A Table of Abundance

This morning we’ve considered how Paul employs the metaphor of an overflowing cup to describe the thanksgiving that should characterize our lives as Christians. This image of abundance and excess is a common description of the covenantal blessings of God. For instance God told the Israelites that if they would honor him in the tithe, their vats would overflow with new wine (Prov. 3:9). In particular, he promised a coming age when the mountains would drip with sweet wine and all this hills shall flow with it (Amos 9:13-14). That age has arrived with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh to establish the mountain of the Lord’s house in the earth, which is the Church. And in this mountain, which is the Church, the Lord says that he has prepared an abundant feast for all peoples, a feast of wine and fatness (Is. 25:6). This feast is a sign of God’s blessing and favor and a picture of the abundant life that he desires to communicate to his people. Even so as you participate in this Eucharistic feast, God desires to fill you with the abundance of his grace in Jesus Christ. And as you receive the abundance of God’s grace at this Table, he desires that abundance to spill out into the rest of your lives in the form of gratitude. He wants to make you a thankful people, a Eucharistic people. A people marked and defined by grace and gratitude. This characteristic is largely absent from our culture. As Americans we are by and large a spoiled and ungrateful people. You are called to be different. You are called to be a grateful people who live out of the abundance of God’s grace. A people who are always able to give thanks for the blessings bestowed upon you in Jesus Christ. This Table forms you to be such a people. So come to this table of grace and gratitude!