Heavenly Father, you are everlasting, yet you have discourse with such transient creatures as we. The infinite engages with the small, the eternal with the fleeting, the unchangeable with the fickle. You have declared by your prophet that you never tire.1 Despite this, you rested on the seventh day and appointed that we do the same. Likewise, you neither hunger nor thirst. You do not need animal sacrifices to sustain yourself,2 yet in times of old you commanded that they be made.
How shall we grasp the mystery of your table? Christ grew weary.3 Christ hungered.4 Christ thirsted.5 You, Christ, are the exhausted innkeeper, the starving host of the feast. What’s more, you are our rest; you became our nourishment!
At your table, we feast both with and upon you. As we somberly trudge up the gap between the metal folding chairs on the gymnasium floor or down the aging aisle of an old cathedral on Sunday, it is to your table we come. It is your body we eat, your blood we drink, and your fellowship we enjoy.
These signs of Christ’s atoning death for us seal to us the things signified, bringing us real spiritual fullness, your grace, by faith. We dine with you, triune King. Christ dined with his twelve. His Spirit dines with and lives in his church. And you, Father, will dine for eternity to come with your people in glory. You have no use of a table, but to share it with us. Let your people praise you, for you have condescended to the table.
1 “The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.” Isaiah 40:28.
2 “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats?” Psalm 50:12-13.
3 “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat…” Matthew 25:35.
4 “Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, ‘I am thirsty.’” John 19:28.
5 “[S]o Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well.” John 4:6.
Pastor Clay's Blog 