Monarchy, Pt. 6

On Feasting

            If then, we are sons and daughters of the king, we may reasonably look ahead to some sort of family life within the king’s court. It would be irresponsibly dangerous for someone as ill-trained and unimaginative as myself to attempt a picture of the heavenly estate, but the one institution I am sure of (from the Biblical evidence) is the institution that the modern family has almost entirely forgotten: Family dinner.

            The modern family finds family dinner hard to prepare and hard to schedule, largely because of other busyness. To cut out family dinner to accommodate work and school schedules is like throwing away the painting so as to better hang the frame. All of the various errands, commutes, and exchanges of the work day only exist to put family dinner on the table. When family dinner becomes an accidental pleasure or a holiday treat because the work world has overgrown it, the natural balance has been lost. It’s no good to anyone to bring home the bacon if no one will be home to eat the bacon. The modern family brings home bacon with both mother and father, and eager children preparing for their own careers nearly from diapers, but all of this is done for the pleasure of bringing it home, not for eating it, let alone sharing a joke or a song while they eat it. This is, I believe, one of the reasons why vegetarianism has become so popular—not because there is any sense in forsaking bacon (which is delicious), but because those people which are resolved to eat grass are at least eating grass together, and that is infinitely more pleasant than eating out, eating at the office, or eating in the car. I would have all of us become vegetarians if it meant we would consume our vegetables at a common table rather than our meat alone in our automobiles.

            One of the many things that the elderly would say, if anyone listened to them, is that we younger folk ought to come over for dinner more often. It isn’t for their sake (it takes quite a bit of effort for them to prepare a meal at their age), but they know that half the angst and pathos of the modern young person would be solved by a hot dinner, a comfortable chair, and a few good jokes. The proof in this case is quite literally in the pudding.

            The thought of eternity as some sort of incorporeal state of being or perpetual narcotic bliss is wholly an Eastern idea. It has no place in Christian theology, and it certainly has no place influencing Christian behavior. I am increasingly disturbed by services in which the pastor or celebrant invites the Spirit to lull us into blank oblivion with devotional sounding electronic music. Being asleep, however, isn’t any more spiritual than being awake, and if God had intended us to spend eternity in a state of adoring half-slumber, he would have made us more like jellyfish, and less like knobby trees. Besides, if this sort of Pastor was really intent on leading us into a blank stupor, he could lead us into a sounder and more satisfying sleep by preaching on the theology of stuporial worship. Out of the many details omitted regarding the resurrected body of Our Lord, the one confirmation we did receive is that he ate a piece of fish. He might have spent several hours a day meditating and perhaps he listened to dreamy music, but this is only speculation. The only confirmed information we have is that he ate, and I think we might reasonably expect to be do the same. A man that expects to spend his birthday in a state of nirvana or uninterrupted beatitude is far less in touch with reality than a man who hopes to have a good meal with friends and family at the end of the evening. Your body will not be the last trumpet, but it will still sit down to dinner.

            Of course, one cannot have dinner with the spirit of democracy, even if the people of the table have a democratic spirit. Whether the table is round or not, our communion table must remain in the center of Sunday worship. It is, in some sense, practice for drinking wine and eating bread at the great wedding feast of the King. Indeed, the earliest churches did have magnificent feasts, but they were waferized because the feast was too good for the people, not because the people were too good for the feast. Once we are convinced that our Sunday meetings are the covert gatherings of an invading kingdom, and not a social club or a yoga session, we can pay homage to the King by celebrating his feast in his absence, and somehow, in a manner far beyond what I have room to ponder here, eating and drinking Him.