Cooking with Zoe: Feeding a Crowd

Most of the time, I prefer my social get togethers to be small, intimate affairs where good rich conversation can take place. But some circumstances just call for feeding a big crowd all at once. For me, figuring out how to feed and seat a crowd is super stressful. But perhaps the stress heightens my awareness. I was in the midst of stressing out about feeding a crowd recently when I read the story in John about Jesus feeding the crowd. 


Something I don't remember being taught about this meal, is about when this miraculously satisfying meal took place. Check it out with me, the book of John in the gospels, chapter 6, verses 1-14. Look at verse 4, the festival of Passover was near. The reason there are huge numbers of people around is because they've come to celebrate Passover at the Temple. But instead of going to partake in Passover, (the ceremony that remembered God passing over the Jews who had marked their homes with lambs blood in Egypt, sparing their lives when death passed by) they gather around to be near Jesus. 


The notes in my bible summarize this scene by saying, "Jesus replaces the Passover." Certainly I'd studied before that Christ was the Passover Lamb in His death and resurrection, that ultimately allows God to Pass-Over us, seeing Christ's righteousness instead of our sinfulness. But well before His death, people were turning to Him functionally as the Messiah whether or not they consciously understood Him as the Lamb of God in this sense. 


And more specifically, not only does Jesus substitue the event of Passover, these people came to Jesus instead of coming to the Temple. Check out John 2:19-22. In these verses, Jesus makes a cryptic reference to Himself as the Temple. I love how one scholar I read put it lately, the Temple [and Jesus-as-Temple] was the place where Heaven (God's realm) and Earth (Man's realm) overlapped. In verse 22, it says that only after His resurrection did this click for the disciples, that Jesus was the Temple, the means of access to the presence of God. And yet, this crowd that Jesus feeds, they go to Jesus during the festival that called for them to go to the Temple. And with Jesus, they eat. 


wo. 


Did they get it? Did they get that they WERE going to the Temple when they followed Jesus? Or was God just illustrating something through them without them even knowing what they were doing? Probably the later. Either way, that's pretty cool. 


Ok, now skip ahead to the Last Supper where we are back at the Passover, sharing a meal with Jesus again. Jesus is breaking bread and passing the wine around talking about how His body was going to be broken for them and that they should continue to take this meal and remember Him. 

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, ²⁴ 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.” ²⁵ 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.” ²⁶ For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Again, a meal with Jesus at the time of the Passover. Again, like in John 2, Jesus is referencing his to-be-broken body, Jesus as the Temple. And we have this instruction to perpetuate this ceremony in the observance of communion. So how do we put this all together, Jesus-Passover-Temple-Communion? 

For modern day Christians, the Temple equivalent is the church building. And for some long-time christians, or those simply walking in christian culture, the building can start to feel hollow. Maybe this was also true for Jews when Jesus stepped in. They'd been going through a great deal of trouble to construct this temple, and yet something was missing . . .


The five thousand diners probably didn't get it, but in choosing to gather with Jesus, they participated in Jesus becoming the Passover and in Jesus being the Temple. Jesus demonstrates that He is the source of true sustenance (John 6:26 "I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves") at the same time as He is becoming the place of true worship, and true access to God. And when the disciples participated in the Lord's Supper, they too partake in Jesus as Passover and proclaim Jesus as the true Sacrificial Lamb. 

So then when we participate in Communion, what is it we are doing? When we authentically participate in communion, whether or not we recognize the significance, we are a) loving one another, b) loving God, and c) glorifying Christ as the means of our access to God and true love of one another. 


We are joining with the saints before, the five thousand diners, the disciples, and the people in the seats around us on that given Sunday to worship God, to enjoy direct access to God, to accept Jesus as the sacrifice for our sins, and to realize true love. Most truly in Communion we become the Body of Christ, the Church. 

Church is not a temple building, because Jesus is the Temple. Church is not a religious ceremony, because being with Jesus has replaced the Passover. Church is not keeping our gifts to ourselves, because when a little boy shares his food, everyone eats. And when Jesus shares the food that is the sacrifice of His Body, everyone's truest hunger is satisfied. 

