This is a meal that should be bookended with gratitude. We come to the Table in the first place because we are grateful, and we are looking for a means to overflow, a way to express that gratitude. One of the names for this meal is the Eucharist, which comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving. We come to the Supper thankful.
But it is a meal, and so we receive in the course of it. If it were undiluted thanksgiving, it would be sheer output. But we come to receive, and we receive bread and wine, emblems of God’s kindness to us. This is a sacrament in which God offers Christ to us, and what could He offer more than that? And, as we all learned as children, when you are given something, what do you say? You say thank you.
And when you are given the one who fills heaven and earth, the first born over all creation, what do you say? You can’t say anything more than thank you, but you can bow down under the weight of the gratitude.
So we come in gratitude, and we receive more than we had before, meaning that we leave more even grateful than we came. This is more than we can comprehend, and all of it is good. Had God determined to give us a fraction of what He did give, it would have been sufficient, and we should have been content with it. But He has given us all things in Christ, and sometimes it seems that a weekly meal of thanks is not nearly enough. But He blesses it and it is.