Communal Love Feast

Christianity is about community, and Community is about fellowship.

What better way to fellowship than gathering together to share a meal.

Meals with Jesus:

Luke 4:38-39 Healed Simons Mother-in-law while dinning with them. Luke 7:24-35 Ushering in the Kingdom of God which included sinner (Gentiles) Luke 7:36-50 Woman anointed Jesus feet at a meal setting Luke 9:10-17 5 Loaves and 2 fish revealing His divine power Luke 10:38-42 Mary and Martha

Explain the Didache The longest section of the Didache deals with the followers of Jesus gathering together and eating. We call it “the Eucharist” or “Communion”

View as a title of an event But should be viewed as an action of the community Meals gave the early Christians their sense of unity with one another and with Christ. In the meal they celebrated who they were, rejoiced in the fact that the Father loved them, and by having a meal as their basic form of gathering stressed Jesus’ view of God as the loving Father who was beckoning them to the heavenly banquet. Now if we want to see how they imagined these meals together we need to look at how they remembered Jesus as the one who called people to his table and joined the tables of others, and there celebrated the Father’s love. Christians have had a practice of only thinking about the Last Supper in the Synoptics (Mark 14:17–25; Matt. 26:20–29; Luke 22:14–38) as having relevance to the Eucharist, but if we want to understand the significance of the meal of the Christians (rather than one interpretation of it that later became dominant), then we need to recall just how often we see Jesus involved in dining with his disciples.

The Didache gave the person who committed it to memory the basic forms for prayers needed for the Christian meal. It does not give a narrator’s description such as we might get if there had been someone at such a meal acting as a reporter. Nor does it give a normative format for the meal as if this was the one-and-only way to have such a meal.

Unfortunately, what we have done over the centuries is narrowed down this celebratory ritualist practice to a wafer and thimble of juice.

Communion:

You have bread placed on your table.

Each table leader is going to take the bread, open it and take a piece and pass it off to the person beside them.

Read:

You have a bottle of Juice at each table.

Each table leader will open the bottle and pour each person a cup of juice.

Read: