Banquet

They are all perverse; they eat up my people as they eat bread. – Psalm 14:3-4 excerpt (NRSV) 

An ancient Greek myth tells the gruesome story of Thyestes, who slept with his brother’s wife. To punish him, brother Atreus slaughtered Thyestes’s little children and secretly served them to him at a banquet.  

The first Christians were accused of holding “Thyestean banquets,” because they consumed Christ’s Body in Communion. But a 2nd century bishop, Justin Martyr, refuted that charge. He argued that the myth was not so much about cannibalism, or even retribution, but about the way power erases the powerless.  

Atreus regarded his brother’s vulnerable children as completely dispensable. They were unreal to him, so he could do with them whatever he wanted. But Justin Martyr taught that Communion is a reality different from the world where the vulnerable are literally devoured. At the Christian Table, no one is unreal, instrumentalized, and consumed; instead, they’re seen, made real, and loved.  

That’s because in Communion we remember Jesus. And when we do, he’s with us truly, a “real presence.” The Victim whom the powers disappeared lives anew and rises to visibility. And all the disappeared victims of the world’s violence rise with him, because he is absolutely identified with them: “What you do to them, you do to me” (Matthew 25:40). 

Psalm 14 says the arrogant gorge themselves on power. No one is real to them but themselves. They don’t see or care who they victimize. “They eat up God’s people like bread.” 

Communion is the counter-meal to their wanton banquets. When we remember Jesus and feast on Love made bread, we do justice to history’s slaughtered victims: we see them, they’re real to us, they live.  

Tyranny wins when no one remembers. But we do. And as long as we do, it isn’t over. 

Prayer
Make us Communion’s dangerous memory in the world, so that the tyrants never feast again on the flesh and blood of the poor.

About the Author
Mary Luti is a long time seminary educator and pastor, author of Teresa of Avila’s Way and numerous articles, and founding member of The Daughters of Abraham, a national network of interfaith women’s book groups.