Journal: Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Volume: JOTGES 34:66 (Spring 2021)
Article: Breaking Bread: The Centrality Of Eating To New Testament Church Life
Author: Shawn C. Lazar

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Breaking Bread: The Centrality Of Eating To New Testament Church Life

Shawn Lazar

Associate Editor
Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society

What role did eating play in the NT church? While that may not seem like a particularly interesting question, my growing conviction is that theology should emphasize what the Bible emphasizes, and there are at least eight important connections between eating and a healthy NT church life. This article will survey eight ways that the otherwise common act of eating ought to be a part of that life.

I. Eating And Fellowship

First, eating was an expression of fellowship between believers. “One of the simplest and the oldest acts of fellowship in the world is that of eating together,” William Barclay said. “To share a common meal, especially if the act of sharing the meal also involves the sharing of a common memory, is one of the basic expressions of human fellowship.”1 That expression is evident throughout the NT.

For example, eating with others was such a prominent mark of Jesus’ ministry that it became a source of criticism. Religious leaders faulted Jesus for eating with “tax collectors and sinners” (Mark 2:16) and spread the rumor that He was too gluttonous to be a genuine prophet (Matt 11:19). Jesus obviously ate with a wide variety of people.2 Pohl noted that both Jesus’ teaching on hospitality (e.g., Luke 14:12–14) and His practice challenged “narrow definitions and dimensions of hospitality and presses them outward to include those

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with whom one least desires to have connections.”3 Eating was an expression of how radical Christian fellowship could be, reaching to people who would normally be outcasts.

And the Lord’s pattern of eating with others for ministry was followed by the first believers:

And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers…So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart (Acts 2:42, 46).

Notice the apostles continued steadfastly in both doctrine and in “the breaking of bread.” Keener explains that this is �...