Atlantic District Publications

Letters from the President - Foretaste of the Feast to Come

October 2, 2009 at 11:08 AM

For eighteen plus years I’ve been eating “on the cuff.”  I’m a party crasher.  Of course, in my case, Judy and I are usually invited, so technically we’re not crashing.  But your anniversaries, ordinations, installations, building dedications, fundraisers, agency awards nights, and general excuses to have a meal in the Lutheran tradition are my grazing grounds.  For me, weekends aren’t made for Michelob – they’re made for lasagna, pepper steak, souvlaki, seafood salad, orange ruffy, roti and curry goat, rice and peas, rice and beans, three hundred fifteen versions of chicken, salads, rolls, the famous brownies of Mrs. G or Mrs. R, the obligatory cake, and the Italian sampler cookies with maybe a canola or two thrown in for good measure.  Seven or eight thousand calories down the line, I waddle forth into the world, content and well-fed.

Of course, the real blessing of all those gatherings is the people who put the love into the food, the people of God desiring the festal board to be exquisitely arranged, the people of God saying “Thank you, Lord” in meat and drink and hospitality.  The conversations are the real main course for me – of course, sometimes I am talking with my mouth full, because it’s not possible to skip the food.

The communion of saints in action around food is a wonderful gift to the world.  But these festivities are also an exterior mirror to what has been received at the Altar in the Body and Blood of Christ.  Our congregations are strongly Means of Grace anchored.  I am grateful that we live what we believe in our quadrant of the Lutheran world, offering a Holy Meal for true sustenance on a weekly basis in almost all of our congregations.  Our Lord’s forgiveness, strength and direction is critical to God’s mission in the Atlantic District.  Fortified, we go forth as a group and as individuals with the lively Christ empowering our thoughts, words and deeds.

But there is one more level to all this talk of food.  The feast we share at the altar in Holy Communion is a sample of the eternal banquet that awaits us in heaven’s halls.  It is indeed a foretaste of the feast to come.  Here we walk by faith.  There we will see and taste and touch, there God will Himself wipe away every tear from every eye, there we will have time beyond time to bask in the Presence of the Almighty One who loved and loves us so. 

When I’m at our many gatherings, it comes to me from time to time to look around the room.  At 11 or midnight the party’s over here; the tables are taken down.  There will be a day when the party will NEVER be over.  And the people in our banquet rooms here whom we love and share joy with are the same people with whom, by God’s grace, we will share that joy with eternally.  
Not a bad vision for a church in mission, is it?  Let’s bring more and more people to the banquet!