist, give thanks [eucharistias] as follows. First, concerning the cup: We give you thanks [eucharistoumen], our
Father, for the holy vine of David your servant. . . And concerning the broken
bread: We give you thanks [eucharistoumen],
our Father. . . but let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist [eucharistias] except
those who have been baptized into the name of the Lord. . . And after you have had enough,
we give thanks [eucharistasate] follows:
We give you thanks [eucharistoumen], Holy Father, . . .
These excerpts from the
Didache are taken from: Lightfoot, Harmer, and Holmes. The Apostolic Fathers; Greek Texts and English Translations of Their
Writings. Baker Book House. 1992.
p.247, “The Didache may have been put into
its present form as late as 150, though a date considerably closer to the end
of the first century seems more probable.
The materials from which it was composed, however, reflect the state of
the church at an even earlier time. . . suggests A.D. 70, and he is not likely
to be off by more than a decade in either direction.”
p.191
The “love feast” (lit agape; cf. Jude 12) or “fellowship meal” was a
congregational meal which (almost certainly) included the celebration of the
Eucharist at some point cf. I Cor. II:17-34).
The Last Supper Passover Seder (video)
What we call the "Last Supper" was a Passover Seder where Jesus and his disciples ate the Passover feast around a low table. It was also at this table that the "upper room discourse" because the banquet was held in a rented upper room of a large house. The first church met in that same upper room. The first church, the apostolic church, the original church met in a banquet room of a large house. No steeple, no altar, no pulpit, no stage, no auditorium, no choir loft, no pews, no candles, no stained glass. Perhaps just a banquet table, oil lamps, good food and some of the most serious talk that has ever been uttered.
2nd
Century Roman house church (video)
This re-enactment of an early roman church
properly sets the context in a large home with a large banquet area. It does a great job of showing how the
fellowship meal was one of the core manifestations of early Christian unity,
equality, joy, unity, love and sharing.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/congregations.html
L.
Michael White:
Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University
of Texas at Austin.
What kinds of people belong to these early
congregations? Who signs up?
Paul's congregations are typically based in
individual homes. We call those "house churches" these days. They
didn't have church buildings. There probably weren't that many synagogue buildings that one could
recognize. Even Jewish communities typically began in homes as well, and in
these home congregations or house churches we should imagine a mix of people
from across the social spectrum of any Greek city. There's the owner of the
house, a kind of wealthy patron. It might be someone like Stephanus or Phoebe.
Also the members of their household, family members as well as household slaves
and even their clients if they were in a artisan guild. Say tent makers or
merchants of some sort. We might typically expect that the household would
include not only the immediate family and others around them but even the
clients and business partners.... Paul seems to have recognized the opportunity
that these house church congregations afforded for getting into the networks of
individual relationships that afford to him access to many different people
within the Greek city.
What do these people do when they get to him?
The
worship of an early Christian house church probably centered around the dinner
table. They don't necessarily all sit facing forward like in a church building
that we think of today but rather they're in someone's dining room and the
center of their activity really is the fellowship meal or the communal meal.
The term communion actually comes from this experience of the dining
fellowship.... We need to remember that dining is one of the hallmarks of early
Christian practice almost from the very beginning. All the gospel traditions
tend to portray Jesus at the dinner table as a very important part of his
activity. Paul's
confrontation with Peter at Antioch is over dining, and when we look at the
context of the letters, especially First Corinthians, the role of dining in
fellowship is central to all of their religious understanding and practices.
