Monday, August 29, 2005
‘Dinner With An Imperfect Community’?
In response to Mark Noll’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal about the limits of the personal-relationship-with-Christ motif in the book Dinner With A Perfect Stranger and evangelicalism as a whole (Noll writes, “A Christian message stressing the possibility of an enduring—and often less demanding—personal relationship with the loving Creator of the universe sounds very appealing. But does such an adaptation retain enough of historic Christianity’s other dimension? Or does dinner with a perfect stranger fit a little too conveniently into our lives?”), Christianity Today’s weblog writes:
Noll’s article is indicative of what seems to be a growing concern among evangelicals (at least evangelical academics and theologians) that the movement has not spent enough energy and effort understanding and describing a theology of the church (ecclesiology).
Does the Christian life look like dinner with a perfect stranger? Well, Jesus told us that it looks like a wedding feast with an apparent stranger. David Gregory may not be far off after all—it just may be that he didn’t place enough chairs around the table.
Indeed, dinner and “chairs around the table” is a delicious metaphor for communal fellowship with God and other believers, and a very promising starting point for articulating a theology of the church!
For example, see how Martha Moore-Keish elaborates on the Eucharist in the church in the context of eschatology in her chapter in A More Profound Alleluia (in CICW’s Liturgical Studies Series):
Another feature that emerges when eschatology is considered in light of the Eucharist is that God’s future includes people gathered in community, not individuals eating alone. In biblical accounts, meals are not individual but are by nature communal events. To “break bread” is to share food and drink with others, not to warm up something in the microwave and eat it alone in front of Seinfeld reruns. Many biblical writers present the picture of God’s ultimate reign as that of a great feast at the end of time, when ‘many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven’ (Matt. 8:11).” So from earliest days the community has been necessary for celebration of the Eucharistic meal, and the Eucharist has provided a foretaste of the eschatological feast of the Lamb (Rev 19:9). (p. 116)
LeRon Shults also used this metaphor colorfully in his address to the Preaching Forgiveness Conference at Calvin Theological Seminary in April, where he talked about facing (each other and God), forgiving, and feasting. You can’t have any one, he said, without the other two.
Also see our Vital Worship feature story: Rejoicing at the Lord’s Supper
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