The table they all gathered at
The Eucharist through the centuries
Jesus took bread on the night he was betrayed and broke it and said: this is my body. He took the cup and said: this is my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.
They did it the next week. And the week after that. And every week since.
Pliny's letter to Trajan, written around 112 AD, describes Christians meeting before dawn to eat together — an ordinary meal, he says, though the Christians clearly experienced it as something more. Justin Martyr, around 155 AD, gives the first detailed description of the Sunday liturgy and its center: the bread and wine over which the presider gives thanks, distributed to all who are present.
The table survived everything. It survived Nero, who burned the people around it. It survived Diocletian, who burned the books above it. It survived the Arian controversy, which disputed who was present at it. It survived the Donatist controversy, which disputed who was qualified to preside at it. It survived the fall of Rome, the barbarian invasions, the fragmentation of the empire.
In catacombs, by candlelight, in houses, in the open desert, in the churches Constantine built and Alaric ransacked — the bread was broken and the cup was shared.
Chrysostom preached that you cannot truly worship at the altar while ignoring the body of Christ in the poor man at the church door. Augustine preached that you receive what you are — the body of Christ receiving the body of Christ. Patrick's monks carried the practice to the ends of the earth.
They were all doing the same thing. The same meal. The same table. The same words over the same bread and cup.
Two thousand years is a very long dinner.
“We do not receive these things as ordinary bread or ordinary drink. But just as Jesus Christ our Savior was made flesh through the word of God, so also we have been taught that the food which is blessed through the prayer of his word is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.”
— Justin Martyr, First Apology 66, c. 155 AD
“For as often as you eat this bread, and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.”
Every time the church has been at its worst — corrupt, divided, violent, self-serving — the table has still been set. Even in the darkest chapters, someone was still breaking the bread and pouring the cup and saying the words Jesus said.
This is not a defense of the church's failures. It is a description of grace that operates in spite of them. The meal does not depend on the worthiness of those gathered around it. It depends on the worthiness of the one who instituted it.
These are the early church's own words for the table, and Christians have since differed — sometimes sharply — over exactly how Christ is present in the bread and the cup. What the first believers held in common was simpler: that he told them to do this, and that he meant to meet them when they did.
You proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Every time. Not just when the church is impressive. Every time.
When did you last come to the table as if the one who said do this was actually present at it?