A People Gathered Around Table
A brief sermon preached at Thompson Memorial Presbyterian Church for Maundy Thursday, 2014.
“For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
When I was a little kid, I spent a lot of time in church. With two parents involved in everything from choir practices and session meetings, to fish fry’s and Sunday school, we seemed to always be headed to or from church. Church was one of the few places outside my family where I felt truly at home, where I understood that I was loved and cared for, and where things mostly made sense in my young mind. However, of all of the things we did at church, there was one thing that I had a hard time understanding: communion.
It began fairly simply: I didn’t understand why everyone else got a snack in the middle of church and I didn’t. It was ok for me to have bread and grape juice at home, so why not at church? This prompted many conversations with my parents, and they helped me start to understand that communion was something special, something different. As I grew older, I started listening more to what Alex, our pastor, was saying before communion. I can still hear the smile in his voice as he would welcome us to the table: “Friends, this is the joyful feast of the people of God!” I wouldn’t find out until years later that when he handed the elements to the Elders to serve the congregation, he would whisper to them, “Remember to smile, it is the Joyful feast!” I didn’t really understand then why it was so joyful, after all, we were just eating some small cubes of bread and barely a mouthful of grape juice; all I could figure out was that the potluck dinners we had at church were sure joyful, and if we were getting ready for a church dinner where all of God’s people, from north and south, east and west, were going to show up, then that sure sounded like a lot of fun.
Over the years I started to learn more about what communion was all about. Through Sunday school, confirmation class, and lots of discussions with my parents and pastor, I learned to talk about the sacraments, about the many symbols of the meal, and eventually how Presbyterian theology of the Eucharist compares to that of other traditions. I learned how to talk about the difference between transubstantiation and consubstantiation, and just why Presbyterians don’t traditionally uphold either position. In seminary I have read hundreds of pages written over two thousand years of Christian history, trying to make sense of just what happens when we gather around this table. And I have a confession to make: there are days when this all seems to make less sense now than it did when I was asking my mom why I didn’t get a piece of bread and some juice. I think part of why I find it so confusing is that for so much of Christian history, there has been very little focus on the table as a place of unity, but rather as a source of division.
I feel confident in saying that more ink and blood and been spilled among Christians over questions concerning the Eucharist than almost any other topic in our history. The supper instituted by Christ on his last night among his disciples, shared just before his commandment to love one another, seems to have been a point of division in the church almost right from the start. If we look just a few verses before our passage tonight, we hear Paul reprimanding the Corinthian church for not properly celebrating the supper. Rather than being a point of unity in the young church, the supper had become a chance for the wealthy to gather and gorge themselves on fine wine and delicious food, leaving nothing but scraps for the rest of the church when they arrived after a long day’s work. Paul is dismayed by the behavior, and strives to bring the community back together. However, this would be far from the last time that Christians would find themselves fighting over the table. For instance, during the early years of the Reformation, differences in theology of the supper between German reformer Martin Luther and Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli would prevent an alliance between the two regions, contributing in part to a series of wars that would plague Europe for centuries. Even today, differences between denominations on questions of the Eucharist are still some of the stickiest issues when it comes to ecumenical dialogue; with lines that have been drawn for generations it can be hard to see the possibility for unity. And for me, it is really tempting to stop here and get discouraged. After all, what can I do in the face of such long-standing discord?
I don’t think the answer is in theological essays or dogmatic debates. I don’t think we will find unity in more complicated statements of faith or by debating the virtues of one perspective over another. Instead, I think we need to consider why, on this night, Christians around the world are gathering around tables to break bread together. We need to think about why the cup will be poured and shared, and why the story will be told once again.
Simply put, why does any of this matter?
That is why it is so important for me to go back to scripture, to hear again who we have been called to be. We are called to be a people who gather around table, to break bread with our brothers and to share the cup with our sisters. We are called to this table even when we don’t understand all the theology (because the disciples certainly didn’t!), even when we feel hurt or confused by our history, even when we might feel totally unworthy of the feast. We are called to this table because when we partake of the bread and wine, we are not only publicly showing our faith and telling of Christ’s death and resurrection, but we are also getting a glimpse of the banquet that we will enjoy when our Lord comes again in the fullness of time.
But I think there is something equally important - when we come to this table, all of those things that divide us fade away. It doesn’t matter how old you are, what you do for a living, or what school you go to - here at this table, we are all brothers and sisters.
My friends, looking out tonight, I see now why my pastor growing up was so insistent on reminding us of the joyful feast. Let us come to the table.