Friday: The Breaking of the Bread Becomes a Love Feast
WEEK 11
FRIDAY
THE BREAKING OF THE BREAD BECOMES A LOVE FEAST
Luke 15:22-24
We ended yesterday with the statement that the breaking of bread was lifted up into a ritual—the Love Feast. It wasn’t the ordinary meal as is seen by the passage, “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread.” This is followed by, “And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten” (Acts 20:7, 11 RSV). “Had broken bread” was different from “had eaten.”
Ordinary breaking of bread had become sacramental; extraordinary breaking of bread—a Love Feast.
But ordinary eating apart from this Love Feast was a part of the manifestation of the kingdom: “And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts” (Acts 2:46 RSV). The Love Feast in the extraordinary had become the feast of love in the ordinary. The ordinary was interfused with the divine extraordinary. Life was unified. The material and the spiritual were “according well” and “beating out music” faster than before.
This gathering up of the material and making it a part of the new order is seen in the very holiest moment of all—in the very coming of the Holy Spirit, which was accompanied by two material manifestations: the sound of the rushing mighty wind and the cloven tongues like as of fire (Acts 2:2-3 KJV). Why was the material thus associated with the spiritual? Both pointed to something beyond them. The sound of the rushing mighty wind helped their faith to take hold, for the words wind and spirit are the same in Hebrew—ruach. So when they heard the “wind,” they said to themselves: the wind—the Spirit—is coming. Their faith stepped easily from one to the other. The “wind” blew them into “Spirit.” The material helped the spiritual.
And the cloven tongues like as of fire sitting upon the head of each of them confirmed the fact by outer sign that God was giving to each one, as an individual, the Holy Spirit. The individual was important, and God was dealing not with a mass but with a person. The individual stood out.
O God, our heavenly Lord, we thank you that you are singling out each of us as important before you, therefore before others. It humbles us and lifts us. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: All my breaking of bread shall be a Love Feast this day.