The Trinitarian Blessing and the Love Feast
St. Paul’s Trinitarian Blessing
“May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
The love of God,
And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
Be with all of you. Amen.” (2 Corinthians 13:14).
One inescapable truth from this Blessing is that it can be sung in three-part harmony: The Person of Jesus Christ the Anointed One is the world’s source of grace, and the Person of God the Father is the world’s source of love, and the Person of the Holy Spirit is the world’s source of fellowship.
The Grace of Jesus Christ: The Greek word here for “grace’ is the tremendously rich word of “charis,” which is pronounced either “care-iss.” This important biblical word was adopted from Greek mythology, and it means: undeserved favor; the gift of good will; unmerited kindness; the unexpected spiritual blessing that brings delight and pleasure; a free gift of acceptance with no strings attached. This is the dictionary version, the basic concept. This biblical grace is an absolute truth, and so grace exists whether or not we choose to accept it. But it is an abstract truth unless we make it a living truth in our Christian walk. Grace is intended to be a personal experience that is lived into and fleshed out. Grace is the exhale after the inhale of Jesus into one’s life. Grace cannot be a product of will power, because one has to tap into the source of grace in order to demonstrate it to others. The life and death and resurrection of Christ was an act of pure grace, a voluntary act of profound favor towards us, as if we actually deserved it. Jesus pioneered the way of grace for us by touching the untouchable, accepting the unacceptable, providing spiritual blessings for those who were spiritually empty. Through His gracious sacrifice, Jesus declared us righteous, despite the evidence to the contrary. The Cross extended mercy to all of us, who didn’t even come close to deserving fairness or the benefit of the doubt. The death of Christ weighted the scales in our favor, even though we have been weighed and found wanting. The Cross was an act of pure grace, the ultimate in offering undeserved favor on mankind. Every person on earth has already been offered this grace and have only to accept it as true to make it the first part of God’s rescue operation. If we hoard this grace and don’t find an outlet for it, we become a Dead Sea Christian. If we allow grace to overflow our hearts and is offered to others, then we would be a Jordan River Christian providing fresh water to all we meet. Jesus Messiah is the only possible source of grace in this world, and His intention is that we participate in His grace and flood the earth with a clear picture of what the grace of Christ looks like… Loving the unlovable.
The Love of God. The particular kind of love Paul points us to in this Trinitarian Blessing is agape love. It is the same love that the Father and the Son share. It is the highest form of love, and can only come from the heart of God Himself. Agape love is the supreme of all the loves, and desires the highest good of someone else. Agape is “the highest level of love known to humanity” (C. S. Lewis), and thus can only come from above with God as its source. Agape love is the ultimate expression of God’s nature, the essence of His character (see Exodus 34). Agape love is not Eros, which is romantic love. It is not Phileo, which is brotherly love. It is not Storge, which is family love. God is truly the source of all these other loves, but it is only agape love that is poured into our hearts from the Holy Spirit, to those who believe in Christ. The most virtuous person on the planet cannot manufacture agape love as if it’s merely a highly esteemed trait. We don’t have it in us. We aren’t born with the ability to show agape love. It is impossible for us to demonstrate agape love on our own, because it can only derive from God, and not from human nature. Agape love is the supreme Fruit of the Spirit, and can only be produced in us through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. “For we know how dearly God loves us, because He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with love; God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom He has given us; We can now experience the endless love of God cascading into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who lives in us!” (Romans 5:5). This divine love being poured into our hearts is meant to be demonstrated to others through sacrificial acts of kindness and compassion. This love, this affectionate regard of others, is deliberate and intentional. Agape love spills over from our hearts only after being poured into our hearts. Through the Holy Spirit, agape love can realistically become second nature to us and in us, by displacing the old loves in a Christian’s life, the love of money and things, of pleasure and self, of power, ego and attention. In some beautifully mysterious way, the loyal, unconditional love in us from above is somehow completed when Christians love others. Agape love is the means by which God’s love may reach the world. Agape love is an eternal virtue, and will still be in operation after faith and hope are rendered unnecessary in heaven (1 Cor. 13:8). Agape love is the divine Fruit offered to us to personally enjoy, and to spread God’s affectionate acceptance to others. Love poured into us, love splashed out to others. “So now I am giving you a new commandment: Agape-Love each other. Just as I have agape-loved you, you should agape-love each other.” (John 13:34-35).
