Holy Fellowship

I've moved to Crozet for the summer to intern at a church, about which I am very excited! I was on my way back from Norfolk earlier this week and stopped at the Cokesbury store in Glen Allen. I came across small scriptural/devotional journals. At Annual Conference last week I acquired a UMC Book of Worship. On page #581, there is a "litany" for a Love Feast. The Love Feast or Agape Meal if you want to be technical is a centuries-old tradition. John Wesley himself experienced it when he was in the company Moravian Christians. They introduced him to the concept of a Love Feast, that is to say, a meal of fellowship modeled after the Disciples' meal time together. A suggested scripture is from Luke, it describes the Dinner miracle. A few weeks ago I was watching yet another sermon from Duke Chapel in which Sam Wells talks about a time when he met an elderly Anglican priest, whom he described as "the wisest person he'd ever known." The priest told Wells to set up a table and anytime he ate from it or did work, he should think of it as a sacrifice. More specifically, mealtime was a time of Eucharist. As Jesus commanded the Disciples, "Do this as often as you meet." In following this example, anytime that Christians fellowship together should be a "Eucharistic meal." In the company of others, when we celebrate our faith in Christ and use our time together as a witness to others. Maybe in those circumstances we can have a dinner miracle as the early Jews and Gentiles did, before "Christian" developed, and they experienced a miracle by Jesus. By celebrating this love feast, I am able to have a Discipleship experience through Christ and an honorarium to my heritage as United Methodist but also as an appreciate for my denominational Moravian friends. For modern a modern Moravian, coffee and sticky buns are used right in the middle of worship service. What a better time to celebrate this occasion we call a Love Feast!