Eucharist

As we begin our chapter on Eucharist, I recall the words I spoke yesterday in our Inquirer's class; Eucharist comes from a Greek word that means "thanksgiving." Yes, plain and simple thanksgiving.

Or is it? We are all welcomed each week with the news that we are invited to the Table and that means that everyone without exception is invited to receive the bread and wine which for us is the body and blood of Christ. And some of us have perhaps grown so used to this that we don’t realize how radical that is given the history of Christian practice.  

For as much difference as there is in the Christian church…Roman Catholicism, snake-handling Pentecostalism, polite Presbyterianism, emotional Evangelicalism, Intellectual Episcopalianism – for as much as we differ, the one thing most Christian traditions actually have in common is some form of communion. The great irony is that the very thing we all seem to have in common is the thing that so often divides us. A lot of ink has been spilled in the history of the church over issues of who gets to take and serve communion, a lot of ink and a lot of blood.

As Pr. Nadia Bolz-Weber has explained, the way we as Christians have historically responded to the gift of the Eucharist is to make sure that we understand it, then to make sure we put boundaries around it and then to make sure we enforce both the correct understanding and the correct boundaries. But on the night Jesus was betrayed he didn’t say “this is my body broken for you…UNDERSTAND this in remembrance of me….he didn’t say ACCEPT this or DEFEND this or BOUNDARY this in remembrance of me--he just said do this in remembrance of me.

Remember the disciples saying to Jesus: "this is a hard teaching?" Well, perhaps It IS a hard teaching. That God would be made human and walk among us, that this Christ would offer his own flesh for the sake of another world, that he would do this knowing what scoundrels sat around his table the night he was betrayed and that he would do it anyhow.  

And when we in Church start to feel even slightly self-congratulatory about our inclusivity, we might do well to remember this: the 12 disciples who sat around that table included Judas the Betrayer and Peter the Denier and the reason Judas and Peter makes us cringe is that there is that of the Christ betrayer and the Christ denier in all of us and it is precisely that part of us which Jesus seeks to make whole with his broken body.  

As Pr. Nadia says: it is hard to accept that our enemies receive the same forgiveness and grace and redemption as we do but sometimes it’s even harder to accept not just that God welcomes all, but that God welcomes all of me, all of you. Even that within us that we wish to hide: the part that cursed at someone this week, or drank alone, or has a problem with lying, or hates our body, that part within us that suffers from depression and can’t admit it, or is too fearful to give our money away, or is riddled with shame or cheats on taxes…all these parts of us we wish Jesus had the good sense to not welcome to his table are invited to taste and see that the Lord is Good….This teaching is Hard…who can accept it.

Jesus never asks us to accept it. He just asks us to do it. 

Because here at this table, you can bring the most broken pieces of your life, here you can bring the most broken pieces of this world, here you can bring the most broken pieces of yourself, and you can receive with no payment or worthiness on your part the equally broken body of Jesus Christ. 

You need not understand it or accept it. You need not put boundaries or defenses around it. You need only do it. 

So as our Bishop Kendrick puts it so eloquently at every Eucharist he celebrates: 

This is the table of Our Lord.  It is made ready for those who love Him and those who want to love Him more. So come you of much faith and you of little, you who have been here often and you who have not been here long, you who have tried to follow and you who have failed...Come because it is the Lord who invites you and it is His will that those who want Him should meet him here. The gifts of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God=Eucharist.