We also know that all other aspects of
worship that we think of as going with early Christian practice probably
happened around the dinner table as well. Paul refers to one person having a
song and another person bringing a prayer. Everyone is contributing to the
banquet whether it's in the form of food or in the form of their piety and
worship. They all bring it to the table.... Some of them bring prophecies or
charismatic gifts, and these too form some of the concerns that Paul deals with
in some of the letters. Sometimes charismatic gifts also produce tension within
Paul's communities. We
hear at times of Paul having to discipline people or suggest that the
congregation discipline people by kicking them out of the fellowship dinner
because he doesn't like the ethical behavior of some people. We hear of questions of dining
with pagans and going to dinner parties where the meat might not be of a
suitable sort, so there's all kinds of questions that come up in the context of
this house church environment in Paul's letters.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/wrestling.html
Shaye
I.D. Cohen:
Samuel Ungerleider Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious
Studies Brown University
When does the church actually kind of begin
to emerge as the church? When does this happen? What's the process by which it
happened?
The
word "church" is a tricky one. There is a Greek word, ecclesia, which
we translate in all modern translations as "the church," and this is
a total anachronism, because nobody in the Greek world would have had any
concept which was remotely similar to what we regard as a church. This is a
political term; an ecclesia is just a meeting, and preeminently the meeting of
the free citizens of a city which is constitutionally organized, so that its
citizens can vote on important things. And so when Paul writes to the meeting,
the ecclesia of God, of the Thessalonians, this is a very strange kind of notion
because ordinarily the town meeting of the Thessalonians is a political thing
which couldn't be more different from a group of a dozen or so people who have
converted to this community meeting in somebody's house. How does that get to
be a church, in our sense of the word? How do these little household meetings come
to be thought of as a universal church or the Catholic Church or the Orthodox
Church? This is something which happens over a long period of time and is
deeply part of that process by which this new movement works out its
relationship to the larger culture, as it institutionalizes itself, to use a
modern sociological bit of jargon, as every movement has to if it's going to
survive.
From Church Historian Phillip Schaff (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc2.v.ii.html)
The
condition and manners of the Christians in this age are most beautifully
described by the unknown author of the "Epistola ad Diognetum" in the
early part of the second century.
"The Christians are not distinguished from other men by
country, by language, nor by civil institutions. For they neither dwell in
cities by themselves, nor use a peculiar tongue, nor lead a singular mode of life.
They dwell in the Grecian or barbarian cities, as the case may be; they follow
the usage of the country in dress, food, and the other affairs of life. Yet
they present a wonderful and confessedly paradoxical conduct. They dwell in
their own native lands, but as strangers. They take part in all things as
citizens; and they suffer all things, as foreigners. Every foreign country is a
fatherland to them, and every native land is a foreign. They marry, like all
others; they have children; but they do not cast away their offspring. They have the table in common,
but not wives. They are in the flesh, but do not live after the flesh. They
live upon the earth, but are citizens of heaven. They obey the existing laws,
and excel the laws by their lives. They love all, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown, and
yet they are condemned. They are killed and are made alive. They are poor and
make many rich. They lack all things, and in all things abound. They are
reproached, and glory in their reproaches. They are calumniated, and are
justified. They are cursed, and they bless. They receive scorn, and they give
honor. They do good, and are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they
rejoice, as being made alive. By the Jews they are attacked as aliens, and by
the Greeks persecuted; and the cause of the enmity their enemies cannot tell.
In short, what the soul is in the body, the Christians are in the world. The
soul is diffused through all the members of the body, and the Christians are
spread through the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but it is
not of the body; so the Christians dwell in the world, but are not of the
world. The soul, invisible, keeps watch in the visible body; so also the
Christians are seen to live in the world, but their piety is invisible. The
flesh hates and wars against the soul, suffering no wrong from it, but because
it resists fleshly pleasures; and the world hates the Christians with no
reason, but that they resist its pleasures. The soul loves the flesh and
members, by which it is hated; so the Christians love their haters. The soul is
inclosed in the body, but holds the body together; so the Christians are
detained in the world as in a prison; but they contain the world. Immortal, the
soul dwells in the mortal body; so the Christians dwell in the corruptible, but
look for incorruption in heaven. The soul is the better for restriction in food
and drink; and the Christians increase, though daily punished. This lot God has
assigned to the Christians in the world; and it cannot be taken from
them."
