COME AND TASTE, A Weekly Reflection by Pastor Lap Dinh on Psalms 34–36; 1 Corinthians 11

We know how to be present without being fed. We show up. We go through the motions of the meal, the song, the prayer, and we leave as empty as we came, because somewhere along the way, we started treating the things of God as a routine to get through rather than a table to sit at. Familiarity is a quiet thief. It can steal a feast right out from under us.

David will not let us settle for that. He grabs us by the collar with an imperative: "Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him" (Ps. 34:8). Taste. Not analyze. Not attend. Taste. He is talking about God the way you talk about food you cannot wait to eat. And it gets more extravagant in the next psalm: "They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life" (Ps. 36:8–9). A house with a river running through it. A fountain that does not run dry. That is what God is offering, and we keep coming to church like people picking at crumbs.

Then Paul takes us to the one table where "taste and see" stops being poetry and becomes bread on the tongue. "The Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, 'This is my body, which is for you'" (1 Cor. 11:23–24). For you. The goodness of the Lord is no longer an idea to consider; it is a body broken and a cup poured, placed into our hands. This is the taste. This is the fountain. The Supper is Psalm 34 made edible.

And do you see what that makes the sin at Corinth? They took the fountain-of-life table and used it to humiliate the hungry. The rich ate and got drunk while the poor went without, "and so you humiliate those who have nothing" (1 Cor. 11:22). At the table where the crucified body is shared, they built a wall. Paul is furious, and he should be. You cannot proclaim a body broken for you while breaking the people for whom it was broken.

Lord, we have come to Your table and missed You. Forgive us.

So examine yourself, Paul says, and discern the body (1 Cor. 11:28–29). We turn that into morbid self-inspection, but that is not the point. To discern the body is to see the broken and the hungry beside us and refuse to feast without them. And here is the mercy in it: this table is not for the impressive. Listen to who it is for. "The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit" (Ps. 34:18). If you are crushed today, you are exactly who the table is set for. Come and taste.

Lord, we are tired of picking at crumbs when You have set a feast. Open our mouths and let us actually taste that You are good. Break our divisions at the very table where Your body was broken, and draw the hungry and the crushed close. We come not because we are worthy but because You are good. Amen.

Have we been attending the feast without tasting it?  And who is hungry beside us that we have been feasting without?