Summary
The Pattern: Teaching and Meal in Luke 24
Patterns shape the world around us—in clothing, mathematics, music, architecture, literature, and speech. Patterns involve repetition, arrangement, and sequence, and Scripture itself is woven through with them. One pattern in particular runs through the Gospel of Luke and breaks the surface beautifully on the road to Emmaus: Jesus and tables, teaching and meal.
Table fellowship in the ancient Near East was no small thing. To invite someone to dinner, and to have that invitation received, signified unity, friendship, and covenant. The pattern reaches back to Abraham and Sarah hosting the three visitors in Genesis 18, to the Passover meal that marked Israel's deliverance from Egypt, and to the meals woven into tabernacle and temple worship. Meals and the covenants of God belong together.
In Luke's Gospel, Jesus dines with four kinds of people: Pharisees, tax collectors, sinners, and disciples. And every table scene in Luke carries the same shape—a meal joined to teaching. At Levi's banquet Luke 5, Jesus reclines with tax collectors and answers questions about fasting with the parable of the bridegroom. At the Pharisee's house Luke 7, a sinful woman anoints His feet, and Jesus teaches about forgiveness and love. At Zacchaeus's house Luke 19, the meal becomes the setting for the proclamation, "Today salvation has come to this house... for the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." Table and teaching, teaching and table.
The Emmaus account in Luke 24 shows the pattern in its clearest form. Two disciples walk seven miles from Jerusalem with a false Christology—a Messiah who would conquer Rome and never be killed. Jesus, unrecognized, walks alongside them and teaches: "beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" Luke 24:27. That is the teaching. Then comes the meal: "When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him" Luke 24:30-31. The risen Christ is recognized at the table. That is the pattern.
This is why Lutheran worship, amid all its weekly variety of hymns, texts, and sermons, has always been understood in two great parts: Word and Sacrament. The teaching of God and the meal of God belong together. When Jesus instituted the Supper, He did not say, "Let this bread signify my body," or "Let this wine remind you of my blood." He said, "This is my body... this is my blood." In, with, and under the bread and wine, the resurrected Christ is truly present, and we receive Him.
Who is worthy of such a meal? No one—measured by sin of thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and left undone, by the condition described in Psalm 51. And yet the comfort of Luke 15:2 lands squarely on us: "This man receives sinners and eats with them." That is precisely where we fit. The beautiful Savior, who bore all our sin on the cross and rose victorious, washes us once in the waters of Baptism and then places forgiveness into our mouths again and again at His table—a tangible Gospel.
The pattern is pervasive. It runs through the Scriptures, through the Lord's Day liturgy, and through every day of the Christian life: Word and meal, teaching and table, the risen Christ giving Himself to His people. And by His grace, you have been woven in.
Video citations
- "The Pattern" 5-7-23 — Let us pray. Indeed, beautiful you are, O Lord. Our beautiful Savior. You have brought us here this morning and you bring forth from our lips the words of praise, the words of praise of your beauty.…