“Awake, O sword, against my shepherd,
against the man who is my associate,”
says the Lord of hosts.
Strike the shepherd, that the sheep may be scattered;They will call on my name,
and I will answer them.
I will say, “They are my people”;
and they will say, “The Lord is our God.” (Zechariah 13:7a;9b)
When the table is prepared with the Bread and the Cup, you know what will conclude corporate worship. The priest or pastor will step behind it, utter familiar words, and invite the congregation to partake. You will receive the bread and the cup with a blessing something like, “The Body of Christ broken for you; the Blood of Christ shed for you.” You may pray something like, “Thanks be to you, Lord Christ,” then eat.
The reverence we give to the Table, the holy words we speak over the elements, testifies to a rite of worship that is by no means ordinary.
Somehow, someway, what we receive and eat nourishes our bodies and our souls, speaking to us something about Jesus and about ourselves. The what, how, and why of the Lord’s Supper, the particulars of what happens at this table, has been hotly contested throughout the Church attempting to unwrap the mysteries of the bread and the cup nearly since the moment Jesus instituted it, “This is my Body; this is my Blood.”
A Catholic will tell you he meant this literally so that in the blessing of the bread and cup they become Christ’s actual body and blood. But if you ask a Lutheran they might tell you that Christ is literally present in the bread and cup “in, with, and under,” in the same way that water is present in a sponge (whatever that means). On the other hand, an Anglican might talk to you about the “real presence” of Christ’s body and blood in a way that is somewhere between literal and symbolic. A Baptist will explain that Christ was just speaking symbolically so that the bread and cup only represent larger spiritual realities.
The first thing pronounced over this Table is that we are coming to it because Jesus commanded, “Do this.” The first thing we pronounce over this table is that we are coming to it because Christ commanded, “Do this.” The last thing we pronounce over this Table verbalizes the testimony of our reenactment. The congregation may testify together some form of, “For as often as we eat of this bread and drink of this cup we are proclaiming that great mystery of our faith. Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.”
Every group thinks they are the one to have it right, or at least are the closest to deciphering the mystery. I can’t tell you which, if any of them, is right about being right. Even if I had the Divine wisdom to decode the truth behind the mystery I’m not so sure that I would want to know. In the very words we pronounce over the table, we declare that we come to it simply because Christ instructed us to do so.
In coming to eat the body and drink the blood, we touch, smell, and taste the mysteries of Christ, but we do not necessarily understand them. We do not necessarily need to.
The broken Body and the poured-out Blood have made the way for the Christ to covenant with us. A New Covenant all wrapped up in the testimony that the Christ who died, is risen and is returning
Covenants bind us in relationship to God and to one another. Jesus deviates from the sacred Passover to institute what we know as the New Covenant, which, in the receiving of it, would bind our hearts to him.1 Yet before Jesus began, “This is my Body,” he announced there was a traitor in their midst. Judas, already bound to Satan, left the dinner to meet with the horde who will arrest Jesus in just a few hours. If the remaining eleven believed themselves faithful, Jesus quickly revealed there was not one traitor, but twelve. “You will all become deserters.”
Jesus’ part in the making of the New Covenant is summed, “the Shepherd will be struck,” but ours quickly follows, “the sheep will be scattered.”2 If a covenant is the sign of loyal, responsibility, love then Jesus is its ultimate keeper.3 Jesus will be broken and poured out, but as for us. . . there is a little Judas in us all.
When the Corinthians were abusing and perverting the Lord’s Supper, Paul wrote a rebuke because they were partaking in what he calls an “unworthy manner.” Because they were eating and drinking without examining themselves, they were wreaking havoc on the community of God. In a failure to reflect upon not only their hearts, but their place in the church and society the powerful were trampling the less privileged. Those who take the bread and cup without self-examination drink not grace, but judgement.4 Paul spends the whole of his two letters to the Corinthians telling them how people in covenant with Christ ought to live in him and with one another – a unity mirrored, for better or worse, at the table of Christ.
If the Supper reveals Christ’s fidelity, it also reveals our brokenness. When Jesus warns the eleven remaining disciples that they will flee they, of course, protest. However, the Shepherd is the agent of change – “He will scatter the sheep.” It is inevitable that they will flee, but God uses their eagerness to betray as the means by which he will same them. As the means by which the Church will begin.
More than this, they would face the resurrected Jesus knowing they betrayed him. Perhaps we could all use such a mirror into the potential of our own unfaithfulness. Those who returned must recognize that we need a covenant that keeps us precisely because we are unwilling and unable to keep it. The only “worthiness” we can hope to achieve is receiving by grace what we cannot earn by merit. What makes you worthy is admitting that you aren’t. An admittance much easier to utter when you’ve already said three times, “I don’t know him.”5
However, Zechariah’s prophecy does not conclude with the scattering but with God regathering their people. The covenant we broke is the one that keeps us. “They are my people,” says the Lord God. We are God’s people. Named and kept.6
Coming to the humble Table, we worship with ordinary things that somehow have become tinged by heaven through the words we utter over them. When take them we testify that the broken body and poured-out blood made the way for our eternal life because we have faith in the Broken One. We testify that though we might share little else, we, the faith community, share one Christ, one faith, one salvation, one table. Perhaps this oneness is why the Christ who said, “You will become deserters” also commanded, “As often as you eat and drink…” He’s making new Kingdom, “They are my people.” But he’s making a kingdom out of deserting people. People inclined to abandon him; people inclined to abandon one another.
While we only proclaim, “One baptism” we return to this table again and again and again. I wonder if we return time and time again because we must remember Christ and we must remember one another. It is a great fault of the church that we have used the mysteries of the table meant to unite us as a point of separation and argument. Coming to the table, we ought first repent and forgive the ways we have deserted Christ and deserted one another.
Then, and only then, should we come to see, smell, and taste the mysteries Christ as the bread and the cup nourishes our souls, reminding us that we may experience by faith things that we may not fully understand or even be able to communicate.
In a way, we eat and drink grace.
Perhaps I can speak to the mysteries of our faith in a different way:
We were loved, we were created, we became fallen, we were still loved. We are redeemed.
Thanks be to you, Lord Christ.
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Jeremiah 31:31-34.
Mark 14:27 quoting Zechariah 13:7.
John 15:13.
I Corinthians 11:27-34.
Mark 14:66-72.
Romans 8:35-39.