In Western culture meals now seem to be mainly about food. In the culture of Jesus, the Jewish culture, meals were mostly about relationships; creating relationships and building relationships. The table was a place where people spent time with each other, got to know each other, enjoyed each other’s company. When the Jewish people gathered to break bread, to share food, they experienced acceptance and companionship.
In providing us at the Last Supper with a table to gather around and with sacred food to eat, Jesus was offering us an opportunity to experience his companionship. The traditional word we use to describe the companionship of Jesus available to us in the sacred food of the Eucharist is communion, Holy Communion. Holy communion is the experience of being in close intimate union with Jesus.
Of course in providing us at the Last Supper with a table to gather around and with sacred food to eat, Jesus was also offering us an opportunity to experience the companionship of one another. Jesus did not want the meal of the Eucharist to be a personal encounter with him only. He also wanted it to be an experience of community, an opportunity for his followers to meet one another, to spend time with one another, to share in each other’s lives.
The meal Jesus ate with his disciples the night before he died was no ordinary meal. It was the Jewish Passover Meal. The Passover Meal was sacred to the Jews. It was their way of remembering and celebrating their liberation from terrible slavery and oppression in Egypt. We too have been liberated. We have been liberated by Jesus from the slavery and oppression of evil and death. Each time we share in the meal of the Eucharist we experience the liberation which Jesus won for us. Each time we share in the meal of the Eucharist we are being redeemed and sanctified by Jesus.
No wonder the meal we call Eucharist has always been at the very centre of the life of the Christian community.