The Lord’s Supper at my church is delicious! When my husband and I first
started attending our church in Pasadena, I remember being pleasantly surprised
that the usual bland, texturally terrible cardboard square that I was used to was replaced with a delicious, buttery morsel of delight. I kept
wondering if it would be unholy to ask for the recipe and eat it at home with
some cheese. My husband always gets so mad at me when I say this because he
tells me it is sacrilegious to speak of something so sacred in such a casual
way, and he is definitely right, but this got me to thinking about the theology of the Lord’s Supper as a
whole. Should I see the Lord’s Supper as a solemn occasion, focusing on his
body being broken and blood being shed in accordance with God’s plan for
redeeming his creation (and thus necessitating the bland, unpleasurable wafer)?
Or should I see it as a joyous time —focusing on his resurrection and the new
age that Christ brought with him as he burst forth out of the grave (and thus
the rich, buttery bit of heaven)? It’s difficult to say.
An Apologetic for the
Stale:
If the point of the Lord’s Supper is to be reflective of the
sorrowful time of the Passover coupled with the fuller picture of God's ultimate passover with the cross, then stale bread and a dime-size amount of grape juice seems sufficient.
No one leaves feeling full or satisfied, and everyone feels slightly punished for
having to choke down the bread (which further helps us ponder the realities of
sin). And it makes it that much easier to appreciate the sorrowful side of our
redemption process… God’s wrath over our sin that had to be satisfied through
the horrendous death of Christ on the cross. If, when Christ called us to
remembrance, we were being called to remember this sorrowful part alone, what could be
more appropriate than insufficient portions of undesirable fare?
An Apologetic for the
Savory:
On the other hand, what host invites his guests to dinner
and only feeds them a literal square inch of crummy unleavened bread and a
tablespoon of grape juice? I feel like the disciples had it a little better
than that on the eve of the crucifixion at the first communion. And when Christ talks about our
banqueting together in the kingdom, surely tiny communion is not a good picture
of what it will really be like. And so I ask myself: What is the appropriate
way to look at the Lord’s Supper?
My husband, John, says that Communion is more than just a symbol of Christ’s death on the cross as most of us have been led to believe. He suggests that when we take the Lord’s Supper, grace is literally bestowed to us, which is why taking it every week becomes so significant. Each week, we are searching our hearts before God, confessing, and then receiving into ourselves an additional amount of grace. I like this, but the glutton in me instantly thinks: “Then I want all of the delicious grace I can get! Enough with this stingy sample-sized portion!”
But then I feel like Simon Peter in John 13: 6-10:
6 He [Jesus] came to Simon Peter, who
said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”
7 Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will
understand.”
8 “No,” said Peter, “you
shall never wash my feet.”
Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”
9 “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my
feet but my hands and my head as well!”
10 Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean.”
10 Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean.”
So should communion be a
savory treat or a sorrowful testament?
Perhaps the answer, for now,
is really more like “all of the above.” Until such time as we can commune with
Christ face to face in his kingdom, we persist through struggle and suffering
and pain into joy and freedom and peace through additional allotments of grace,
but it is not yet fully realized and we are not fully satisfied until that time
when we are welcomed into the kingdom. There we will enjoy a true feast of
experiencing the fullness of his grace and our most abundant satisfaction, and
every hunger of our hearts will be fully and finally satiated!
Until then, we return to the table again and again and find much-needed grace for the moment.
*Note: There is so much more
to be said about the bestowal of grace through communion, and so many others
who can say it much better, so I welcome Bill Kilgore and John Bennett (and
many others who have studied this) to explain it better than I have. Hopefully
this will just be the prologue to a much deeper discussion that changes our
hearts about the significance of the Lord’s Supper, moving it from rote
tradition to something much richer.
**Note 2: This post was written while listening to Matt Maher and Matt Redman's song, "Remembrance" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdx9AeiPTGk) and remembering Kenneth Spiller's song, "In You."
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