Feasting and Death
Reading the New Yorker recently, I came across a fantastic quote:
Doing a quick search online, I found that it is quoted nowhere else except here, by an actor and instructor of acting, on his blog. (Interesting blog, too.) I'd love to know the author of this quote, someone who is, apparently by the author of the article, a "philosopher."Without a killing, there is no feast.
But its significance to me goes beyond the field of acting or even philosophy.
Think for a moment: the Christian faith is compared to a feast. Themes of satisfaction, fullness of joy, and being filled (with the Holy Spirit, with grace, with love, etc.) abound.
What is remarkable is that this bounteous feast of grace has been prepared for us through the death (and resurrection) of Jesus. Even more remarkably, the one who prepared it, the Host, is the one whose death was required.
Reading elsewhere online, I came across this quote from Old Spurgeon, the famous 19th century Baptist pastor:
Gospel joys are elevating, they make men like angels. As in the gospel God comes down to men, so by the gospel men go up to God. I might also have shown you how absolutely peerless are the provisions of grace. There is no feast like that of the gospel, no meat like the flesh of Jesus, no drink like his blood, no joys like that which crowns the gospel feast. (Spurgeon on Isaiah 25:6)
