A Celebration Meal
Texts: Isaiah 25:6-10a; 26:19; Luke 14:12-15
Pastor Phil Hughes, American Fork Presbyterian Church, Utah
May 5, 2024
Resurrection Sunday was over a month ago. The world has moved on from what it calls Easter. But Christians are always living in the resurrection. It is the heart of our faith.
While the Resurrection is a New Testament thing, we find hints of it in the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament. The book of Isaiah is filled with messages preached by the prophet. And in the passage we read this morning Isaiah gives three vivid and descript actions that God will do.
First, Isaiah foresaw a day when the Lord would swallow up death forever.[1] Isaiah portrays death as a shroud. Shrouds were used to cover and wrap the dead. Isaiah pictures death as a sheet that is spread over all people and nations. God will take away that shroud and that sheet.
In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul picks up Isaiah’s vision in I Corinthians 15, which is a chapter all about the Resurrection, when he writes “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”[2] Death swallowed up like a whale swallows a minnow. Paul uses this vision from Isaiah.
Isaiah’s words, in and of themselves, do not specifically speak about resurrection. Just the end of death. It was Paul who makes the connection with resurrection for us.
Isaiah give a more explicit reference to resurrection when he then says in chapter 26, “Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise…and the earth will give birth to those long dead.” Because death will be swallowed up it will lose power over those it holds, and those who were dead will live.
Second, Isaiah says that when that happens the Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces. That’s the same thing we hear at the vision of the New Jerusalem at the end of the Bible in Revelation 21: “he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more.”[3]
Death gone. A distant memory. Not another funeral. Mortuaries out of business. No obituary pages. No body counts. We cannot imagine it.
Our tears come from pain and grief. Can you imagine no more pain? No more pain from missing loved ones? No more headaches, cancer, or arthritis? No more famines, hurricanes, or wars and the devastating pain they cause? No more pain from depression or broken relationships?
The Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces.
Thirdly, Isaiah says that at that time the Lord himself will take away the disgrace of his people. In Hebrew “disgrace” is a synonym for “guilt” and “contamination”. Earlier Isaiah says, “…a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt…”[4] The world is under the curse of sin. Kind of looks like that too, doesn’t it? Because of sin death has shrouded everyone and everything.
In Isaiah 25:8 it is announced that the Lord God himself will take away the disgrace, the guilt, the contamination, the curse. He will deal with it personally and permanently. God did this in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
He took our guilt and disgrace and contamination, bore it himself, and swallowed it forever on the cross and in the empty tomb. The curse has been broken. Those who come to God are not under the power of death.
The Lord himself has done this. There is no work for us to do except believe and trust. We don’t have to fill out any forms. We don’t have to go to any classes. We don’t defeat death. We only have to trust.
Isaiah foresees this swallowing up of death, the lifting of the shroud, the wiping away of tears, the taking away of the disgrace of the people will be celebrated with a meal. It says the Lord will make a feast of rich food for all people.
This week we got a promotional flier in the mail from a local Mortuary for a Pizza and Pre-planning Meeting. Come and eat pizza and do a little pre-planning for your death. I am all for pre-planning.
But the Bible gives a vision of food and life. Come and eat and plan for life. Resurrection and meals go together in the Bible.
Jesus, while sitting at a meal, says that when you host a dinner party don’t just invite the favored, but also invite the poor, physically disabled, and blind. But what I want us to hear in this is when Jesus says that if we do this we will be “repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” A resurrection is coming for all who are right with God. One of the dinner guests hears Jesus and says, “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God.” A meal.
Because of the words of those like Isaiah the Jews believed in a great Messianic banquet that celebrated the Messiah’s coming and the great in-breaking of God’s power.
Go forward to that great vision of the fulfillment of the kingdom of God in Revelation – when the swallowing up of death and the wiping away of every tear is celebrated – we hear of a great marriage supper of the Lamb.[5] The final coming of the kingdom of God will be celebrated with a banquet. A meal.
After Jesus rose from the dead he came alongside those two disciples on their way from Jerusalem to Emmaus. They did not recognize him. But when he sat at a meal table with them it says he took bread, blessed, broke it, and gave it to them. And then it says “Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him…” It happened at a meal.
They go back to Jerusalem and tell the others that the Lord has risen indeed.[6]
One time Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.”[7] Eating. A meal.
At what we call the Last Supper, the first Communion, the Lord’s Supper, Jesus tells his disciples that he has conferred on them a kingdom so that they may eat and drink at his table in his kingdom.[8] A meal.
Jesus even told them that he would not drink the cup of the Lord’s table until he does it with us in his kingdom. If Jesus is going to drink a cup with us in the kingdom that assumes he is alive to do this, it assumes a meal, and it assumes there will be a kingdom.
Banquets and feasts are times of joy and celebration and blessing. The swallowing of death, the wiping away of every tear, the victory of God and the coming kingdom are something to be celebrated.
