Can the Lord indeed set a table in the wilderness?*
Faith accepts it, our experience affirms it, but Scripture has a way of both raising and answering its own questions. The two meals at the end of Luke (**, ***) give, I think, both substance and affirmation to the question. "In this moral and spiritual wilderness is there, can there be, a table set according to God's mind?"
Luke 24:30, 3130And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. 31And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight. (Luke 24:30‑31) connects the breaking of bread with the eyes being opened. Both are gifts involving, in some sense, a breaking or an opening. Now does sitting in His presence open my eyes to understand all Scripture? to be a Bible scholar? Hardly, Energy and diligence still have their reward, and the midnight lamp its recompense. But this opening-the revelation of who He is-transcends mere scholarship. Throw open the curtains, shrug off the night and greet the new day. You don't have to be an astrophysicist to appreciate and, in measure, to understand the warmth of it.
In Luke 24 the revelation was retrospective, "Did not our heart burn within us?" He's gone, but the savor lingers. "Given" and "remembrance" (Luke 22:1919And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. (Luke 22:19)) add the thought of sacrifice and memento. "Given" is gratuitous, reminding us that in life, as at His death, His every thought and move was (with the Father) for us.
And what of mementos? We treasure a rock, a scrap of paper, an old photo that recalls our own past, and perhaps, our lost youth. In the Olympic Mountains once, 30 years ago, my packsack was invaded by a night creature which devoured my cereal supply for the rest of the trip. Now, when I strap on my old pack, the recollection comes alive, and my footsteps quicken. But mementos of people move us as those of mere places and things cannot. I dress in the morning on a braided rug my mother made half a century ago. Standing on it, barefoot like a boy, my thoughts recall those nimble fingers of hers.
Mementos. What should be given to Peter and Andrew or to John and James? Wasn't this man Jesus the Christ, Son of King David? We expect a gift worthy of the character and dignity of the giver. And so He gives a fitting memento, a loaf of bread. Having known Him as a poor preacher from Nazareth, the disciples received a poor man's gratuity. Loaves in later years must often have turned their thoughts back to those three golden years of their comradeship.
Consider how fitting the legacy was. (If your great aunt-the one with the Rolls Royce-left this scene, with your bequest clearly spelled out-one loaf-you wouldn't know whether to laugh or to cry!) Yet somehow this simple gift suited both giver and receiver exactly. Consider:
•Joseph's mountains of golden grain,
•The manna, (what is it?),
•The Pentecostal sheaves and loaf,
•The prophet's raven-borne food express,
•The 200 loaves that averted a civil war,
•The feeding of 5,000 (with the help of a boy),
•The upper-room ministry.
In all these we see pre-figured God's provision for our needs-all of them-for time and for eternity.
And so He gives this loaf, this homely everyday loaf, for a memento to His friends. "Think of Me," says He, "when it shall be well with thee." Not a locked-away keepsake, mind you, but life-sustaining bread for real men.
“This is My body" how grand! How simple to faith. Where Martin Luther, steadfast in his iron resolve, insisted on "the real presence" in the loaf, simpler souls find reality in the symbols of Scripture. Faith throws open the curtains, shrugs off the darkness, and revels in the real Presence of the new day.
Whether eating our daily bread (Luke 11:33Give us day by day our daily bread. (Luke 11:3)), or at the Lord's-day bread breaking, the thoughts disciples linger still in the presence of that One, "'The bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die." John 6:5050This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. (John 6:50),
D. Lunden