Church is not an individualistic spiritual experience*, because Communion, remembering Jesus, is "com" = with, together, "unus" = oneness, union; united together. It is in this togetherness, reconciled with each other that we are able to come together reconciled with God. 

Church is a group eating together. Church is Jesus satisfying the needs of a crowd. Church is where we do communion. 


Church is where we do love.


And when we do love, when we rightly do church, we are loving God, we are bringing Him glory.

Matthew 22:34-40

"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" And [Jesus] said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it: 'You shall love you neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."

Together, remembering Christ; Together, with Christ; 
Together, with all the saints beside and before, we are the Church. 

*a small intimate meal, if you will; though in Christianity we certainly have space for private intimate times with God; that's just not Church

Cooking with Zoe: A Good Meal

"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." 

~John 15:9, 12

I remember. 
I was a little girl, legs bare under my Sunday dress after ripping off tights that made my skin itch, running bare foot along rows of black leather cushions on fold out chairs linked by metal hooks on either side. Chasing or being chased by my friends, maybe Joy, maybe Jennifer, Allison or Melissa, we giggled and squealed up and down those ailes. From the rings on the back of chairs, underneath the seats, strewn hither and thither on the carpet, I would collect those little plastic cups, gather them up into heaping stacks. I would bring them home and stash them in the window seat in my room. Running my finger around that small little rim, round and round. I collected and collected a mountain of cups, always looking for an opportunity to put them to another use, not willing to believe they were just trash, certain they were treasures worth being repurposed. 
Abide in my love. 

I remember.
A dark gym, music blaring over a stereo, people milling about, catching up, laughing, hands patting on backs. Band members breaking down equipment, congregants folding up chairs, children running around underfoot. Between trips from the rows of chairs dwindling down to the stacked chairs building up, I would dodge to the table with the left over bread and wine. Such good, fresh, bread. Over and over, I snatch just one more bite.
Abide in my love.

I remember.
I was one nervous WASP amongst many brown, Sri Lankan catholics. I knew full well that to take participate, one needed to be catholic, which I never have been. So in attempts to juggle multiple layers of cultural sensitivity, I sat still and quiet, trying not to look too awkward, as my host family rose and proceeded forward. But my host mother turned around to me with a reprimanding smile, "We are all one. Come. Break bread with us."
Abide in my love. 

I remember.
Just barely. So much a daze from the whirl of a day all in white. Eyes locked on my groom, a crowd of people seated behind us, as our pastor says, "take, drink, eat." We begin, our first taste of food and drink as one, in the food and drink that binds.
Abide in my love.

I remember.
Eyes free to roam around that theater, as heads were bowed in contemplation. There is the one who bore his soul to us this week, there is the one who asked us to a meal, there is the one we knew before he was born, the one whose hand I grasped, the one I do not know, the one who makes me laugh, the one who makes me think, the one that is hard to love, the one whose music makes me smile. "His body. Broken for you." One by one they approach, our eyes lock, I am filled with love for them, I praise God for them.
Abide in my love. 

I remember.
He took. He thanked. He broke. He gave. He said, "This is My body, which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me." (Matthew 26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24)
Abide in my love. 

I remember.
That night He would be betrayed. "This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." A new passing over. The sign and seal of the sacrificial lamb is that we share together in His death, that we love one another, that we are united in the covenant that is the promise of His and our coming new life.
Abide in my love. 

But I did not realize. I did not remember.

He did not drink with them. He poured out the drink, to be divided among them. He did not drink. "I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes" (Luke 22:17-20).

We remember, that we might bear the fruit of the vine, the fruit of love, the cup that he will drink when he comes again in glory. We abide in Him, He abides in us. We are growing for a feast, a sweetest drink. This communion, this life together, this love.

I remember. 
He is the vine, we are the branches. (John 15) Abide in Him, together.
Abide in His love.

--
Dear Lobsters, on this Good Friday, the remembrance of the first communion meal, would you share with me some of your significant experiences with communion?