In 1971, the Persian Empire celebrated its 2500th birthday as the Shah of Iran gave a four-day celebration costing $100 million. Imagine what it would cost now. The focal point of the event was a huge banquet. The banquet was held under a gigantic silk tent lighted with $840,000 worth of colored lights. The guest list matched the occasion: the Shah invited more than 600 dignitaries from 69 nations.[9] Brothers and sisters that banquet will pale in comparison to what God has in store. Like that man sitting at that dinner with Jesus said, “Blessed is anyone who eats bread in the kingdom of God!”
The kingdom is coming with celebration, joy untold, peace unimaginable. Jesus says it is like and indeed will be a banquet. We will eat and drink in celebration at the Lord’s table in that kingdom.
We look forward to that day and time but it is something we wait for. Something we are waiting for in hope. We still have pain. We still have tears. We still feel the sting of death. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the first fruits, the down payment, the guarantee of our hope. But we live in hope. We aren’t there yet.
Paul wrote about the waiting and the hope in Romans 8. He said I know we are living in a time of suffering but the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. People of God, there is a glory to be revealed to us beyond all imagining. Paul says we have the first fruits of the Spirit (remember Jesus is the first fruits of those risen from the dead). And we wait for the redemption of our bodies. He didn’t just write the redemption of our souls, but our bodies.
Human beings are body and spirit and in the world of glory the total person will be redeemed and saved. The body will no longer be a victim of decay and death. It will be a transformed resurrected body.
We are waiting for this. We are waiting in hope. “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”[10]
This waiting in hope is the picture of a person on the shore, who scans the horizon with head thrust forward eagerly searching the distance for the first signs of the dawn and the break of glory.[11] Yes, there the suffering of this present time, but “To Paul life was not a weary, defeated waiting; it was a throbbing, vivid expectation.”
It is a battle to keep hope as we live in the world of death and decay. Nevertheless, we don’t live only in the world, but we also live in Christ. We do not only see the world but we look beyond this world to God. He do not see only the consequences of people’s sin and rage but we see the power of God’s mercy and love. And because of this the keynote of the Christian life is always hope. We wait not for death but for life[12]
We need to live like it.
There was a wildly popular, best-selling book some years ago entitled “Your Best Life Now.” It sold like hotcakes. And far more people were listening to that guy who wrote it than me. Your Best Life Now. My thought is, “Man, I hope not.” I hope this isn’t as good as it gets. I hope this isn’t the best.
Even if it’s all good for me God save me from being so self-oriented that I’m content with my happiness when so many others are suffering. This world is groaning in decay. This can’t be our best life.
If I am going to be a disciple of Jesus then what happens to others needs to matter to me. First, because my life is tied in with others – Jesus called them “my neighbor” -and if I am going to be a disciple of Jesus then it isn’t just about getting mine. What happens and doesn’t happen to others needs to matter.
Second, because I am holding out and living in the hope for the promises of God. I want God’s best. My Best Life Now? – no way! Because I am waiting in hope for more, for something far more.
What I read in the Bible is “your best life in the kingdom,” with God, where death is no more. No, the best is yet to come.
A meal celebrates that. This table is a foretaste of that. Communion looks ahead to the resurrection of us all.
Many times weddings will have a great feast. Sometimes the bride and groom will go to a caterer and sample taste the food for the reception. They get just a bite or two. The full meal will come at the wedding. So this table is just the foretaste reminding us of what is to be.
Yes, one thing this table reminds us of is Jesus’ death on the cross and the awful price paid for our salvation. We do pretty well with the seriousness of this. We know how to be quiet and bow our heads and not be too happy.
But this table is also points us to the kingdom of God where the risen Lord Jesus whom death could not hold down awaits to celebrate with us. “I won’t drink of this cup until we are together where I am.” There is joy, delight, and celebration when we do this. We don’t have to be stern and super serious. Yes, be reverent but you can be reverent with joy.
Death has been swallowed up. So smile. Laugh. Hug someone.
Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!
On that day I want to be sitting at that table with my Lord.
I want to be in the kingdom banquet he promised us.
With all those resurrected in the Lord Jesus Christ, I want to see his nail-scarred hands break off a piece of bread for me.
I want to have the opportunity to pass him the potatoes.
I want to see the all the rich food – the ribs, the greens, the fresh blueberries, the impeccable pies that the Lord is going to provide.
I want to look at his resurrected, glorified body for myself and see him smile as he wipes his face for another bite.
I want to do this with him and all the resurrected in Christ, someday.
I want to be on the mountain, on that day, with the Lord, sharing in his resurrection, in his kingdom, eating with joy and celebration.
I want to say, as Isaiah said all God’s people will say on that day, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the LORD, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”
[1] The word for “destroy” and “swallow” is the same verb in Hebrew.
[2] I Cor. 15:54
[3] Rev. 21:4
[4] Isaiah 24:6
[5] Revelation 19:9
[6] Luke 24:
[7] John 6:54
[8] Luke 22:29-30
[9] Today in the Word, March 1989, p.31
[10] Romans 8:24,25
[11] William Barclay. The word he exposits is in v. 19 for “eager expectation” (apokaradokia).
[12] Barclay, Romans, p.111