All this talk of kingdom and Abrahamic covenant and messianic banquet and meals and the church community should, quite naturally, lead one to consider the practice and the table of communion. As has been well-demonstrated, meals and their structure were an important component of the wider world in which Jesus lived in that, in the wider culture, the outworkings of shame and honor and social standing were on ready display at tables. To go along with that, meals were obviously a vital component of the faith (using this word in its religious context while acknowledging that there would be no separation from all components of life---economic, political, social, cultural, etc…) which Jesus held, as the life of the people of God was oriented around feasts. This can be seen in the great Sabbaths (Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles, Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Pentecost), the weekly sabbaths, in the adoption of non-Mosaic law feasts such as Hanukah (the Maccabees & Judith) and Purim (Esther), and even in the fact that Jesus tells a number of parables that involve feasts.
The very fact that the Gospel writers make great effort to show Jesus at numerous tables as they sought to preserve the memory of His ministry for the early church community, and even the fact that the miraculous feeding of multitudes makes its way into all four of the Gospel accounts (which shines forth as a table with no discrimination, no hierarchy, no chief seat, and no lowest place), demonstrates the tangible significance of meals. Much more could be said about meals, of course. Just as we could continue on through Luke and John to provide an exhaustive presentation of Jesus at meal tables, we could also make our way through the whole of the Scriptures, highlighting the record of meals and the events associated with them. The Scriptural treatment of meals does not end with the Gospels, but continues right in to Acts and on in to the New Testament letters (all of which, with the exception of Revelation, were most likely written prior to the Gospels and therefore had a probable role in the shaping of the theologies to be found therein), and finds its way into letters within letters, as demonstrated by the mention of a meal, by Jesus, in the letter to the Laodicean church (as has been repeatedly referenced).
With so much Scriptural weight, and with so much of the weight of Jesus’ own ministry and sense of mission (especially because of the notion of the messianic banquet) resting upon meals, we should not be overly surprised that Jesus Himself institutes a particular type of meal for His followers. This meal, referred to by a variety of names, was a variation on already established “religious” meal practice. As was the case with the Passover (and really all of the other Mosaic feasts), in which the exodus-ing of God’s people was to be remembered, celebrated, and expected, this meal carried specific instructions as to what should be remembered and upon what Jesus’ disciples should reflect. Because Jesus is instituting this meal as the Messiah, the concepts surrounding the messianic banquet must be held in close association, so that a full comprehension of what was represented by this communion meal might be had.
We dare not detach the vision of the messianic banquet from the communion, for in so doing, we lose almost all sense of what Jesus desires to communicate to His disciples, and of what He expects from His followers as they attempt to live out the kingdom that He has faithfully and forcefully announced, and that He has routinely put on display. When and if such a detachment happens, we also lose a continuity of understanding with the earliest Christians. This break is unfortunate, as they were far more steeped within the same culture of Jesus, be it Greco-Roman culture or that of first century Judaism, and were therefore better able to see and to communicate the socially and culturally transcendent aspects of what Jesus had instituted, keeping the communion contained within both its heavenly and earthly parameters, rather than letting this meal spin off into a decidedly spiritual and esoteric plain in which the concrete aspects that it was intended to communicate about the nature and make-up of kingdom of God on earth (the coming together of heaven---God’s sphere of reality---and earth) is lost.
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