Sharing in the Lord’s Supper
The idea that the Lord’s Supper is Christian sharing already assumes that the bread is something of ours that we distribute among ourselves, rather than a gift to us. If Jesus Christ ‘re-presents’ himself to the church in the Supper, wholly to each of us and to the body as a whole, then the sharing being done isn’t ours at all but Christ’s–and our part is only sharing in his gift to us, delighting in the share we receive and rejoicing that we are called to his table. This understanding of the Lord’s Supper issues more radically economic demands (requiring a certain poverty of us) and makes visible a more radical generosity (“you who have no money, come buy and eat!”), without ceasing to be wholly Christological in a way that maintains the mystery of the words, “This is my body,” and “This is my blood.” Indeed, it is precisely because this table and this supper is the Lord’s, not ours, that a radical economics is involved. Once we appropriate the supper to ourselves, flattening the supper to an immanent plane and denying that Christ is in any way really and actually present, we have inevitably devolved to an economic model focused on our generosity, even if it is communal. Pious phrases ascribing everything we have to God are not enough; only if we as a community are really receiving something from outside ourselves will we as a community really understand our place as guests at the table, drinking wine and milk that we can neither afford nor ourselves offer, with Christ as our head and our host. The invitation to the Supper of the Lord is always only an invitation that we receive, even as we extend that invitation that is not our own to the table that is not our own. A most basic virtue of the supper and its proclamation, then, is humility.
27 May 2007 |
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Tags: Lord's Supper, Money
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You’re not posting on the Holy Spirit today? The Church’s birthday?
I hope you got to Notre Dame for services at least. You would be amused to hear that I received a sending prayer from my Episcopal Church this morning for my CPT trip, an exhortation to find God in the chaos to well-situated suburban yuppies, and I took communion to the tune of “My Country ’tis of Thee”… we finished the worship with a song entreating “may the whole world know peace.”
Have you ever wondered about the incredible juxtaposition of sacred and banal in the Church? One second, I sense palpable mysterious sacrament in the community’s covenant of baptism, and then the next I hear coffee chatter about Memorial Day plans and the new cars and appliances that ‘need’ to be purchased, and I am told that cheap souvenirs can be found in Bethlehem. It’s the paradox of gracious heretics, Christian scrooges, the harlot who becomes desert mother…
What I’m really trying to ask is, can we ever have the right attitude or countenance for worship or receiving sacrament? Once you think about being humble does it not become false piety? Aren’t we all just mysterious broken creatures that sometimes glimpse the holy? Or am I being too cynical about the theological project? Is it possible to dream the right dream about what should be?
Sorry, I’m raining on your discovery with a totally different train of thought…too much land-centered Wendell Berry: “Rather than worrying about what we should do, we need to worry about who we are, and then let who we are choose the course of our lives as we think best, come what may. “
Rambling again
I think that one of the strengths of the Scot’s Form of the Lord’s Supper is the emphasis on Christ’s emphasis – we are invited to sit at Christ’s table and feed upon his self-giving to us.
with this understanding, would you say that the Lord’s Supper somehow actually communicates grace in its performance or is it a symbolic act of Christ’s self-giving? Also, does Christ’s role in this sacrament call for a form of imitation on our part in some form of discipleship or it is something that should not/cannot be “re-enacted” or “embodied” by the members of the community–an act that is solely for Christ alone? just some of my thoughts.
25 When they found him on the other side of the lake, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ 26Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 27Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.’ 28Then they said to him, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’ 29Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’ 30So they said to him, ‘What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? 31Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.†’ 32Then Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ 34They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’
35 Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
This part of John 6 asks some of the questions I have following my reading of your post. Moses, the faithful prophet, did not provide food for the people in the desert; God did. (Jesus as human did not provide food for his followers in the feeding of the 5000; God did.) The text tells of our desire to understand this miracle as the work of human hands (which seems related to the selfish? desires of the disciples to fill their own stomachs), though this is not what is best: the truest food is the eternal food of God. But when the disciples ask where to get the food Jesus says: “I am the food.” Christ is Host, head of the table, and Host, body on our plate. What does that mean for “the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it?” Anything at all?