The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit. The Trinitarian Blessing that closes Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians contains an interesting observation concerning the Holy Spirit. The Greek term “Hagiou” is used for Holy, and it means sacred, different from the world, as well as unique in likeness to the Lord God. The Greek word for Spirit is “Pneumatos,” and can mean wind, breath or spirit, and is always capitalized when referring to the third Person of the Trinity. After praying for them to be blessed in the grace of Jesus Christ and the love of God, Paul completes the blessing by praying that they would experience the “koinonia” of the Holy Spirit. Koinonia is another rich Greek biblical term, meaning communion, participation in, companionship, intimate partnership with, deep fellowship with. We are not only joined into the community of the Trinity through the Spirit, but we are plugged into a profound fellowship with other believers as well. There would be no intimate friendship with other believers were it not for the source of all communion, the interwoven unity of the triune God. We are one with other believers only because of our oneness with the Trinity. Believers are welcomed into the relationship of the Trinity, and through that spiritual source of oneness we have the possibility of intimate fellowship with fellow believers. The Holy Spirit dwells within us, along with the Father and the Son, and thus we are able to live inside the Trinity while the Trinity lives within us and we live within the community of believers. The Holy Spirit, our true Companion, our intimate Friend “who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24).
The Agape Feast. Soon after Jesus returned to His heavenly home to be with the Father, the Christ-followers began to adopt various aspects of the life they shared with Him, to remember His life and ministry on earth, to strengthen their faith in Him, to grow into Hus life and dwell in Him during His absence. The first believers in Jesus found a way to put Paul’s Blessing into practice… the Love Feast, a centerpiece of their communal life with a weekly meal together. They called this potluck dinner “the Agape,” or the Love Feast. It’s fascinating to consider that the Agape meal was central to their worship together as they sought to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. Every week in their house churches, they enjoyed each other’s presence around the table sharing a meal. According to early church documents like the Didache, the Agape meal was their community dinner where everyone brought foods to share, including with those visitors and interested parties who were not Christians. The Love Feast was their regularly scheduled time to bond, a time when they could participate in an activity that was filled with the Spirit of Jesus. The usual order of events was to meet together for the meal in one of the house churches, and towards the end of the meal they would worship through the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. The Agape was significant in the life of the early church for many reasons:
- When the early believers in Christ decided to call this communal meal “the Agape,” it was the logical thing to do. One of Jesus’ favorite words was agape, it defined His identity and mission and ministry. Everyone knew that if you wanted to follow Jesus, if you truly wanted to live in Christ, then agape would become your lifestyle of choice, your identity as a Christ-follower. I have my doubts that the Apostles got together and brainstormed a list of possible titles for their worship meal together, and then rolled the dice, and settled on Agape because it seemed like there was nothing better to use. The Apostles knew Jesus better than anyone, and so what other word best describes their Savior? Agape was the only option. Jesus urged them all to love each other the way He loved them! Agape, all the way.
- The Love Feast continued the high value that Jesus placed on sharing meals. Christ was indeed the King of the Table and Lord of the Feast during His ministry. He enjoyed the interaction around the table, the opportunity to rub shoulders with a wide variety of people, everyone from Matthew’s outcasts to the leaders of the Pharisees. Sharing a meal in that culture was a sign of acceptance and respect and friendship, which of course characterized Jesus quite well. And too, many of Christ’s parables focused on the meal and food and the joyful act of sharing food together, such as the Wedding Feast in 22:1-14; the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-31, and the Great Supper in Luke 14:15-24. Eating a meal together as believers might even seem like they were stepping into one of Jesus’ stories. One would expect that many fond memories would be recalled of simply eating with Jesus, whether around a table or around the campfire. Jesus’ fondness for food and fellowship around the table was well known, and He even developed a reputation with the religious establishment as “a glutton and a winebibber.” (Luke 7:34). Eating together brought joy to Jesus, and so it’s no surprise that it brought joy to His followers as well.
