Reformed Wisdom

“With the current situation of the American church in  mind, we can say that frequent eating and drinking at the table will inoculate the church against the Gnosticism of modern Christianity (not to mention trendy spiritualisms) that would reduce religion to a private, inner, purely ‘spiritual’ experience; a church whose central religious rite includes baked goods is being trained in proper dominion over creation and will refuse resurgent nature worship in both its religious and political guises; a church that celebrates a feast of wine is being formed into a joyful community that contests the equation of Christian seriousness with prudishness; a church that celebrates the communal meal is bound into one Body and will resist the corrosive individualism of modern culture that has too often invaded the church; a church that shares bread at the Lord’s table is learning the virtues of generosity and humility; a church that proclaims the Lord’s sacrificial death in the Supper is exercising itself in self-sacrifice and becoming immune to the lure of self-fulfillment.  Not automatically, but in the context of teaching and a robust community life, the skills and virtues practiced at the Lord’s table will spill over to fill the whole church with a Eucharistic ethos.  In short, the Supper exercises the church in the protocols of life in the presence of God.  The Supper, then, is not ‘God’s flannel graph’ so much as ‘the church’s role play.’” – Peter J. Leithart, Blessed Are the Hungry:  Meditations on the Lord’s Supper, 185-186.