Sunday Reflection: Supper

I'm giving a sermon on Maundy Thursday this week at First Covenant--Minneapolis (6 pm, if you would like to come). I spent a good chunk of yesterday pondering what I am going to say.

It's a challenging thing, of course. There is so much that happened at the last supper, actually, and I am struggling to focus.

There is something about feasting that moves deep within us. We eat and drink ceremonially when we mourn, when we wed, when we gather together as family, when we celebrate holidays. At some level, it is this commonality that we will always have, this bond we cannot break: we must eat and drink. The murderer in prison with his steel tray of food and the billionaire sitting by the sea with his do the same thing-- in fact, they must do the same thing. It is an existential requirement.

There is this moment during communion that moves me to my core. I might be kneeling before a rail, hip to hip with those next to me, or standing in a line. I put out my hands and open them to form a little cup. A man or woman looks at me, and I look into their eyes as they say "the body of Christ." Then they put a bit of bread into the cup of my hands. In that moment, I feel the bread, I actually feel it-- the roughness of it, the yeastiness, the crevices and valleys and the hardness of a bit of crust. In that moment before I eat it, it seems a living thing (and it is), and precious.

Many Christians take communion by intiction-- that is, by dipping the bread into the wine. I don't. I drink from the cup, to feel the wine meet my lip, to feel to coolness of the silver chalice, to taste it in whole. That, too, is a slow moment.

And in that is everything.