Communion Meditation - 9/09
COMMUNION MEDITATION 13/09/09 (am)
For as long as I can remember we have always had dogs. I’m not sure whether it was written into the wedding vows that we would have dogs. Perhaps it was, and I didn’t see it. Most times they have been great, but as Barbara said the other day, there is a down side to dogs. One is when they have a bone and become very protective and territorial. Chester, our older dog, was eating a bone in the back porch recently. Toby, the pup, wanted to go outside. Chester wouldn’t allow him. Chester thought he would take his bone, so there was all this male, macho stuff. Toby didn’t want his bone. He just wanted to go out into the back yard. Although, I have to admit that when Barbara called Chester in later, Toby did promptly scamper off with Chester’s bone and repeated the same possessive behaviour!
Only dogs? Yes. But very reminiscent of humans, and not least in relation to the Lord’s Supper. Christians have generally been very territorial and protective of it, in what I think, personally, are quite ridiculous ways. The explanations of what happens in Communion have ranged across the board. At one end there have been our Catholic friends who use the word ‘transubstantiation’ to describe the real presence of Christ in the sacrament. The bread and the wine through the action of the priest become the body and blood of Christ. Lutherans talk about ‘consubstantiation’ whereby the substance of the body and blood of Christ exist alongside the bread and the wine. Our tradition has always wanted to affirm the ‘real presence of Christ’ but the bread remains bread and the wine remains wine. Baptists often have an even more symbolic approach and the Quakers and the Salvation Army bypass any outward form of the Sacrament and have a purely inward Communion. So far so good. There is variety, just as we all have variety in our evening meals, and yet all of us are presumably nourished. But what happens is that often groups get like Chester with the bone, totally defensive; or like Toby trying to run away with the sacrament as though it belonged to them alone. In reality I think each of the groups in fact embodies an element of truth about the sacrament, and all, in their own way, are wanting to affirm the presence of Christ.
Where groups disagree we do well to go back to the first common denominator, that which we can all share in and on which we can all agree, and I don’t think that’s too difficult. Paul reflecting on the sacrament in his letter to the Corinthians says, ‘Jesus took bread, and after giving thanks to God, broke it and said, ‘This is my body which is for you; do this as a memorial of me.’ ‘Do this as a memorial’. ‘In the same way he took the cup after supper, and said, ‘This cup is the new covenant sealed by my blood. Whenever you drink of it, do this as a memorial of me.’ ‘Do this as a memorial of me’.
We have all been to memorial services of people who have died, whether services for individuals, or on a greater scale such as Anzac Day. What’s going through people’s minds at a time like that? What are they experiencing? I have no idea because we are all different. But I know why we are all there. We are there to remember the person we knew or loved. It is the same at Communion. On the front of our Communion tables we have the words of Jesus, ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ . And in Communion we do that it by sharing the bread and wine, believing they convey to us in visible form the good news of God’s love made known to us in Jesus in his life, teachings, death and resurrection. And in sharing those elements we share also in the presence of the risen Christ who says ‘I am with you always’, so that by the Spirit we live in him and he is us.
Explanations beyond that? In theology books and theological seminaries? Yes, of course. But in a service of worship, be it in a Cathedral, church or a hall, it is much simpler. It is simply experiencing the truth of what our books say and what we sing in our hymns: ‘Here, O my Lord, I see thee face to face.’ Or, ‘And now O Father, mindful of the love that bought us once for all on Calvary’s tree.’ And that action is for us all. No group can claim it solely for itself. No-one can ever exclude another person from the Lord’s Supper. That’s like Chester trying to hold onto his bone, or Toby trying to steal it away for himself. Then it becomes, not a means of grace, but a means of control.
As we come to the table today may we come with the confidence of people in every part of the world-wide church and people in every generation who come to the Sacrament saying, “I come with joy to meet my Lord, forgiven, loved and free, in awe and wonder to recall, his life laid down for me.”
