LitBit: … gathering in solidarity and love was not a Christian innovation. Members of Roman collegia addressed each other as brethren and often held goods in common. What distinguished the Christian Eucharistic community was the way that it transcended natural and social divisions. In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female (Galatians 3.28).
William Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination, p.115f
Litbit: In the assembly, the preacher arises to bring to present articulation what the assembly is doing by gathering, reading Scripture, praying, and holding the meal on Sunday or on some other festival. Indeed, the juxtaposition of this sermon to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper makes it most clear that this a word that is to be eaten and drunk in faith, just as that is a meal that “preaches”, that makes proclamation into present need.”
Gordon Lathrop, The pastor, p47.
LitBit: Christianity came into existence as a meal fellowship. when it is healthy, Christianity is a meal fellowship still.
Gordon Lathrop, The pastor, p62.
LitBit: Christianity is a meal fellowship. The meal of the Word, the Word of the meal is itself a witness to the world of God’s love for the world, is itself the very mission of God in the world.
Gordon Lathrop, The pastor, p64.
LitBit: Christianity is a meal. Its leaders are table servers. Let beggars come.
Gordon Lathrop, The pastor, p73.
LitBit: In the Eucharist, the pastor stands at the table and gives thanks, proclaiming how this food and all food comes from God, proclaiming the mystery of God now using this food to give us life through Jesus Christ, begging the Spirit to form us in the sharing of food.
Gordon Lathrop, The pastor, p71.
LitBit: The Eucharist reminds us of the need for honest repentance – of the need to confront our capacity to betray and forget the gift we have been given. And that is why the Eucharist is not, in Christian practice, a reward for good behaviour; it is the food we need to prevent ourselves from starving as a result of our own self-enclosure and self-absorption, our pride and our forgetfulness.
Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.52f
LitBit: [The Eucharist] is, as some modern Christian thinkers have said, what makes the Church what it really is. For that short time, when we gather as God’s guest at God’s table, the Church becomes what it is meant to be – a community of strangers who have become guests together and are listening together to the invitation of God.
Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.58
LitBit: Sometimes, after receiving Holy Communion, as I look around a congregation, large or small, I have a sensation I can only sum up as this is it – this is the moment when people see one another and the world properly: when they are filled with the Holy Spirit and when they are equipped to go and do God’s work. It may last only a few seconds but there it is. It has happened and it happens again and again. And what is the appropriate response? …thanksgiving.
Rowan Williams, Being Christian, p.58
LitBit: The Eucharist reminds us of the need for honest repentance – of the need to confront our capacity to betray and forget the gift we have been given. And that is why the Eucharist is not, in Christian practice, a reward for good behaviour; it is the food we need to prevent ourselves from starving as a result of our own self-enclosure and self-absorption, our pride and our forgetfulness.
Rowan Williams, Being Christian p.52f