At assemblies of those loyal to a monarch, there is always a banquet. At board meetings of corporations, there is always a banquet. At gatherings anticipating graduation from university or high school, there is always a banquet. Human beings eat to live, and without food they die. But we have also found a festive meal an inseparable element in our celebrating the power and honor of a ruler, the successes of another year of business, completion of an important stage in our education, and many other aspects of life. We often eat without a sense of celebration and are just glad to find sustenance for the day, but when we celebrate, we often sit down at a table together. For celebration takes its place at the heart of our lives, and at that heart are God’s gifts of his daily provision for our bodily welfare and also his placing us together in communities that helped solve the problem of Adam’s being alone.
As the assembly of God’s people, we have a banquet of our own. It is a mystery in several ways, such as presenting us with the body and blood of Jesus Christ in the ordinary bread and fruit of the vine that we encounter in the course of a week. It is also a mystery how we can call this coming to the Lord’s altar on a regular basis a festive banquet. Our perceptions are not all wrong. Our participation in the Lord’s banquet with friends and fellow members of a congregation, one Sunday after another, or from time to time, hardly seems to qualify as a banquet. But this living mystery of the Lord’s Supper, eating Jesus’s body and drinking his blood, and thereby receiving forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation, clearly bestows on us the richest of foods, the most fulfilling of nourishment.
We must concede: our service is but a rehearsal, not even a dress rehearsal, of the eschatological feast that Jesus promised his disciples to celebrate with them in the world to come (Matt. 26:29, Luke 22:18). The bread and wine we receive among our own at the familiar altar may seem quite modest, but it gets its punch from the promise that accompanies these visible objects, the promise of new life, of a new identity. The eschatological banquet will continue the celebration of that new identity, thanksgiving that our God has given us the new life that we will then be enjoying fully.
Our banquet here and now has been well prepared. For Jesus came as chef deluxe, who knew just what combination of antidote for the sinful identity and revival and restoration of our identity as children of God we needed. He came, willing to be slain, the sacrifice for our straying from our Creator, so that he might rise as the Lion of Judah, the king of God’s people. “Lion of Judah” designated the Messiah for early Christians, the one from David’s life who came to be king of the jungle, to dominate and destroy all the evil beasts that invade our lives, the one who protects his cubs and provides for them in every way, nourishing them both bodily and spiritually.
The Lion of Judah did not need to roar to assert his lordship. He stretched out his hands to have them pierced with nails, but those bloodied hands uplifted the very tree on which our fellow defyers of our Creator had nailed him. He crushed their powers as he rose from his tomb and asserted his lordship as Lion of Judah over all the world.
His reign is here, and his reign is coming, and in the coming realm his current rehearsals of the banquet to come will bear fruit as we raise our cups to praise our Lion, the one Lamb of God who had been willing to be slain. We shall sing songs of victory as he gathers us into his home. So, this week, as he gathers us together at his house, we will again proclaim his death and his victory, our task until he returns to roll back the clouds and march us into his everlasting banquet hall, with songs that echo and amplify the praise we sing this week.
Banquets feature not only good food and drink. Brass, harps, and every other imaginable musical instrument will also express the rejoicing of God the Father as he gathers his children around him, of God the Son as he embraces those for whom he died and rose, and of God the Holy Spirit as he chats with those to whom he gave a new identity as forgiven and restored children of the Father. The joyous melodies and lyrics express the pleasure of those invited by this host to be with him and his people who join us at the table. Human voices and instruments of all kinds sing the hymns we know and will sing angelic compositions at the never-ending banquet that Jesus sets before us after he has brought us to live fully in communion with him. At our dress rehearsal nowadays we do not fill the table with joyful laughter, but there is every reason to be filled with pure delight, a holy reverence for our Lord that gives us a glow that reflects into the entire week.
The anticipation of a table more richly set, an angelic band and orchestra playing truly celestial music, the laughter of those who face sins plague no more, should come to mind as we return from the altar to the pew, as we return from God’s house to our own homes, as we return from our network of believers to the networks of neighborhood, employment, social groups, as well as our family. For we know that we have been well fed with the nourishment that sustains forever, prepared as Christ hung on the cross and burst from the tomb. That nourishment upholds us as we ride the tides of the coming week, anticipating a banquet that bursts the seams of all the definitions of “banquet” we have with the splendor of the joy that comes from sitting at the Father’s eternal table in the company of the Son and the Holy Spirit, along with their whole family from throughout the history of God’s people.
Robert Kolb
PhD, University of Wisconsin
Robert Kolb is mission professor of systematic theology emeritus at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books and articles.