Christianity

Liturgy

The central focus of the liturgy of the early church was the Eucharist, which was interpreted as a fellowship meal with the resurrected Christ. Most expressions of Judaism at the time of Christ were dominated by an intense expectation, appropriated by the early Christian church, of the Kingdom of God, which would be inaugurated by the Messiah–Son of man. At the centre of Jesus’ preaching on the Kingdom of God is the promise that the blessed would “eat bread” with the exalted Messiah–Son of man (Luke 13:29). The Lord himself would serve the community of the Kingdom at the messianic meal (Luke 12:37 ff.), which bears the features of a wedding banquet. The basic mood in the community gathered about him is thus one of nuptial joy over the inauguration of the promised end time. The supper that Jesus celebrated with his disciples “on the night when he was betrayed” (1 Corinthians 11:23) inaugurated the heavenly meal that will be continued in the Kingdom of God, as Jesus indicated when he declared “I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my ... (200 of 126,827 words)