In the beginning
If you were to ask most Christadelphians today what a Christian meeting was like in the days of the apostles, you would probably get different answers. Some would probably answer that it consisted primarily of preaching and singing. Some might reply that it principally centered around the Memorial i.e. partaking of the bread and wine. Of course, both of these responses are partially right. However, a rather dominant part of apostolic worship that few Christians would think of today is that it actually centered around a meal.
That’s right — a meal! The early Christians referred to this meal as the agape. Even after the death of the apostles, the pre-Nicene Church continued to practice the agape or love feast. Yet, within a century or so after Constantine’s conversion in AD 312, this important part of apostolic worship totally disappeared.
For the origin of the love feast, we need to look no further than the Last Supper. “As they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body’ ” (Matt. 26:26). So the very first Memorial was instituted in the context of a meal. A meal continued to be the normal setting in which Christians met together for fellowship and worship. Acts 2:46 tells us: “Continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart.” The expression, “breaking bread,” no doubt includes the celebration of the Memorial. However, the phrase, “they ate their food with gladness” would also indicate that this was more than a memorial: it was also a meal.
Nowhere is this practice more clearly confirmed than in the well-known passage of 1Cor 11:20-34. Paul begins that passage by saying, “Therefore when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper. For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others; and one is hungry and another is drunk.” Now, this is obviously talking about more than just the Memorial. Nobody gets drunk from the small amount of wine taken in the service, nor is it credible that various persons would receive communion before others because they were hungry. No, Paul is obviously describing a meal — the love feast — that preceded the actual Memorial.
A love feast
Yet, that the Memorial was celebrated at the end of the love feast (or, as part of it) is quite clear from verses 23-30 of the passage from the Corinthians passage. In those verses, Paul expressly mentions Jesus taking bread and saying, “Take, eat; this is my body which is broken for you” (1 Cor. 11:24).
Another place in Scripture that describes eating as an integral part of a New Testament worship service is Acts 20:11, where it mentions: “When he had come up, had broken bread and eaten, and talked a long while, even till daybreak, he departed.” So Paul didn’t just preach; he also ate!
And, then, of course, there is the well-known reference in Jude, where Jude refers to those who are “spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves” (Jude 12). Here Jude uses the Greek word agape to refer to the “love feast”. It is clear that eating was a significant of what occurred, which was almost certainly what we would call a memorial service.
Jesus said: “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another” (John 13:34). But to love was not a new commandment! The whole of the divine law was comprehended in the concept of love for God, and for one’s neighbor. So what was the new commandment? Could it be that he was saying, “Keep the agape (the love feast) with one another, for by this, men will know that you are my disciples”? This was the new commandment!
Peter writes that “love (agape) shall cover a multitude of sins” (1 Pet 4:8). What is it that covers sins? Forgiveness. Because of our love for one another we can forgive another’s wrong; but is not Peter saying, “Be fervent in your love-feast (agape), for your love-feast shall cover a multitude of sins”? It is here, at the love-feast, that we have the opportunity to examine ourselves before our Savior, as at no other time. Even though God’s forgiveness is always available to the repentant sinner, it is at the Memorial Table, above all, that we are moved freely to confess these faults and seek the forgiveness that we sorely need. And in the early church this was a community meal as well as a communion.
The disappearance of the love feast
It is noticeable that nearly all Biblical scholars and early Christian writers are agreed on this matter: that New Testament worship consisted of the love feast, followed by preaching and the Memorial. Here is just one sample:
“In the opinion of the great majority of scholars, the agape was a meal at which not only bread and wine, but all kinds of viands were used, a meal which had the double purpose of satisfying hunger and thirst and giving expression to the sense of Christian brotherhood. At the end of this feast, bread and wine were taken according to the Lord’s command, and after thanksgiving to God were eaten and drunk in remembrance of Christ, and as a special means of communion with the Lord himself and through him with one another. The agape was thus related to the Memorial as Christ’s last Passover [was] to the Christian rite which he grafted upon it. It preceded and led up to the Memorial, and was quite distinct from it.”1
What happened to the love feast?
If the love feast was such an integral part of apostolic worship, why is it not still around today? The answer is that the apostolic pattern was eventually altered. Even though Jesus and his apostles handed down the model of having a common meal before the Memorial, some churches began changing this after the apostles died. During the second and third centuries, the agape was eventually separated from the Memorial. Churches began celebrating the Memorial in the morning and hosting the love feast in the evening.
Nevertheless, even though the agape and communion went their separate ways, the church continued to practice both of them until sometime after the time of Constantine. Perhaps the love feast would have continued on down to our times if the original apostolic pattern (holding the love feast and the Memorial together) had not been broken.
When we come to Justin Martyr (ca. A.D. 150), we find that in his account of church worship he does not mention the agape at all, but speaks of the Memorial as following a service which consisted of the reading of Scripture, prayers, and exhortation. Tertullian (ca. A.D. 200) testifies to the continued existence of the agape, but shows clearly that in the church of the West, the Memorial was no longer associated with it. In the East, the connection appears to have been longer maintained, but by and by the severance became universal; and though the agape continued for a long time to maintain itself as a social function of the Church, it gradually passed out of existence.
And what of the twentieth century? Since the early days of the gospel, fellowship has found its highest expression in the sharing of a meal — a meal characterized neither by grim austerity nor by convivial jollity, but by religious sincerity, wholesome talk, and cheerful friendliness; and since neither human nature nor the gospel have changed over the years, it would seem that present-day life in Christ can gain much from a similar activity.
And it does! For it can hardly be accident that a feature of Christadelphian fellowship meetings (“Fraternal Gatherings” or more commonly in North America “Study Weekends”) is shared meals. Yet how much more could that meal bring blessing to all if only it had become traditional to consecrate meal-time conversation to the Lord instead of to the gods of health, holidays, shopping, or gossip. But the early church’s Agape was a Love Feast only by virtue of its climax and conclusion — the poignant yet confident remembering of Jesus in Bread and Wine “until he come.” The Love Feast was the Holy Place by which access might be had to the Mercy Seat beyond the veil.
In our day
Looking back, I have experienced what I can, in retrospect, call a “Love Feast”. On a few occasions, I have shared a meal with a few other brethren, spent quite a long time discussing matters of the Truth, and concluded with a Memorial. These were indeed deeply spiritual occasions.
So how much is being lost in these days by the omission of the Love Feast? It is impossible to say. To make it a weekly function would probably be undesirable, even if it were possible. But to convene a meeting on such lines once or twice a year, with the ecclesia forewarned and suitably prepared, could hardly fail to bring a rich spiritual reward. Those who have been members of some small ecclesia where local circumstances have dictated the holding of a simple communal meal between Sunday services will know how much can be gained from good table-talk about Holy Scripture and the suffering and glory of Christ. From such a practice to the Agape itself is only a short step. In the Love Feast neither time nor place nor form are commanded, only unanimity of spirit. All that is forbidden is unseemliness; and its rules and regulations are summed up in its very name “Love”.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One