Lesson 17: Eating Together, part 2
After receiving the response to last week’s lesson, I decided to comment further on eating together as a mark of the church. It was an easy decision as I think it addresses one of the biggest spiritual problems in our time, the failure to eat meals together even with our own families. Certainly, as the book of Jude maintains, the communion meal is a love feast that serves as a model for bringing diverse people together.
We get an idea how powerful eating together is when we remember what a big deal it was in the first century. Fearing contamination, Jews did not eat with outsiders. They had to do that however, if they worshipped with Gentiles. You see how difficult this was when Peter is asked to take the Gospel to Cornelius’ home in Acts 10 and 11 or when the problem forced the first church-wide assembly in Acts 15. Both were groundbreaking events in Western Civilization as well as the Church.
Years ago my partner and I used this power to overcome racism in our congregation. We invited a black pastor from Namibia to distribute the bread and wine. Leading members threatened to leave the church if we continued doling that. Of course, they did not because once home they realized it was Jesus’ meal and he shared the table with all God’s children. It changed everything.
An episode in JD Salinger’s Franny and Zooey offers another amusing illustration. A preppie had taken Franny out to dinner in hopes of seducing her. Little did he know, she was practicing the Greek Orthodox method of praying constantly. That involves repeating a Jesus Prayer almost unconsciously every moment you are awake. The preppie did not stand a chance with Jesus’ being present at the meal.
There is a lot more than eating food that goes on at meals. I first realized that many decades ago when teaching a First Communion class to first graders. Hoping to promote discussion that recognized the sacrament was a meal, I asked what they do at the dinner table. To my surprise they replied, “We talk.” Totally amazed, I repeated my question for over 30 years, always receiving the same answer from first graders. When I pushed further asking asked what they talked about, they responded, “What we have been doing and what we plan to do.” There is a lot of that going on silently during church services. In a democratic society, we should probably give voice to more than the scriptures and the ordained clergy.
I used to show Sally Field’s marvelous movie, Places in the Heart on my ninth-grade catechism retreats. The last scene superbly presents the meaning of the Communion meal. Everyone in the film, living and dead, passed the elements with the words, “The body of Christ given for you; The blood of Christ given for you.” The widow passed to her slain husband, he to the black teenager who killed him, “The Body of Christ given for you.” The young boy passed to the Klu Klux Klansmen who lynched him and they to the black man they ran out of town, “The blood of Christ given for you.”
I personally experience the power when I find myself broken or twisted out of shape at the end of a week. Standing in the circle looking across the table into the eyes of the beloved sharing the bread and wine on Sunday, I return to reality. There we are, unlikely ever to share a room under ordinary circumstances, sharing food with Christ and each other.
Of course, in the old days when I was a full time pastor, I usually moved around the circles distributing the bread and wine to each individual again with the words, “The body of Christ given for you.” One of the most moving moments of my life was when I dropped a piece of the bread on the floor. The woman in front of me leaned over, picked it up, and looking directly into my eyes handed it to me with the words, “The body of Christ given for you, Fritz.”
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