D. BENSON MARCH 6TH, 2016 – COMMUNION LENT 4 The Marriage Supper of the Lamb/The Great Wedding Banquet Isaiah 25: 6-10; John 2:1-11; Revelation 19:6-10 Living Faith 10.2: Our Hope in God

When I was 10 my best friend invited me to attend the wedding of one of her relatives. It was a traditional and typical Italian wedding. I don’t remember anything about the ceremony, but I remember the reception. What I remember most about the reception was the amount of food! I don’t think there has been a time since then that I have seen so much food. There were several “bottomless” courses and a buffet and a mid-dance meal and an end-of-the-reception snack. It was an unending feast of abundance. Every guest was given a gift for coming – which in my case, as the guest of a cousin, was a set of silver (yes, real silver) salad tongs. The gifts got fancier the closer a relative you were. Now, salad tongs weren’t all that exciting for a 10 year old (I still have them), but as I think back, if the most distant guests got silver salad tongs and the closer relatives got fancier gifts, and there were several hundred people at the reception – it was a pretty extravagant wedding reception and I can’t even begin to imagine what it cost.

When I think back on this event and on other banquets of abundance, I am reminded a little bit of how scripture describes the Messianic banquet. One of the most prominent images in scripture of the coming, final and perfected kingdom of God is the As we reflect on what kinds of images scripture offers with respect to the Messianic Banquet, also known as the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Isaiah mentions the coming Day of the Lord (OT language for the coming Kingdom of God) he imagines an abundant feast on the mountain of the Lord, brimming with the best foods and wines, of which the poor and oppressed and those who mourn will have their fill and be healed and satisfied (Isa 25. cf. Isa 55). The Psalmist speaks of God preparing a table of abundance in the presence of his enemies (Ps 23). Matthew and Luke picture the Messianic banquet in terms of a wedding feast in which the King invites everyone from far and wide (Matt 22; Lk 14). In our New Testament Apocalyptic literature, the church is pictured as the bride of Christ, who is clothed in beauty and lavishness as she comes to this wedding banquet as the beloved of God (Rev 19).

The Wedding at Cana is another biblical event which points us toward the great feast of the Kingdom of God. The Wedding at Cana was the first of the miracles/signs that Jesus performed which foreshadows not only the last supper where Jesus reveals just what kind of a Messiah he is, but also points ahead to that final feast in the kingdom of God. In those days, wine was a sign of the harvest, of God’s abundance, of joy and gladness and hospitality. To run short on wine was to run short on God’s blessing. To run out of wine only a few days into a week long party wasn’t just a social disaster for the host, this was a catastrophe of holy proportions. Thankfully, along comes Jesus who reveals that God’s blessing is never stingy. We are told that six jars were filled with the best wine – that’s somewhere between 500-800 litres of wine! Not just enough, but over-abundance.

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The wedding at Cana helps us imagine what God’s Marriage Supper of the Lamb might be like. This is a story of abundance and of surpassed expectations. When the steward was concerned that the party was going to be an utter social disaster because the wine ran out too soon, he discovered that the best was yet to come. When the guests were expecting the poorer wine, they got wine better than they had ever tasted.

For us too, the best is yet to come. While I preach often about the present reality of God’s kingdom among us, the present working out of God’s kingdom purposes through the Holy Spirit active in the church, we mustn’t overlook that the kingdom isn’t here yet in its fullness. We are still anticipating a great and endless banquet. A feast to top all feasts. A party to end all parties. We are still anticipating the Marriage Supper of the Lamb when the church, the bride of Christ, will finally be reunited with our Lord in the most profound and intimate way possible. Everywhere in scripture signs point us in this direction: where all are provided for with abundance, where goodness and grace overflow, where there is more than enough for all, and where the guests are given the seats of honour as God, the host, lavishes his love on his beloved. [Noteworthy also is the fact that scripture also speaks about which guests are worthy or righteous enough to attend the wedding banquet – which we will talk a little bit more about next week.]

In the meantime…

The Wedding at Cana shows us that the kingdom of God, while not yet here in its fullness, nonetheless is at hand. In Christ, the very presence of God among his people, the love of God does come close. The bride becomes betrothed to her bridegroom. They live preparing for their lives together, anticipating that wedding day when all will finally be realized. The wedding feast in Cana, for which Jesus provides abundantly, is where that great feast of the last day rubs up against us.

The celebration of the Lord’s Supper is also an occasion when the great feast of the last day rubs up against us here and now and where we anticipate the time when the great wedding banquet will take place. This meal is referred to as many things, which emphasize different aspects of what we are doing. Sometimes it is called the Lord’s Supper or the Last Supper, causing us to remember the last meal that Jesus shared with his friends and anticipating the healing that is brought by his death. Sometimes it is called the Eucharist, which literally means “thanksgiving” – the meal wherein we remember and give thanks for God’s saving work on the cross. Sometimes we call it communion, where we emphasize the sharing of the body and blood of Christ in such a way that we experience intimate fellowship with God and with one another. But no matter what we call it or what we choose to emphasize, this meal is always a sign and a foretaste of the wedding feast to come.

2 D. BENSON MARCH 6TH, 2016 – COMMUNION LENT 4 In this in-between time, this meal, as our way of participating in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, is the best of God’s glory made tangible and taste-able for us. This is why it is a sacrament. These little pieces of bread and this wee tiny cup of juice point us forward to the day when we will be filled to overflowing with the water of life that never runs out and the food of God that heals and satisfies. As we eat this meal we do it together, as one body. Not as isolated individuals with our own private relationship with God, but as a community of God’s people who have a common purpose, a common Spirit, a common beginning and a common end (it is communion after all). As we gather around this table we anticipate, and wait like an eager bride awaiting her bridegroom, the coming of our Lord and the establishment of the New Heaven and the New Earth.

This meal might be made of common stuff, but it isn’t a common meal. It’s a taste of God’s glory here and now, and much more profoundly in the age to come. All who are thirsty come. All who hunger, come and be filled. For there is no hunger or thirst that God cannot satisfy.

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