- The Agape meal was a natural lead-in to the high point of the worship service, the Lord’s Supper. The communal meal led perfectly into Communion, which is the ultimate Love Feast. In their life together, the Christians earnestly “broke bread” together in the Eucharist in remembrance of the Savior, and as an act of obedience to what He instructed the disciples to do when He was gone from their midst. What better way to live into the Presence of Christ than to go from sharing bread and wine together to partaking of the Body and the Blood together?
- One New Testament scholar observed that the Agape feast was enjoyed in the spirit of Christ’s parable of the Great Supper in Luke 14:13-24. In this story, the generous host asked his servants to invite “the poor and the crippled, the lame and the blind.” And while you’re at it, the host said, don’t forget to go out into the highways and byways and hedges and invite complete strangers and traveling foreigners to come and eat with us. After all, the host wanted to spread the joy and the festivity, and he wanted his house to be full of guests hunkered around a hearty meal. Perhaps the Great Supper story was the prototype for the Agape meal?
- The Agape was a prime example of what Jesus valued so highly… Fellowship! As mentioned above, the Greek word for that idea is “koinonia,” and it came into play first in Acts 2:42, 46, 47: “All the believers devoted themselves to the teaching of the Apostles, to fellowship (Koinonia), to sharing meals including the Lord’s Supper (“breaking of the bread”), and to prayer. They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and they shared their meals with great joy and generosity – all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.” Koinonia is a term that only applies to spiritual matters, and it means fellowship, joint participation, mutual companionship, shard partnership, togetherness at a deep level. Koinonia happens when people share something in common that bonds them together. And certainly the followers of Jesus had a lot to share together… their new life in Christ; their need to build each other up; a desire to forge spiritual relationships; offer support and encouragement for each other; material blessings like food, clothes, sustenance; the profound spiritual blessings to rejoice in together like their common forgiveness in Christ, their destiny in the New Kingdom with Jesus; the amazing blessing of having the Holy Spirit, the very Spirit of Jesus, in their midst; and the “fellowship of suffering” (Philippians 3:10) that all Christians shared as they picked up their cross daily and followed Jesus.
- The Love Feasts reminded all the early believers that they would have no fellowship at all were it not first for their fellowship with God. The shared companionship of the believers was rooted in their intimate fellowship with God. “We are declaring to you what we have seen and heard, so that we may have fellowship (koinonia) with you. For truly, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ”(1 John 1:3). In other words, the union that the believers experienced together at the Agape meals is impossible without their primary union with Christ. The community they celebrate together is based on their togetherness with Jesus. We are first called to be partners with Christ, companions with Christ, which then allows us to experience koinonia with God and each other. Communion with God is the source for communion with each other. The relationship with God enables us to enjoy relationships with each other. The agape meal joined with the Lord’s Supper confirms that important truth… “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we then have fellowship with one another.” (1 John1:7).
If the Agape was so crucial in the life of the early church, why did it disappear after a couple of hundred years? Those intimate connections and sweet fellowship enjoyed in the name of Christ were evidently difficult to maintain. In 1Corinthians 11, Paul outlines his complaints as to how some in the Corinthian church were treating their koinonia. He accused them of being divisive and separating into little exclusive groups. Many were disinterested in the Eucharist and didn’t bother participating. Some ate their agape meal hurriedly so they could hoard their food, keeping it to themselves, instead of sharing with the hungry in the congregation. Some of the church actually came drunk to the agape meal, or even got drunk there, and thereby disgracing the Lord during what is intended to be a sacred time together. So the Love Feast became anything but that, with selfishness and drunkenness and divisiveness present, hardly the holy preparation for the Eucharist that was expected. Because of abuses like these in the early church, the Communion service was separated from the Agape meal. By the early 300’s, the Eucharist remained a crucial part of their worship and their life as believers, but the Love Feast was dropped. What once was a mainstay in the worship of the early church became a distant memory. Thankfully, many churches and even whole denominations are attempting to resurrect this wonderful Christian tradition. Wouldn’t it be glorious if this Christ-centered community-builder were somehow revived?
I love this Trinity song, it hits me in the gut every time… “Father, you found me; Jesus my Lord, you’re all around me, Sweet Holy Spirit, you’re all around me.” The final moments of this song done live is the singer’s impassioned, heartfelt declaration, “Father you found me!” I love that.