If there is one communion hymn that virtually everyone in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod knows in some way, it is “I Come, O Savior, to Thy Table.” You might have grown up singing it in a large stone church with clouds of incense, in a little wooden Gothic church in the middle of a cornfield, or in a drywall box at the unspeakably early “traditional” service before the praise band rolls in to take on the late service. You might have even sung it with a praise band. But if you grew up in the LCMS, you almost undoubtedly know it. The repetition of “Lord, may Thy body and Thy blood / Be for my soul the highest good” on every verse certainly helps to cement it in the mind and heart from an early age. I certainly remember singing all fifteen stanzas (on red hymnal Sundays) in my youth.

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Yes, we live in a culture that is indeed “uncomfortable with feasting.” And the “obesity rate” actually proves it. For that is not “feasting,” but rather “gluttony.” And the confusion dates all the way back to when our Lord was mocked as a “glutton and drunkard” for simply doing what we in South Louisiana do at Mardi Gras: proper feasting.