There is something else about Antioch you need to know. Why do we remember Antioch? It was at Antioch — not Jerusalem, not Damascus, not Rome — but at Antioch that they were first called Christianoi. It was in Antioch that Jesus’ followers were called Christians. Why? What had they been called back in Jerusalem? Well, we do not know for sure everything they had been called, probably some bad names, but along with that they were known as followers of the Way. Luke tells us this in Acts 22:4. Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, the Life.” That is how the earliest Christians were known: followers of the Way.
Yet at Antioch the followers of the Way became known as Christianoi — the Christians. Those who look and act and walk and talk and dress and smell and eat and live in the way that Jesus did all those things. A Christian is one who is living in the light of Jesus Christ, one in whom Jesus’ lifestyle is reflected to those around in the surrounding world. Someone in whom Jesus can be seen. That is what a Christian is.
What would have made the citizens of Antioch call the Way-people after the name of Christ? Well, I think one of the main things was the fact that Jesus used to eat with sinners. He told about that great eschatological banquet that was going to be at the end of the age when people were coming from the east, and the west, and the north, and the south, and that Father Abraham would be there. Everybody would be there and they would all sit together at that great banquet table. Jesus’ meals prefigured the marriage supper of the Lamb.
There is a lot about eating in the New Testament. Did you ever realize that? We do not think much about it anymore; breaking bread, buying bread. We go to the store, we buy a loaf of bread. It is no big deal. There is a lot of bread around to be bought. That was not true in the ancient world. Bread was a scarce commodity. People had to work hard with their hands, the sweat of their face to bring forth bread from the earth. To share a meal, to break bread together, was to share your very life with somebody else. It was not a casual thing.
The Christians of Antioch would come together and break bread together at a common table, at a love feast called the agape meal. And they broke bread again together in a most special way at the Holy Supper of the Lord Jesus when they remembered what Jesus had said, “This is my body broken for you. This is my blood shed for you.” But now there is the drawback. It is not that Peter had changed his mind about this. Rather, he had buckled under pressure. That was the problem. There was nothing wrong with Peter’s conviction. What was wrong was his lack of courage. The drawback. This leads us to