Why Take? Why Eat?
Luke 22: 14-20
October 7, 2007
by Rev.
If, like my husband Doug, you have ever had Holy Communion at a church outside your own, you may relate to the awkwardness of doing something different. HOW communion is done varies to wide degree between every church.
There are some churches that use wine, others, like our denomination that prefer juice.
Some serve it from a chalice, others from tiny glasses. And
then there is the bread. How many have been served the thin unleavened wafers?
Sometimes these are made in monasteries or nunneries. How many of you grew up
with what we had at First UMC in
Then, I don’t know, in the late eighties, it seemed all the ministers insisted on pita bread. This got us away from the silver plates and into the latest preferred method of dipping bread into a chalice. Which we call serving by intinction.
One of the reasons for this shift is that the Communion Meal
looks more like a meal, more like ordinary food from your house. And to share
from one loaf and one cup keeps us in line theologically with our understanding
of the unity of one bread, one body of Christ gathered.
Some people tell me that because there are many ways Christians serve the meal they feel self-conscious about Communion at a different church. Which is unfortunate, because The Lord's Table should never be a place that makes you feel like an outsider? However, I meet people all the time who say they won’t participate, even when the minister says all are welcome. One young woman says that outside of her own church, she feels like everyone is watching to see if she knows what she’s doing. So she opts not to come forward at all. She remarks, it’s not like we need communion - so Why do it?
Which leads me to explore the questions, Why Take? Why Eat? Since
the evening of the Last Supper, Christians have faithfully sought to keep Jesus
commandment to DO THIS IN REMEMBRANCE of Me. Just like what is described in
scripture, communion has remained the same words and actions of Jesus at the
table. Take the bread, Bless, Break and distribute. Then the cup, take it,
bless and share it.
The eating of bread and sharing of cup, is an event that should hold deeper meaning – it is a transcendent moment where we are at once past-present-and future. This is a concept that was better understood in Jesus’ time and in his Jewish heritage. But let me explain using an exercise that Dr. Stookey, professor of liturgics at Wesley, developed. You may remember that Jesus tells his disciples to "Do This in Remembrance of Me." The most crucial and difficult part of this for us today, is that Remembering is a “solitary experience involving mental recall.” And this was not the case for ancient Jews or early Christians, whom most were all Jews, where remembering was an experience through action and ritual.
Suppose someone were to say to you, "Remember your high school Graduation” You would say, “Let me sit down and think about that, give me a sec. Hmm, ok I can picture it outside on the lawn, the chairs set up. I had to wear a white dress, which I liked but we had to shop all over for it for a month. My shoes were uncomfortable. Ah, my parents showed up late, and I wondered where they were sitting. There was walking across the platform and getting the diploma, once again I was conscious of those darn shoes, and afterwards I couldn’t find my parents right away, then I think we all went to dinner or something.” That’s how we would remember – or recount, isn’t it. Now you may remember more or less details than me, but that would be the essence. For the ancient Hebrews, though, you would do something different. Challenged to remember, you would rent a cap and gown and even some uncomfortable shoes, you would put those on, walk across a room while playing pomp and circumstance, and then you would go out to dinner! The DO of Do this in Remembrance of Me is more crucial than the remembering part. In doing it, we are experiencing the past anew and also experiencing the future, where we will be at this table again, in the heavenly banquet.
Have any of you ever attended a Jewish Seder? Many have. This past-future reality is really clear, I find, in the Seder meal. (Which I have only had the pleasure to attend once, but the reenacting through story, food, spices, and even now, some families incorporate plush toys that represent the ten plagues was unforgettable.) This is a very different way of remembering, but it is exactly the intention that Christ had in that we are to have this meal, this last supper, in order to meet the living Christ, to experience earth as it is in heaven. The final eating in heaven, the heavenly banquet is described as a celebration. It is a meal that brings healing to the nations, a unity of people from every nation.
Every branch of Christianity, except for our Quaker friends and Unitarian Universalists, follow Jesus mandate to do this in remembrance of me. They may call it Eucharist, or the Lord's Supper, The Holy Meal, the Holy Mystery, but each will have bread and wine or juice.
Last week, I received a church newsletter which read, "Join us for World Communion Sunday, a united Methodist tradition that makes us aware of our unity in Christ around the world." Well that is not exactly so. World Communion Sunday is not just for UM – it was started in 1936 by the Presbyterian church – and its intent was always that every branch would join in celebration on the first Sunday in October. So today, protestants, Catholics, orthodox, Baptists, evangelicals, around the globe will feast on earth as it is in heaven.
But for us gathered here, I wondered if anyone ever thinks, “Why is the sacrament important, really?"
I was an acolyte in high school when I looked around during church and asked myself, “What is it with this strange ritual? Does anyone know why we do it anymore?” I didn’t know what I was to think about when I ate the bread. When I looked around and saw the saddest looks on people’s faces, I was more confused. Didn’t Jesus want us to have life and have it abundantly? I decided if I couldn’t understand the WHY behind it, then I would stop. This lasted 10 years. I used to pray to God to help me understand it. I didn’t want to be phony and receive a sacrament without believing in it.
