Invited to the Feast
by Mark S. Giacobbe
I never did find out why he didn’t show up. I had invited Ahmad, my first local friend, over for dinner at the guesthouse I called home that summer. It was hot, and I was a lonely aid worker, new to Central Asia. Although I knew that invitations were sometimes made and accepted out of politeness in that culture, I thought I had made it clear to Ahmad that I meant it. By seven o’clock the cloth was laid out carefully on the guestroom floor, colorful seat cushions strewn about, with plates piled high with savory kabobs and rice, watermelon standing by for dessert. With everything in place, the elderly watchman and I sat down to wait for our guest. It was in vain: after an hour, with no mobile phones in those days to find out what had happened, we began the meal without him. When I tracked Ahmad down the next day and asked him why he hadn’t come, he only sheepishly replied “I’m very sorry.” To this day I don’t know why he didn’t show—was it a simple misunderstanding? Did he think I was bluffing? Did his family have concerns about him going to a foreigner’s home? Or was it something else entirely? All I knew is that it was a missed opportunity, a connection that might never come again.
We all intuitively sense the importance of shared meals. Whether family dinners, holiday feasts, breakfasts with parishioners, or dates with loved ones, there is something uniquely precious about breaking bread with other people made in God’s image. We all feel, at the best of these times, that there is something transcendent, even eschatological going on; that something from beyond is on the verge of breaking in to overwhelm us with piercing joy.
According to the Bible, this sense is no private fancy of our own. Shared meals feel important because they are important—because God designed them that way, as pointers to a reality that transcends the here-and-now. Although we can see this in many places throughout the Scriptures, one of the clearest is in Luke-Acts. Among the evangelists, Luke uniquely emphasizes table fellowship—eating and drinking together—with some profound implications for us today.
Before looking at Luke, however, we must first consider table fellowship in the Scriptures and other literature before the time of Christ. In the Hebrew Bible, table fellowship is particularly associated with David. We see this, for example, in the many meals David hosted (e.g., 2 Sam. 6:19; 9:1–7; 1 Chr. 12:39–40; 29:22a), and throughout the Davidic psalms (e.g., Ps. 22:26; 23:5; 41:9; 63:5). In the Prophets, promised restoration and re-creation is sometimes epitomized by abundance and feasting (see especially Isa. 25:6–8 and 55:1–5). Isaiah 55 explicitly links eschatological table fellowship to David: after an invitation to “Come to the waters…, come, buy and eat,” we are told that “I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David” (Isa. 55:1, 3). It is because of texts like these that, in the Second Temple period, the theme of eating and drinking became inextricably linked to a messianic figure who would arise in the end of days and feast with his people (see, e.g., 1 En. 62:12–16; 2 Bar. 29:1–8; 1QSa 2:11–22). This theme of eschatological feasting, with or without an explicit messianic figure, is often known as the messianic banquet.[1]
The theme of the messianic banquet, including the connection to David, is the background for the meal scenes in Luke-Acts. While all the Gospels feature scenes of eating and drinking, they are especially prominent in the third Gospel. In fact, the ten meal scenes in Luke are probably one of the organizing motifs of the book.[2] In them, we see Jesus eating and drinking with a wide assortment of people—with his disciples (10:38–42; 24:13–35, 41–43), with a new convert (Zacchaeus; 19:5–10), with Pharisees (7:36–50; 11:37–54; 14:1–24), and even with sinners (5:29–32). The theme continues in Acts (e.g., Acts 1:4; 2:42). Considered together, these meal scenes tell us something about Jesus, about his followers, and about life in the kingdom-community he forms.
Concerning Jesus, especially in light of the Second Temple idea of the messianic banquet, Luke uses the meal scenes to tell his readers that Jesus is the promised Davidic Messiah who invites restored Israel—including gentiles—to feast in new-creational bounty. So, when we read over and over again in the Gospel that Jesus shares meals with so many, this is Luke subtly telling his readers: “This is the Christ! This is the true Son of David! The King has come!”
