If you have grown up or spent any amount of time within my heritage, you have undoubtedly heard someone talk about Jesus “instituting” the Lord’s Supper. It’s a dry, boring and official sounding word that lends itself to the thought that what Jesus was doing that night was giving them a new religious ritual to be done in their worship services. Personally, I think the way we talk about it and the way we “do” it misses the point.
This was a group of friends (one not so much) who came together for one last meal. In Luke’s account (22:15), Jesus is quoted as saying, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” At the heart of this meal is a friend spending one last night with his closest companions before he “leaves.” It involves the same sentiments as a man meeting at his favorite restaurant with his group of closest friends sharing food that they frequently enjoyed together and saying to them, “When you guy’s come here next time and I am gone, don’t forget me. When you eat this burger that we have shared so many times and that you will undoubtedly share again, remember me as a part of this. When you drink that Coke, remember when I was here with you.” This bread and wine were not uncommon things. They would have found themselves with bread and wine in hand frequently. Maybe after this last night with Jesus, as they ate these common things, they would find themselves in the middle of chewing a mouthful of bread thinking, “Wait, I remember eating this with Jesus.”
Maybe communion should be less of a ritual and more like this: Have you ever, worked hard all day in the sun with a group of friends? Maybe you were helping one of them move or remodel. After a long day you find yourself tired, sore, dirty and extremely hungry. You make your way down to a fast food restaurant with that same group of friends you have worked and laughed with all day. You get your food, burger and fries and a large drink, and you find a place to sit. It feels good to sit and you are ready to eat and even chat a little about the day. As you take a bite, it tastes good and you are enjoying your hunger being satisfied. In that moment, you remember the homeless man on the corner who is tired, sore, dirty and extremely hungry himself and you find yourself humbled and thankful that you have been provided something to eat. You remember that this food and these things aren’t what really “fill” you up. (see John 6:53-58 – the first time Jesus talks about bread/flesh and drink/blood) You remember that this drink is not what really washes away your thirst. You find yourself in this completely human and normal experience, remembering Jesus and this way of His that you have found. You find yourself in this deeper place. Out of this place, you show your friends love. Out of this place you share a meal. Out of this place you feed someone else who can’t feed themselves.
And so goes Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians. It wasn’t because they got the black and white steps out of order. It was because they were missing the point. It’s the difference between what I described above and just sitting in McDonald's eating your lunch and reading the news. This group in Corinth was just eating and drinking and there was nothing deeper going on. They weren’t mindful of each other or of Jesus for that matter. But, so many of us with our reductive ways of modernity have taken this “Lord’s Supper” and Paul’s teaching and turned into sterilized and controlled religious act. We have made it about the day of the week, the type of bread and wine, who can and can’t take it and the list endlessly rolls on. Now we find ourselves sitting in pews on Sundays eating a tiny pinch of a cracker and sipping from a little plastic cup of juice hoping we can conjure up some memory of Christ in our heads in order to avoid “eating and drinking judgment” on ourselves because we have “done” it wrong.
We have taken this simple gesture of a man asking His friends to remember Him even in the everyday common things of their lives and made it another tradition to do right. In some ways we have stripped it of its’ original intent. Although, despite our synthetic version, many still manage to find the heart of beauty in it all week after week.
It is becoming clear to me that we have done this same “manufacturing” to the entire way of Christ. It is like we have plucked it from its’ very soil, cleaned off all the dirt, processed it and put it in a can. Recently I have found myself in conversations about these things using the word “organic.” I use that word to try and communicate living this way of Jesus in less “institutional” ways and more “natural” ones. I am sure someone else has used this previously in a book that I have read that I am failing to site. So, this is where I will stop and next week this is where I’ll begin: Recovering this way of Jesus from our institutional and assembly-line manufacturing and finding it growing in its’ more natural state.
6 comments:
Right on!
Sterile is a good word for it. We try so hard to 'do it right' that we've come up with dozens of catch phrases to sprinkle around the event. From making sure it's "separate and apart" from anything else to hoping that our process is done "in a manner acceptable in Thy sight". So concerned about process we completely miss the real meaning....
To me, the Lord's Supper sounds a whole lot more like when we had dinner together after Austin's funeral. I could just imagine if all of us were together before he died; we'd all be eating some sort of food, and he would go "wooow, this is good, you need to keep doing this after I'm gone, I teach you so you can teach others, so remember me." I wonder at what point the supper became crackers and juice eaten correctly as opposed to a simple remembrance, and even more than that, why is the entire thing centered solely around the death and resurrection of Christ, instead of his life? His life to me, seems worth remembering, and at times, even more than his death.
that's why I invited you Luke...great comment.
Michael...I think one of the reasons that this has become so sterile is that relatively few of us have shared a hard days work together....we are so segregated in what we do that we are rarely together for worship, service, life, etc....and when we are on Sunday AM we are setting w/ a bunch of strangers who have come together just to "do things right" and we miss the whole point...to me, it's another way western influence has damaged Christ rather than lifting Him up....tf
tony, I agree and in the next couple of posts I will probably hit on the exact point you made...
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