The Sacramental Nature of Shared Meals
On February 6, 1754, renowned Baptist pastor and theologian Andrew Fuller was born in the small village of Wicken in Cambridgeshire, England. On February 6, 2025, five historians met at Chuy’s in Louisville, Kentucky, to celebrate the 271st anniversary of his birth in what surely ranks high on the list of nerdiest dinner celebrations in history. Our dinner party was not the first group connected to the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to commemorate the occasion—just the latest.
Why do human beings always celebrate with a meal? What is it about food that makes consuming it together the most appropriate way to commemorate an occasion?
Think about it. We celebrate everything with a meal. Birthdays, funerals, graduations, anniversaries, engagements, promotions, holidays—all excuses to gather and eat and drink.
This tradition has ancient roots. After the LORD redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt, he told Moses: “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast” (Exodus 12:14). God commanded his people to remember the Exodus redemption by celebrating the Passover meal every year.
Here’s my theory: all shared meals are sacramental in the sense that sharing the meal signifies something more significant that we share with the people around the table. Hans Boersma defines a sacramental mindset as one “in which the realities of this-worldly existence point to greater, eternal realities in which [a group] sacramentally shares.” While not every shared meal points to eternal realities per se, every shared meal does point to more significant shared realities.
Our meal at Chuy’s? We all share an appreciation for the life and legacy of Andrew Fuller and have been shaped by his example and writings. The meal we shared represented a more meaningful reality—mutual gratitude for a historical figure. Even two lonely co-workers who decide to sit with one another and converse at lunch in the cafeteria to avoid sitting alone share something more significant than the food they consume—they are both alone and want some company. Shared meals are sacramental in the sense that the meal serves as a stand-in for something more significant.
Sometimes the meal becomes the occasion for discovering that we share more than we knew. For example, when I was in the sixth grade, we invited our grandparents to school for a Thanksgiving lunch. Naturally, I got a seat beside the girl I liked. When my MaMa arrived and saw my crush’s grandfather, they excitedly hugged each other. Come to find out, they were siblings. My crush was my cousin! That shared meal took on significance I never anticipated. It also ended a middle school romance before it ever got started, overturning rumors about the dating habits of South Alabamians in the process.
Every Sunday night, small groups from my church meet at various houses in our community. They share a meal, but that meal signifies much deeper commonalities. In many ways, it signifies shared lives as those group members show up each week to encourage, exhort, and pray together. When needs arise, group members line up to meet them. The weekly shared meal represents weekly shared lives.
Of course, the Lord’s Supper is the most significant sacramental meal and one that certainly points to eternal realities. We gather each Lord’s Day to consume the bread and the cup together, signifying that we share redemption found exclusively in Jesus’s body broken and blood poured out. As we share the meal, we know it’s a stand-in for so much more—we share Christ. And in Christ, we share everything—identity, inheritance, destiny, and family.
We deepen our share in Christ as we consume the meal. Paul writes, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of one bread” (1 Cor 10:16-17).
If you share Christ, you won’t want to miss the weekly shared meal that proclaims his death “until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26). It represents everything we already share in Christ. But it might lead you to discover deeper shared realities you’ve not yet grasped. See you at the table.
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