Breaking Bread

I love Acts 2:42. Most of the relational fellowships I visit go heavy on the “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” and not so much on the “breaking of bread”. When brothers and sisters sit at the same table, eat and fellowship, something supernatural happens. Relational fellowships work best when all four elements are well balanced. A recent (2022) book, simpler church by Roger Shenk, explores the four devotions found in Acts 2:42 and the two loves. An excerpt from his book, discussing the importance of breaking bread, is below. I have also linked four videos where Roger discusses the four devotions.

Two of my favorite words are “Let’s eat!” Eating together is one of the most meaningful human activities. It’s physical, but it’s also relational and spiritual. It’s fuel, but it’s also fellowship and fun. It conveys acceptance, commonality, and interdependence.

We feast together to celebrate. We share a meal together to connect. We sometimes even withhold a meal, as an act of self-discipline or sometimes to discipline others. Eating together is one of the most significant things we can do.

And especially for those of us who are following Jesus as Lord, and devoting ourselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, it just makes sense that we would also devote ourselves to breaking bread together.

It’s where faith and fellowship feast.

It’s good for eating to be part of meeting.

As we read the gospels, we see Jesus eating with his disciples in various situations, sometimes around a fire, or at someone’s house, or at feasts and banquets, and even a couple times having a picnic on a hillside with thousands-each time fueling his body to keep it alive, but also enjoying fellowship with others doing the same thing.

When Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God, he told parables about banquets and wedding feasts and guests, and described redemption as having the right to eat and drink at his table. The Pharisees complained that Jesus was eating and drinking with sinners, as if that was a bad thing, and Jesus said it was a good thing.

At the end of his life Jesus ate Passover again with his disciples and told them to keep doing it as a remembrance of him after his death.

Then, after he was resurrected, he ate a piece of fish in front of his disciples to prove he wasn’t a ghost.

Another time they didn’t recognize him until he broke bread, and then their eyes were opened.

And yet another time he made breakfast for them and spent time eating with them, and then went for an after-breakfast walk with Peter.

In fact, Luke started out his book of Acts with the resurrected Jesus eating with the disciples and telling them about the coming Holy Spirit.

And later, when giving testimony about his resurrection, the disciples don’t just say they saw him, they said specifically that they ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.

Eating together was a significant part of the disciples’ relationship with Jesus, and then, after he returned to heaven they kept on meeting to eat together as a part of their own fellowship.

We already read Acts 2:42 that “they devoted themselves to…the breaking of bread” and then, in verse 46, “They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.”

We should renew our devotion to that. We should practice that as part of our faith expression. We should eat together in each other’s homes more often, and do so with glad and sincere hearts as an expression of our faith and acceptance.

When we eat together we commend each other as worthy of fellowship. To eat with someone is to accept them, to approve of them.

I mean that socially to an extent, but I also mean it with regard to faith. In fact, it’s so significant that when Paul wrote about not tolerating wickedness in the church, he said we shouldn’t even eat with people who claim to be in the faith but live in wickedness. You can read it for yourself in 1 Corinthians 5. We won’t take time to study it here. I just mention it to note that refusing to eat with someone is such a powerful demonstration of disapproval because choosing to eat with someone is such a powerful demonstration of approval!

I believe we need to restore the practice of eating together as a devotion of our faith. When we meet, let’s take time to eat.