Today is Maundy Thursday, the day that the Christian church commemorates the Last Supper of Christ with His disciples; the institution of the sacrament of the Eucharist; and the Lord’s betrayal to the Temple authorities by Judas Iscariot. I was asked to share my thougts on the Eucharist/Communion/the Lord’s Supper with my church community group tonight, so I wrote this to collect my thoughts. One of the beauties of the meal our Lord has given us is how multifaceted it is. No matter what state you’re in when you come to the Table, there’s something there to come and meet you exactly where you are. Following are just the first few interpretations of the Eucharist that occur to me: The most obvious thing, I suppose, is the symbol our Lord Himself gave us when He said “Take, eat; this is my body,” and “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood[.]” The reality it pictures is the Lord’s sacrificial death on our behalf, and it gives us the chance to reflect on the gravity of our sins and sinfulness. As we tear from the loaf, we’re reminded of His flesh torn from Him as He was scourged, and when we see the wine dripping from the bread, we’re reminded of His blood, shed painfully on the cross. It’s a reminder of the horror of the murder of God, for which we are responsible, and a chance to repent, and to gratefully praise Him for the lengths to which He was willing to go to redeem us, who were His hateful enemies. The Lord’s Supper, at the same time, is an extremely accessible symbol, in that the mode that it takes is common to all human experience — just eating, simply. We can and do talk a lot about terms like substitutionary atonement and reconciliation and redemption — and we do well to do so, because they’re real and they’re life-giving and they build us up — but because those terms are disconnected by a degree from our daily experience, there is always the danger that they will pass, insubstantial, through our heads, without really touching anything. But it’s impossible to misunderstand a meal. It calls to our minds kindness, warmth, hospitality, and generosity. Jesus has given us a meal. We were like people starving to death in a wasteland, and since there was no other food that could possibly have saved us, Jesus broke His own body to give us food. And not just food, but a feast — because He didn’t say that His blood was water, which will do for thirst, but wine, indicating ease and enjoyment. (I miss, by the way, the loss of this last concept in taking juice instead of wine, but I understand that love for the Family in the culture of the American South demands it, unless we are well enough acquainted with everyone involved in the practice to know that there is no possibility of offense.) Finally, in being invited to the Lord’s Table, there is a reminder for us as the Church that we are a family. We are all brothers and sisters, adopted by the same Father, made heirs with His own natural Son, joining each other for a simple, unpretentious meal, graciously provided for us by Him. And just like a natural family, there are differences between us, because we are joined together not by our own preferences but by Someone greater than us; so there may be people at the Table that annoy us, or that we don’t understand, or even that we prefer not to be around. But ultimately, we are joined together by the fact that we share one Father, who calls us to one Table to eat together. Communion is a reminder to “love the brothers,” and to enjoy the unity that we share with them, and to be reconciled not only to God, but also to one another. Time would fail, let alone my limited intellect, to exhaust the meaning of the Eucharist, but those are the things that come most readily to my mind.
H/T: http://301cranston.tumblr.com/
