From the Table to Thanksgiving:

Thanksgiving! In our country this begins the Holiday Season.   Typically, friends and family gather around a table loaded with expensive foods and special dishes by the cooks in the family.  Food shelters and churches provide meals for those unfortunates who can’t afford It or have no friends or family to invite. Some families, being blessed and thankful for it, extend hospitality to those they do not know. 

We began this series on Table Fellowship by touching on the role of Table Fellowship and Christianity. The second essay detailed the decline of  and abandonment of table fellowship. The third explored how our fragmented society and multitude of social connections has led to this decline.In this essay, we look at the historical connections between meals as a means of hospitality, thanksgiving, and celebration of the “Lord’s Supper.”

In the ancient Near East offering guests bread as a symbols of hospitality occurred as early as 2000 BCE.  Food offerings to  travelers are depicted in the Odyssey (at 8 BCE).  Bedouin tribes are well known for offering meals to guests and strangers to cement alliances and provide safety with questionable guests. This ancient tradition still occurs in the Slavic countries today.  Table Fellowship has a long history of establishing bonds between the participants.

How is table fellowship,  the term “thanksgiving” and  “Lord’s Supper related to each other?   In our faith group we call the celebration of the death, burial, and resurrection and the resulting hope we have the “Lord’s Supper.”  This celebration is described in Cor. 11 as follows:  After taking the bread at the meal, then the text says in Greek “after supper” the wine was blessed.  Conservative Christian groups begin calling this celebration meal the “Lord’s Supper.” Perhaps this name was influenced by the Passover Meal where the Lord instituted the practice. Nowhere in the New Testament is this table fellowship meal practice given any formal name.

Where does “thanksgiving” come into play?? The earliest description of the Lord’s Supper outside the bible is the Didache ( 100-150 BCE).  It describes the meal but does not explicitly call it “Thanksgiving.” The early church father, Ignatius of Antioch (110 BCE)) gives it the name Eucharist. Justin Martyr (150 BCE) gives a detailed description and calls it the Eucharist. Eucharist is the Greek Word for Thanksgiving. This term has been retained by the Catholic church.

The Pilgrams had a tradition of a harvest celebration of thanksgiving. I in the fall of 1621, the Pilgrims held three days of Thanksgiving to God for His provision and blessings. This was the beginning of our Thanksgiving. In 1789 Washington encouraged the nation to set aside Nov. 26 as a day of Thanksgiving to God. Lincoln made it an annual national holiday during the Civil War.

So, the “Lord’s Supper” is a celebration meal of thanksgiving to God.  Our Thanksgiving  is also a meal of celebration and Thanksgiving to God. Lincoln’s word’s to the nation are applicable today:

“I invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States…to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.  And I recommend to them that…they do also…fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union”