Communion Meditations

More than Just a Symbol

Not long after tornadoes devastated communities through Oklahoma and Kansas in the spring of 1999, Bishop Medardo Gomez of the Lutheran Church in El Salvador visited the Disciples Center in Indianapolis. The Lutheran Church in El Salvador is one of the Disciples' important partner churches in Central America and our relationship with the Lutherans goes back to the dark days of the Salvadoran civil war. Periodically Week of Compassion provides emergency and development funds to the Lutheran Church in response to various human needs in their country, most recently in response to the enormous needs in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch.

The Bishop read a very moving letter he had written to "Semana de Compasion" to express his church's concern for Disciples congregations in Oklahoma and Kansas affected by the tornadoes. On two different occasions, he told us, he had asked his seventy plus congregations to offer intercessory prayer for those congregations and all the tornado victims. He then presented to Week of Compassion a very gracious monetary gift from his church for tornado relief. A few weeks earlier, during the crisis in Kosovo, this same church had offered to resettle a hundred Kosovar refugees. His people, the Bishop said, know what it is to flee war and violence, to live amidst hurricanes, volcanoes, droughts, etc.

Almost apologetically, he acknowledged that the gift was "just a symbol" and that he wished his church could do more. However, we Disciples in North America, who like our brothers and sisters in the Lutheran Church in El Salvador gather weekly around the Lord's table, know that something symbolic is not "just a symbol." The bread, we say, is symbolic of the broken body; the cup, symbolic of the shed blood. These are not "just symbols." These are more than mere tokens of worship. They are, rather, deep and powerful expressions of our participation in the body and blood of Christ, of our remembering the suffering and sacrifice of Christ, of our partnership in the life and resurrection of Christ. And like the offerings of our dollars and checks to Week ofCompassion, the offerings of bread and wine become strong and living symbols of our unity with people of faith in El Salvador and throughout the world and of our common commitment to Christ's command to share compassion with suffering people everywhere.

These are the gifts of God for the people of God.

JWW

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Somebody Must Set the Table

There was a communion service of sorts in this church on Thursday evening. In a simple, compassionate act three quiet members of our group prepared a meal for _____ and took it to them.

It makes me wonder who prepared the meal and who made the arrangements for that other communion service on that other Thursday evening.

The Gospel of Mark tells us that two disciples, unnamed, followed a man, also unnamed, who was carrying a water jar. He led them to a house with a large upper room that was, the scripture tells us, furnished and ready.

Well, who furnished it? And who made it ready?

While Jesus and the boys were at the table doing their thing, were the women in the kitchen preparing the food? Not in my version of the story.

While the elders were at the table praying, were the deacons waiting to wash the dishes? Not in my version of the story.

Still, somebody did it. And without that somebody we would not have a gospel story.

We gather at this table each week to worship, we tell ourselves, in spirit and in truth. We are able to do that because somebody has unlocked the door, turned up the thermostat, swept the floor, arranged the chairs, and set the table.

In God's great drama of redemption we focus on the main actorsAbraham, Moses, David, Peter, Paul, and, of course, Jesus. But it is the bit players, working in obscurity, who set the stage and move the story along.

Someday, we dare to believe, we shall gather at God's great messianic banquet. When that hap

pens, you may rest assured that somebody will have set the table.

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A Grammar Lesson

Each Sunday at this table you hear the words, "This is my body, broken for you." How, I wonder, do you hear that word YOU? Do you hear it as a singular YOU or a plural YOU?

When you stop to think about it, there is no more selfish act than eating and drinking. The bread that I eat is no longer available to you. The wine you drink is not there for me any more. At the biological level, eating and drinking would not seem to be a very compassionate thing to do.

And yet there are no more powerful images in the Bible of God's sustaining and nourishing grace than the images connected with food and drink. From the manna in the desert to the feeding of the multitudes on the hillside to the vision of a great messianic banquet, God is present for us in the act of nourishing our bodies.

Yet in none of these events is the focus on individual nourishment. God's people are fed not as individuals but as a group. Individuals are nourished only as members of a community.

So at the table of Jesus a very self-centered act becomes a community event. When one person tastes the wine of joy, we all rejoice. When one person does not get enough of the bread of life, we all go away from the table hungry.

That is why, among other reasons, the word of Jesus is: "This is my body, broken for YOU." That's ALL of you . . . second person plural!

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What Do You Do next?

The story comes to us in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of Luke. A man came up to Jesus one day and said, "I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."

And that's itend of story! No description of what happened next. No explanation of whether Jesus was rejecting the man's offer or whether he was just warning the man what it would cost to

follow him. I wonder why Luke leaves us hanging that way.

It could be, I suppose, that Luke wants us to experience that life's storieseven faith storiesare never wrapped up with neat endings.

Or maybe Luke just wants us to finish the story.

Let's try it: You are the man. You come to Jesus

in a moment of enthusiasm. You say, "I will follow you wherever you go."

And then, before your very eyes, he turns into a homeless person.

What DO you do next?

The dream of God as we see it in Jesus's alternative social visionis usefully crystallized in three complementary ways. First, I call it a "politics of compassion." For Jesus, compassion was more than a virtue for the individual. It was the basis of his criticism of the social order: for Jesus, the compassion of God stood against the domination system of his day. Compassion was also the paradigm or core value of his social vision: Jesus' understanding of God as compassionate led to a social vision grounded in compassion. It stood in sharp contrast to the core value of the social vision of elite theology, which was a politics of holiness and purity centered in the temple and legitimating the social order. Compassion as a core political paradigm suggests a political order that is life-giving, nourishing, and inclusive.

Marcus J. Borg,

The God We Never Knew

(San Francisco: Harper, 1997)