Tasting God in Worship

The worship of our holy God engages our senses, for we are embodied beings who interact with creation via our sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell. We have briefly considered the sense of hearing in worship by looking at what Scripture says about music. Today we will consider the use of taste in worship.

When we look at the history of God’s people, we see that taste has always played an important role in corporate worship. For instance, feasts were central to life in the old covenant. The Old Testament prescribes several feasts and festivals for God’s people (see e.g., Lev. 23), and we have seen in our study of Exodus that all Israelites had to make a pilgrimage to Israel three times a year to celebrate the feasts of Unleavened Bread (including Passover), Pentecost (or Harvest), and Weeks (or Ingathering) (Ex. 23:14–17). Notably, much is said about the tastes that were to be present in the Feast of Passover, which celebrated the foundational act of salvation in the Old Testament, the exodus from Egypt. Exodus 12, for instance, mandates that Passover be celebrated with roast lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs (Ex. 12:8).

God mandates only one feast for the new covenant church—namely, the Lord’s Supper. In the Lord’s Supper, through the giving and receiving of bread and wine, Christ’s death is shown forth and we feed on Him in a spiritual manner, as Westminster Shorter Catechism 96 tells us. When Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, He gave us bread and wine (Luke 22:14–20), and consuming these elements engages our senses—taste primarily but sight and touch as well. Bread is often used in Scripture as a metaphor for daily physical sustenance. For example, when Jesus prays for God to give us our “daily bread” (Matt. 6:11), it is a request for the basic elements of life, especially food. The bread in the Lord’s Supper reminds us that we need Jesus to live, that His death for us sustains us for all eternity. When we taste it, we recall the nourishment that He provides us, not only in sustaining our physical life but also in granting us life eternal.

Wine has a bitter taste, so it helps us recall the bitterness of Christ’s death as He bore the curse on sin (Gal. 3:13). Scripture also tells us that wine is a gift of the Lord given to gladden our hearts (Ps. 104:14–15). So in the Lord’s Supper we are also engaging in a celebration. We are rejoicing in the victory of Christ over death and looking forward to His glorious return.