But table fellowship in Luke tells us more than merely who Jesus is; it also points to something profound about his followers. This is because Luke does something that no other Gospel writer does. In many ways, all throughout his two-part work, Luke quietly intimates that followers of Jesus—apostles and disciples; men and women alike—are royal figures who reign with him in his kingdom.[3] We see this perhaps most clearly in Luke 22:29, where, in the context of a meal scene, Jesus grants (or covenants) a kingdom to his disciples, indicating that they are royal heirs of David’s kingdom.[4] Or consider Luke 10:23–24, where Jesus, speaking to the 70 disciples, encourages them that “many prophets and kings desired to see what you see,” likely changing Matthew’s “righteous men” (dikaioi; see Matt. 13:16–17). It is also alluded to in several other places (e.g., Luke 22:25; Acts 12; 15:16–18). One vital way that Luke suggests this royal identity for Jesus’s disciples all throughout the Gospel is by means of table fellowship. For, as Isa. 55:3 suggests, and as some Second Temple period texts corroborate, table fellowship was understood as a subtle indicator that those who eat and drink with the king share in some sense in His royal authority. In other words, we are royals, and when we eat and drink with the king, we are reminded that, under his loving rule, we reign with him in cross-shaped servanthood. How the lowly have been exalted!
Finally, besides teaching us about Jesus’s identity and our own, the meal-scenes reveal something startling about life in Jesus’s kingdom-community. This is because Luke, beyond what any other Gospel writer does, emphasizes meals with people whom Luke’s readers would never expect: gentiles; the poor; the sick and disabled (and therefore impure); a pariah tax collector; a rebel son. And what this means is that the community Jesus comes to establish is a community that is open to the outcast; to all, regardless of race, citizenship, or socio-economic status who make Jesus their king. This invitation to the kingdom table, however, is also an invitation to the kingdom lifestyle characterized by repentance, faith, and righteous living. That is, it is not merely a meal, but also Jesus’s “contagious holiness” that gets shared.[5]
Of course, no discussion of eating and drinking in Luke-Acts could be complete without mention of the Lord’s Supper: “Of all the means by which Jesus could have chosen to be remembered, he chose to be remembered by a meal.”6 When we partake of the bread and the cup, we commune with Jesus in intimate fellowship, enjoying his presence and finding nourishment for our souls. In this connection, perhaps also it is no mistake that Luke, in his infancy narrative, repeatedly emphasizes that the newborn Jesus is lying in a manger (Luke 2:7, 12, 16). Here we see hints of what, surely, food and drink are ultimately made for: that we might grasp how all-satisfying God is. God “meets our senses half-way,” in the words of St. Athanasius, using creation to point us to the Creator.
Luke’s profound and pervasive use of table fellowship in connection with matters of eternal importance indicates that our collective hunch regarding shared meals is right on. Meals mean something, more than we can imagine, and picking up on Luke’s clues can open up new vistas of worship and praxis. But perhaps the very subtlety of the motif hints at something further; something crucial: the meaning is easy to miss. Like my friend Ahmad, how many times do we miss connections God would have for us, whether to commune with him, or with those created in his image, out of misunderstanding or fear? Or perhaps, the guest that God has in mind is different from the one we have in mind: although my friend never showed up, I never forgot the sumptuous meal the dear watchman and I shared that night. In other words, we must have eyes to see and ears to hear. Careful attention to the way Luke uses this important motif will help insure we don’t miss the invitation to the feast.
[1]. On the messianic banquet theme in the Hebrew Bible and the Second Temple Jewish literature, see J. Priest, “A Note on the Messianic Banquet,” in The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 222–38; and Dennis E. Smith, “The Messianic Banquet Reconsidered,” in The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester, ed. Birger Pearson (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 64–73.
[2]. The ten meal scenes are: Luke 5:27–39; 7:36–50; 9:10–17; 10:38–42; 11:37–54; 14:1–24; 19:1–10; 22:7–38; 24:13–35; 24:41–43. On the meal scenes in Luke and Acts, see Eugene LaVerdiere, Dining in the Kingdom of God: The Origins of the Eucharist According to Luke (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1994); and LaVerdiere, The Breaking of the Bread: The Development of the Eucharist According to Acts (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1998).
[3]. This is an under-recognized Lukan emphasis. On the topic of “vice-regency” in general, see Dan G. McCartney, “Ecce Homo: The Coming of the Kingdom as the Restoration of Human Viceregency,” WTJ 56 (1994): 1–21.
[4]. See Scott Hahn, Kinship by Covenant: A Canonical Approach to the Fulfillment of God’s Saving Promises (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
[5] See Craig Blomberg, Contagious Holiness: Jesus’ Meals with Sinners, New Studies in Biblical Theology 19 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005).
[6] Craig Thomas McMahan, “Meals as Type-Scenes in the Gospel of Luke” (PhD diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1988), quoted in ibid., 163.
