The Church has an eating disorder. We do not come to the Table as we ought to do. We do not come frequently enough, although we are graciously invited every week. We do not come cheerfully enough, even though this is a Table of thanksgiving, not a Table of morbid introspection. We do not come with enough of our people—even though the invitation said that children are welcome, and that we do not need to get a sitter.
One of the things that reveals how important this Table is would be the many different devices we have figured out to stay away. Just as a thoughtful Christian knows how important prayer is from how difficult it can be to pray, so we ought to conclude that this Table is important from how difficult it is to get Christians to gather around it every week. We shy away from it.
As just mentioned, this is the Eucharist, the Table of thanksgiving. In part, we shy away because we don’t want to be troubled with the disciplines of gratitude. While we don’t want to be overtly complainy or whiny, we think we can just gravitate to some neutral place, a place that is neither grateful nor murmuring. But this is not possible—it will either be one or the other.
Because murmuring is so easy, with its ever-present gravitational pull, we need to be brought up short, on a regular basis, with the delightful duty of rejoicing at the Lord’s table.
He has given us this as a delightful reminder, and He rejoices to sit with us. The Lord Jesus is at the head of the Table, and He is the Lord of the Table. He is the one who took the bread that represented His own body into His own hands, gave thanks for it, and then broke it. If He could give thanks in that setting, how much more should we give thanks in this setting? Because He thanked God for the breaking, we may thank God for the breaking and the restoration. If He could thank God by faith before the resurrection, how much more grateful should we be after the resurrection?