I didn’t realize at the time, but to be puzzled by Holy Communion is not an unusual predicament for Christians. After all, we call it the HOLY MYSTERY. From the first time Jesus shared this meal, the disciple sat there puzzled. Then after his death, the risen Christ appeared in the breaking of the bread at Emmaus, showing that Christ is truly present in the meal. In our earliest roots as Roman Catholics, we marveled at how Christ could be present in the meal. When he said this is my body, how did it become his body? When precisely did it occur? The notion that the bread became Jesus body and the wine actually became his blood is called transubstantion. The substance of bread was replaced by the substance of Christ.
But by the fourth and fifth century, some Roman Catholics were discontent with transubstantion. Logistically, they wondered how can Christ, who is seated at the right hand of God, leave his post and become bread. The questions of space and time for Christ’s body probably don’t cause us to lose sleep, but it certainly troubled our ancestors like Martin Luther, yet he could accept that the Lord was known in it.
He made a comprehensive case that Christ is everywhere – in the bread, with the bread, under it... and still at the glory seat in heaven. That is the Holy Mystery. Luther said Christ’s omnipresence is hidden from us, because our eyes are clouded over by sin.
But in taking the bread, eating it, drinking from the cup, the clouds part for just a moment and we see Jesus Christ in everything around us. This awareness is a gift of God to us; it is the grace of the sacrament. And we must return again and again to the table to receive this gift of grace. His reason for Why Eat? For enlightenment to Gods glory and ongoing redemption of our sinful state.
His position, of course, was part of what separated
Christians in Catholicism – causing the formation of the Protestant movement, and
the eventual formation of the
Ulrich Zwingli, who lived during the time of Luther, and was
also a Roman Catholic Priest rejected the Roman Catholic idea of transubstantiation
– But he also rejected Luther’s idea of Christ’s presence in the bread and
everywhere. Now he taught that when we approach the Lord’s Table at Holy
Communion, we shouldn’t concern ourselves about whether we find Christ in the
bread. Christ is spiritually, in our hearts and physically with God in heaven. We
come to REMEMBER. After all, Jesus says we should do this in remembrance of
him. So it is at the table we contemplate his passion and death. During our
mealtime meditation, we consider Jesus body breaking, his blood being shed and
our sins being washed away, forgiven. This memorial service approach is what I
observed in my United Methodist church in
A generation later than Zwingli and Luther came John Calvin. He wasn’t satisfied with that memorialism or with Luther’s answers either. He didn’t see the need to explain where Christ is. He would rather we just experience the holy mystery of it. At the meal, we are mysteriously joined, by the power of the Holy Spirit with the risen Christ, just like those earliest disciples who recognized Christ in the breaking of the bread. This is not an intellectual pondering, but a powerful experience of God in our midst.
So Why Take and Why Eat? There are many answers by those who
participate in world communion Sunday. My quick sketch of the historical
thinking and debate around Eucharist barely scratches the surface of how
Christians have wrestled with this. But it gives each of us a chance to
consider what we believe as we come to the table.
The way I finally returned to the Communion table was via,
not Luther or Calvin or any of the biggies, but as a result of reading Henri
Nouwen's Life of the Beloved. I had never heard of Nouwen, until I joined this
small group that studied Christian writers each week in the basement of a
church in
Nouwen writes that the words of the Eucharist, Taken, Blessed, Broken and Given, summarize his life as a Christian and ultimately as a human being. He says they are four words that hold infinite meaning to him, which he can hardly fully know. He devotes a chapter to each of the four verbs Taken, Blessed, Broken, Given and says that each of us are called to be bread for the world.
It was such a shift in how anyone ever explained The Lord's
Supper to me. I could picture what he meant though, on a personal level first
and then on a communal level. You and I are Taken - chosen by God. Like the
bread, we are held by God for a purpose. We are also blessed and broken to be
given. Our greatest fulfillment lies in giving of our selves to others. What
often stops people is what Nouwen calls a sense of brokenness. Maybe it is the
pain of broken relationships, a feeling of being rejected, ignored, and despised
but whenever we feel we are too broken to be of “use” or of “value", we lose our
grip on life. We stop ourselves from seeing how God loves us and how it is only
in being broken that we can truly give. But putting our brokenness under God’s
blessing opens us up to a new life. At the heart of Nouwen’s description of the
human life as a journey patterned after the Lord's Meal, is a description of grace.
The sacrament is a means of grace – a holy mystery.
Sometimes I hear one of you share with me an experience of grace in communion.
And that is always exciting. In this place, Christ has been known in the
breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup. Maybe it was an experience of
unity in a time of disunity, Or as another person who said, that as she chewed
the bread, kneeling at the altar rail, she felt Christ’s living presence within
her, calling to mind her past, comforting her worried mind in the present, and
filling her with strength to go on in love.
Come to the table this morning– and come seeking the risen Christ - who promises to be present in our sharing!
To trace the whole line of historical thinking and debate around Eucharist would be impossible in one Sunday morning sermon. But I want us to consider WORLD COMMUNION Sunday. But let me tell you, there is so much more – and hopefully this can lay a foundation for future preaching and teaching on Holy Communion.
The bread and juice aren’t magical in that they won’t transmit saving grace to whomever comes into contact with them. But they also aren’t merely symbols to bolster our faith, making them dependant upon our bringing meaning to them.