3rd-Century
(?) The
Megiddo Church
The recent archaeological discovery of a fairly
early (third century?) church building is exciting to me because it seems to be
a transitional fossil between the first generation house churches and the
fourth century dedicated church building/temple. This church building does not
have the Temple-like basilica style which characterized churches after Roman
Emperor Constantine took measures to try to ensure the protection of the
powerful god of the Christians. In the "Armageddon church"
there is a tile mosaic which indicates that there was a table dedicated to Jesus
(echoes of “the Lord’s table”) and which was central to the banquet room.
Quote:
"Researchers
of Christianity argue about the origin of the Eucharist. Many of them think that the
early Christians did not perform the Mass ceremony as it is preformed today. It
is thought that they ate a communally meal. The early Christians were few, so
perhaps it comes as no surprise that they could gather around a single table.
This communally meal, in which bread and wine were served to the members
sitting around the table, is considered the origin of the Mass ceremony. Later
the table became the altar. This is the significance of the
Megiddo prison finding which is considered to be one of the most ancient
churches yet to be found. For the first time archeological evidence mentions a
table and not an Altar to be used for the communion rite. This may be the
origin of the rite, or a transition stage before the table has been transformed
to an Altar.
Again, the significance of
the finding of the Megiddo prison is that for the first time there is an
objective mention of a table and not an Altar, which sheds light on the origin
of the Altar in Christianity. Gathered around the table, the early Christians
sat and ate the communally meal, which may be the origin of the Communion
ceremony. Archaeological evidence that sheds light on the origin of the
Altar and the communion rite, found in a maximum security prison- well you've
got yourself another episode of Indiana Jones.. . . ... his team found a mosaic floor
showing not only a medallion with two fish but also three
inscriptions. The first inscription reads the names of four women and
calls upon us to "remember" them. Unfortunately, we don't know (for
sure) who they were. They could very well have been members of the local community.
The second inscription was made (or commissioned) by a woman named
Akeptous. She has "offered a table", it says, "as a remembrance,
to (the) God Jesus Christ". It is pretty likely that the so-called table
was in use as the place where the ritual Last Supper (or Eucharist) took
place. The third inscription was
commissioned by an alleged Roman army officer named Gaianos, also known as
Porphyri(o)s, who had donated the mosaic floor. The name of the mosaicist was
Brouti(o)s.”
[Photo of the mosaic over which the table used to
stand]
Observation
from “the corporate world”
When
those in command and those under command inside of a modern corporation need to
communicate with one another, we usually fill a conference room and occupy a
conference table. This is how we do it
at my company anyway. It looks a bit
like this:
People
who lead say what they think needs to be said and typically ask for
feedback. Was what was understood
clearly understood? Does anyone have any
questions about the meaning or the implementation of the plan? Those who are
“down-level” take notes, ask questions, and sometimes offer recommendations,
alternatives, nuances. My experience in
this world has increased my conviction that the larger the audience, the more
effective communication breaks down.
When my team meets with my manager(s) we find that meeting in a private
conference room with the intimacy that a table-based setting affords allows for
two-way communication, greater understanding, opportunity for confusion and objections
to be addressed. And we often do all
this while enjoying food with one another.
It naturally increases our unity and sense of team spirit. It helps the underlings become a part of it
all. We’re not just slaves of the
master. We’re a team. This helps us to be involved and feel
involved.
Of
course large corporations also use large-venue meetings with monologues from a
leader to an audience. But isn’t it
interesting that on the lowest levels of service they try to “bring it home” in
a small venue conference room? Perhaps
there are lessons to be learned here. If
the church wants to be a corporation where the majority of its sheep are little
more than passive listeners (who may be falling asleep or letting their minds
wander during the monologue) then perhaps the lecturer-audience relationship is
a fine architecture to work with. But
the leaders of a local church truly wish for the flock to become something
other than passive listeners, perhaps there is more need to return to the
table, return to the intimate venue, return to stimulating dialogue (rather
than just boring monologue), and return to a team-like structure.
1
John 1
1That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it,