love feast

...while we have yet to celebrate formal communion (or the lord's supper) on sundays at gakuentoshi chapel, we have nonetheless experienced the love feasts that -- in the early new testament church -- went hand-and-hand with the lord's supper...[fyi: for those interested in reading more about love feasts, you'll find a brief supplement at the end of this post]...

...today we came together in community to worship the Lord...

...to hear Gods' word preached by kokubu-san (left)...

...to welcome two more visitors...an older gentleman (not pictured) and erico-san (below right) with members (left to right) megumi, claire and yoko)...

...with a simple service and setting, we pray that God would use us to offer our neighborhood a place where people know your face and remember your name...some pictures of the faces at church today...

...following sunday service, church members who didn't have to work (as well as our visitor, erico-san) came to our place for our love feast...lots of our blog pictures center around food, which, in turn, create the impression that all we do is eat eat eat...but get this: nothing has made us cohere as a family than eating as one...before, between and after our meals, we spend time cutting...

...cooking (like yaki-soba below),

...can't get any better than okonomi-yakis hot off the table-side grill to your plate...

...and cleaning...

...as you probably know, more than the meal itself, it's the "in-between" times of chit-chatting and chuckling and caring that yield such rich overall chemistry...and we are recognizing that these seemingly insignificant times -- like cutting, cooking, and cleaning -- are the building blocks for significant ministry together as a church...join us in praising and thanking God that with each passing sunday our family love feasts are getting more wonderful...it is our hope that God will use our family chemistry and love to witness and share the love of Christ to our neighbors...

:::EXCURSUS: LOVE FEASTS:::

...sharing meals together was a crucial part of early church life...this is not surprising, considering the example set by jesus of welcoming to table fellowship all who would come...this is featured prominently in luke’s gospel...the early church continued this practice and often met together in people’s homes to share food (e.g., acts 2:42)....

...for christians, sharing a common meal was such a powerful emblem of their love in christ that it came to be called a “love feast” (greek agape; lit., “a love”)...nb: only in jude 12 is the word used this way...

...jesus also instituted a christian celebration at the last supper (cf. mark 14.12-26)...this celebration is called by various names (the lord's supper, the eucharist, communion, among others)...while the relationship between the eucharist and the agape has been debated among scholars, the early church drew no firm distinction between the two...in other words, the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the cup, with its special symbolic importance, was likely included with a communal meal among believers...regrettably, in later centuries, the practices were separated and the “love feast” became less prominent...for further reading: see I. H. Marshall, Last Supper and Lord’s Supper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980).