Monday Morning After
January 3, 2012
We tried an Agape Meal on Sunday, sitting around tables for worship in Titus Hall. The early Christians met in homes for worship, combining what foods they had, hearing the Apostle’s teachings, praying, and sharing communion. It was called an Agape Meal. Agape means love, a Greek word used by the early Christian church to describe the love God has shown to us in Jesus Christ, as well as the love we are to have for one another. It was the love associated with grace, a love given not because of merit, but given despite the fact that we did not deserve it. Imagine Greeks and Jews, slaves and slave owners, men and women, people who would not be “allowed” to be brothers and sisters in daily life, coming together under their common desire to be disciples of Jesus Christ. They would come together to be the Body of Christ, “though it is made up of many parts…they form one body.” The Apostle Paul would go one to say: “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” (I Corinthians 12:12, 27) It would be like heaven on earth. Imagine the power of that kind of gathering each week.
And it probably started out that way. While there are many references to “agape” love in the scriptures, the phrase translated “love feast” is only found in Jude 12 (Maybe in 2Peter). In Jude, we read that things have been falling apart. People were coming who claimed to be teachers with greater insights about God, other than Jesus Christ. They were disrespectful of the church’s leadership. They were “…blemishes at your love feasts…”
And there were behavior problems with the agape meals in Corinth, too. People were arriving early and started eating and drinking before all had arrived. “…I have no praise for you, for your meetings do you more harm than good…I hear that when you come together there are divisions among you…for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else…One remains hungry, another gets drunk…” (I Corinthians 11)
What made the idea of an agape meal so appealing was that the differences between people didn’t matter because of the unifying fact that they were followers of Jesus Christ. When those differences became selfish or their common love of Jesus Christ was diluted, there were problems.
The Apostle Paul writes some of his most simple and yet most powerful words in response to what was going wrong. He called it the most excellent way and that it is:
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
We had an Agape Meal on Sunday to begin the New Year on New Year’s Day. It was taste of heaven. You had to be there. Maybe you were.
