Counting Your Blessings: The Love Feast

When we hear the words ‘love feast’ today, we might imagine something from the sixties – flashy colors, platform shoes, and peace signs. But the love feast that John and Charles Wesley celebrated was a passionate part of the Evangelical Revival Movement that began in 1727 with Count Zinzendorf and the German Moravians. 

The believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching,

to the community, to their shared meals, and to their prayers.  Acts 2:42 CEB

They renewed the practice of the earliest Christian groups, who ate and worshipped together. This practice was called the agape meal from the Greek word which meant an inclusive and unconditional love.  John Wesley first experienced the Love Feast in Savannah, Georgia around 1737 with the Moravians who were working there as well. Wesley’s own diary notes: 

 After evening prayers, we joined with the Germans in one of the love-feasts. 

 It was begun and ended with thanksgiving and prayer, and celebrated in so 

 decent and solemn a manner as a Christian of the apostolic age would have 

 allowed to be worthy of Christ.

The practice grew among the early groups of Methodists and became an important part of the early

American Methodist movement.  Vital to the celebration was telling stories of how one was 

experiencing the transforming love of God in one’s life or in the life of others. Informal singing and  

sharing of bread with water – a simple meal – were also an important part of the celebration.

 

Thanksgiving is a day for us to celebrate how thankful we are for the blessings and the people in our lives. It might mean including the names of people you love in the prayer you say around the dinner table this week. It might mean going right up to someone you hold near and dear and saying, “I thank God for you!” and then telling that person why you are so thankful to God for him or her. It might mean giving a big bear hug or a hearty handshake to someone who is very special to you. 

 

Give thanks in every situation because this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Don’t suppress the Spirit.         I Thessalonians 5:18-19 CEB 

 

Perhaps you need to write a note to someone – perhaps you don’t know the words to say … Give them a warm fuzzy.  However you wish to do it, show people in some way how grateful you are for their presence in your life and then let the feast begin!