Christians, as would
be expected, were to be different. Their table was to represent far
more. Their table represented their Lord and their God and His rule, so
it had to be different and it had to look different. It had to (and has to) command the attention
of the watching world. Peter writes “So they are astonished when you do
not rush with them into the same flood of wickedness, and they vilify you”
(4:4).
As has been noted,
Christians (noting that this letter is the only New Testament letter to employ
the term) were accused of heinous activity in association with their meals
(e.g. cannibalism), while also being charged with atheism and with having a
destructive effect on the social cohesion of their communities and of the
empire itself. Indeed, vilification took place and it did so in
conjunction with the derisive name of “Christian” (kristianos as opposed to
kaisarianos), so it is quite interesting that Peter takes up its usage in the
sixteenth verse of this chapter, mentioning suffering “as a Christian,” as well
as in the third verse, using it negatively with the term
“non-Christians.”
Based on what comes
in between the use of non-Christian and Christian, it becomes strikingly clear
that Christians were to be primarily identified by their meal practice. The socially defining meal table would be the
place that their sensibilities would develop, and be the place from which would
stream their good works for the benefit of their communities and ultimately the
world. This would, of course, be in keeping with the fact that those with
whom the Creator God has entered into covenant, have largely been identified by
meal practice of some form.
This is patently
obvious when it comes to the Jews, as the major provisions of their God’s
covenant with them involved keeping His Sabbaths, which were the feasts
ordained in the Mosaic law. This also included dietary laws that would come
to be used as a means to readily identify an individual as being in good
covenant standing and able to participate in the rule of the covenant
God. This notion, however, stretches back to the very first covenant of
Scripture.
Genesis records that “The
Lord God took the man and placed him in the orchard in Eden to care for it and
to maintain it. Then the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat
fruit from every tree of the orchard, but you must not eat from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die.’”
(2:15-17) There, the bearer of the divine covenant, who was charged to
represent the Creator God in and for the whole of the creation, has his
covenant marked out by what could be easily termed as meal practice.
Maintaining that
position in Genesis, the next covenant, which the Creator God made with Noah
when He “blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply
and fill the earth’” (9:1), was codified with “You may eat any moving thing
that lives. As I gave you the green plants, I now give you
everything. But you must not eat meat with its life (that is, its blood)
in it” (9:3-4).
Moving on to Abraham,
and though one does not see any type of meal associated with the initial report
of the Creator God’s covenant with him that occurs in chapter twelve of
Genesis, one does find such a thing just two chapters later. After
Abraham defeats the kings that had captured his nephew, the author reports that
“Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine” (14:18a), learning that
“he was the priest of the Most High God” (14:18b).
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