[Click here to download a PDF version of this document, complete with citations.]

“Jesus said: I am the bread of life. You who come to me shall not hunger; you who believe in me shall never thirst. In company with all who hunger for spiritual food, we come to this table to know the risen Christ in the sharing of this life-giving bread.”

In late 2006, I was holding a workshop on congregational marketing and media outreach for a group of about 15 Lutheran congregations in southeastern Wisconsin.  After we had finished, one of the participants came up to me and told me how offended they were at one of my claims: that as Christians, the celebration of the Lord’s Table is intrinsically linked to our identity.  This link is not just symbolic, it is also linguistic: communion shares the same Latin root, commun-, with common, community and communication.  To communicate is to share, to commune is to be together, to be in community is to hold in common that which unites you.  It is the communion that encompasses all of these: where we share together in the unity of believers in all times and places – those who have come before and those to come after, those both near and far – the common practice of our faith.  “There’s no better external communication strategy than that,” I concluded.

Such a claim, to this person, was “too Catholic.”  Since then, I have shared this story with someone else, who told me that my claim was not Catholic but “too post-modern.”  The mystery that surrounds the category of that thesis, I believe, reflects some of the mystery of the experience of the Lord’s Supper – the very mystery of God.

Since childhood, communion has been the center of my worship experience.  As a child, I was filled with wonder: what are these little crackers?  Why are there little cups?  What do they taste like?  What do they feel like?  Why are some people kneeling and others standing?  How do they get the red drink in the little cups without spilling?

As I got a little older and began to learn more about the ritual, I was engrossed.  How exciting it was to eat and drink as one people, to encounter God through the meal Jesus Christ himself celebrated.  When I took my first communion just days before my birthday in December 1994, I had memorized all the right to explain the ritual:

What is the Sacrament of the Altar?
It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ himself for us Christians to eat and to drink. (Luther’s Small Catechism)

As I participated for the first time, it was exactly as Burkhart explains in the opening words of our class reading.  Actually being a part of the communion – not just an onlooker, not just reading and studying its meaning in Sunday School for the past three months – was an experience without substitute.

In the years since, however, my outlook on the communion celebration has become even more community-focused.  The communion “embraces all aspects of life,” demonstrating the unity of the participants and witnessing to a single kingdom and the future life to come.   I couldn’t (and still can’t) reconcile the image of a closed communion table.  Walter Brueggemann makes analogy of the heresy of scarcity to the Pharaoh, and I extend that analogy here.  Pharaoh, afraid that he might run out of good things, is not satisfied until he is in control of everything so that he can adequately ration and preserve the standard of living to which he is accustomed.  As a result of his fear, he becomes ruthless and destructive, eventually resulting in the Israelites slavery.   Against that scarcity, it is rather abundance in the meal that witnesses to a future banquet where Jesus Christ will preside at the end of time , where divisions cease and the human ways of division crumble in the unifying experience of God’s beloved community.   Such close(d) communion restrictions instituted by religious authorities surely have no place in such a celebration.

In communion, table fellowship is a profession of abundance.  The early believers shared with those around them not because they felt it was their duty or obligation, but because to them God gave much.  In Acts 2, routine, everyday chores were infused with the joy that was given to the early church in baptism, and it empowered the community to give and share from their table.  God’s blessings are given abundantly, without restraint or condition, in a way that confuses and confounds the human observer.  Unlike our human-made systems and structures – which oppress and discriminate, that breed fear of not having enough – the Lord’s Table is open and free, with more than enough blessing and opportunity, more than we can even imagine, for all who respond to the invitation.

Before running off and attaching such great significances to communion, however, we must remain grounded.  After all, eating and drinking is merely human necessity, part of the core and instinctive, reflexive actions for our own survival.  But as human beings are social creatures, so too is the action of eating.  When we gather together in a group, it is always more than the basic elements of food and drink, it is an experience that nourishes our mind and soul, holistically permeating our entire being.   As we talked in class one week, remembering the first meal I had with my adopted sister who had just arrived from India is not about the items we ate but is entirely about the celebration of Priya’s being present with us, learning together as a united family no longer separated by oceans and continents.  The experience is of greater importance than the action.

Therefore, the communion experience is undoubtedly different for each person.  In the midst of this corporate act, a deeply personal, intimate engagement between the believer and God is taking place.  God’s spirit empowers us to restore creation and make all things new.  Christ’s sacrifice for the reconciliation of the world is celebrated and honored.  Thanks and praise is given to God for all God has done.  The meal comes not only as a commemoration of the past, but indeed a response to the present and a plea for the future.

As the world continues to change, so too will communion’s meaning and the associations attached with it.  As I have been supporting here, communion is not only a celebration of a once-and-done event 2,000 years ago, but it encompasses the whole community of believers that have been and are to come.  As Christians, we must confess the harm that has been inflicted upon nations, cultures, and peoples in our name, ideas born from a convoluted sense of our table of unity.  We must confess our complicity in the economic globalization and agricultural empire that ensures the oppression and marginalization of the most poor and vulnerable in our world, contributing to the rabid protection of our abundance while we structuralize scarcity at our table of plenty.  We must work toward unraveling the systems within our churches, our governments, and our cultures that attempt to withhold God’s freely-given blessing on all people while we try to protect our own perception of the sacred at our table of grace.

Stepping back and exploring communion for the past few weeks has been exciting for me as I once again evaluate my own sacramental theology.  During confirmation, when I was exploring the full impact of the definition of the Sacrament of the Altar that I had memorized three years earlier and realized that it did not sit well with my soul, I began to read through other confessional resources.  When I found resources from Huldrych Zwingli and the Heidelberg Catechism and saw a symbolic view of the Lord’s Supper proposed, I stopped my exploration and felt I had found a theological outlook that suited me.   Additionally, in the call for unity amid diversity that inspires me from a reading of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, differences of opinion regarding communion can be expressed while maintaining fellowship within the Christian church.  In the Statement of Faith of the United Church of Christ, we affirm God’s call “to share in Christ’s baptism and eat at his table, to join him in his passion and victory.”   So far as the issue of symbolism, memorialist, and ecumenical doctrines are concerned, my positions have been confirmed through this class’ exploration.  But an intentional exploration of the depth of attachments to communion’s practice is something I had not done in the past, and for me, that was and remains the bigger challenge.  Staying alert and engaged, avoiding the ‘ho-hum routine’ of communion had always been at the front of my mind, and for the most part I find that with few exceptions, I have always experienced the comfort of God’s grace, yet been surprised by the Spirit’s power in the times I have communed.  In the process of writing this paper, I have only begun to explore the depth of my own convictions and now feel challenged to do so with prayerful intentionality, looking through aspects and lenses I had previously overlooked.