We Have Not Eaten Together Yet

There is a seat at your grandmother's table that nobody sits in anymore.

You know the one. The chair that was always his, always hers. The place that still gets set out of habit sometimes because the hands that laid the table for forty years have not quite caught up with the heart that knows that person is gone. The empty chair does not just represent loss. It represents a meal that is not finished yet. A conversation that got interrupted. A table that is still waiting for everyone to be back together.

Every family has a version of that chair. And if you listen closely, the Lord's Supper is the Church's answer to it.

The night before He was crucified, Jesus sat down with His disciples for the Passover meal. It was not a new ritual. Jewish families had been celebrating Passover for over a thousand years, remembering the night God delivered Israel out of Egypt, setting a table in the shadow of death and calling it redemption.

But something new happened at this table. Jesus took the unleavened bread, broke it, and said: "This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me." (Luke 22:19) Then He took the cup of blessing after the meal and said: "This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood." (Luke 22:20)

And then He said something that tends to get overlooked in the weight of everything else: "I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom." (Matthew 26:29)

Stop there. Jesus was not just instituting a memorial. He was making a promise. He said: the next time I eat and drink at this table, it will be in the kingdom. We have not finished this meal yet. There is a cup that has not been poured. There is a table that has not been fully set. And I am coming back to sit at it with you.

That is the theology underneath every communion table in every church that has ever broken bread in His name.

The Apostle Paul put it plainly: "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes." (1 Corinthians 11:26) Three tenses live inside a single act. You remember what He did. You declare He is present now. And you announce that He is coming back. Past, present, and future in one cup. Backward-looking, present-experiencing, and forward-leaning all at the same time.

This is what the prophet Isaiah saw centuries before the night of the Last Supper. He described a day when "the LORD of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain; a banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow, and refined, aged wine. And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples, even the veil which is stretched over all nations. He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces." (Isaiah 25:6–8)

A banquet. For all peoples. On the mountain where God dwells. Death swallowed up. Tears wiped away. Not a metaphor for a nice church service. A meal. A real table with real seats. And every person who has ever been ransomed by the blood of Jesus has a place reserved.

Every time the Church takes communion, it is practicing for that table. It is saying: we remember where this started. We experience His presence now by the Spirit. And we are leaning forward toward the day when the meal is finally finished and the One who promised to come back takes His seat at the head of the table.

The Church of the Nazarene holds the Lord's Supper as a means of grace, open to all believers present. Not just members. Not just the long-tenured. Not just the ones who have it all together. All who believe. Because the Messianic Banquet Isaiah described was not a table for the qualified. It was a table for the ransomed. And Christ is present by His Spirit in the breaking of the bread, meeting His people right where they are, giving them what they cannot generate on their own.

That empty chair at your grandmother's table tells the truth about grief. The communion table tells the truth about hope. The meal is not over. The guest of honor is still coming. And the table is being set for something that death will not be able to interrupt.

The next time you take communion, do not rush through it. Do not treat it as a quiet moment between the offering and the sermon. Treat it as what it actually is: a declaration that you remember, a confession that He is here, and a promise that you are still watching and waiting for the One who said He would come back and finish what He started at that table in Jerusalem.

The bread is broken. The cup is poured. The meal is not finished yet.

Come, Lord Jesus.