You have perhaps heard the admonition that the “family that prays together, stays together.” This is quite true, and families should pray together.
But it is also true that families that eat together stay together. One of the signs that our culture is fragmented is that it is so easy to eat alone—in the car, in front of the television, or leaning over the sink before you rush off to work. But we in the Church cannot be cultural critics if we are doing something very similar in the Church. How often do we eat together?
This is one of the reasons for weekly communion. We eat together as often as we get together. God has created us in such a way that eating is a binding ritual. Of course, Scripture teaches us that a house of feasting can also be a house of strife—and that we should prefer peace and quiet to the food, if we have to choose. The same problem arose at Corinth, in their observance of the “Lord’s Supper,” which Paul said was not really the Lord’s Supper at all. He said that there was a way of coming together which, when God’s manners were disregarded, did more harm than good. So we do not think that automatically scheduled refueling occasions have the same blessed benefit that a meal does.
But the glory of it is that we do not have to choose between the love and the food. If you must have one or the other, choose love over food. But never make the mistake of thinking that love instead of food is to be a permanent arrangement. Prefer love to food just long enough to get your priorities straight so that you and your brothers and sisters might come to the Table together, in real harmony.
And when we come in harmony, God uses the occasion of eating together to ratify and seal the harmony. He uses this ritual of bread and wine as a way of knitting us together. It tightens the oaths, it binds us together in love. So as we come to this Table yet again, receive the bread and wine as God’s means of drawing you all together in love. And so we come gladly.