THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SUPPER

            On a trip to England and Scotland which Pat and I hosted back in 1997 with several members of our church sharing that delightful experience, at the end of the trip we programmed in a few free days in London. I decided I would go for an early morning jog. Looking at a map of the downtown area, I discovered that Westminster Cathedral was only about a mile and a half from our hotel. So off I went. When I arrived at the massive front doors, I never expected them to be open. But I gently pushed on one of them, and it opened! There I stood, sweaty, in a jogging outfit, when a dignified gentleman from inside said to me, “the mass is in the side chapel, sir.” Somewhat embarrassed, I moved as inconspicuously as I could along the back wall of the cathedral, to a side chapel, and there, lo and behold, at 7:00 a.m. in the morning, were about 50 people leaving their seats to go forward and receive the sacramental wafer and wine. From a respectable distance, I scanned the folks there, amazed at the diversity. I figured they were taxi drivers, business executives, sales clerks, secretaries, housewives, university professors and students, tourists, and who knows what else. The early morning hour would not deter them. Let those who are ready to bury religion ponder the hold of the Eucharist on Christians everywhere.

            If we understand a sacrament to be a “holy ordinance instituted by Christ,” then we must acknowledge that two sacraments belong to the Christian faith: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Baptism we experience but once. It stands as an outward and visible sign of God’s acceptance and adoption of us. Holy Communion we experience times without number. It is our nourishment on the way. What a joy to have our young people’s sacraments class beginning today.

            The significance of the Lord’s Supper cannot be captured by any single mind, much less can it be expounded in a brief meditation. But may I suggest for our consideration this morning that the Lord’s Supper is the commemoration and the interpretation of Jesus’ death.

            Christians live with a sense of having been died for! Not simply with a sense of having been inspired, or taught, or lead. We live with a sense of having been died for.

            Jesus wants us to remember this. “This do, in remembrance of me.” He wants us especially to remember him for the death he died. The sacrament of Holy Communion focuses on that event. Perhaps, because, Jesus anticipated that we might prefer to focus somewhere else. Jesus might have taken a lump of clay and said, “Remember how I made the blind to see.” He might have taken a piece of net and said, “Remember how I called you to be fishers of people.” He might have taken some salt, some leaven, and a lamp and said, “Remember your role in life.” He might have taken a couple of leather thongs and said, “Remember how I cleansed the temple.” He might have taken a precious coin and said, “Remember how I warned against the deceitfulness or riches.” Instead, he took the bread and the cup that we might remember him in his death. He desired to be remembered not primarily as a teacher, or worker of wonders, but as the savior of the world, who came to affect our deliverance.” Do, this, in remembrance of me.

            Why did Jesus die? There is the question that has haunted the ages. Theological libraries are stacked with volumes that propose answers to that single question. Some would have it that he died to exemplify courage in the face of pain. Others insist that he died because he clung tenaciously to ideas whose time had not yet come. Some would have us believe that he died to pacify an angry God. The more politically minded might say that he died because he tangled with the overpowering forces of church and state, Israel and Rome. In my heart of hearts I believe that he absorbed in himself the ills and death to which we are all subject, the pain and death we perpetrate on the world, to affirm that these ills and deaths are known by God, and are not the last word.

            Jesus’ death belongs to history, but the meaning of his death belongs to faith. The scriptures make it clear why he died. The Bible is emphatic that Jesus’ death was voluntary. His dying was not a catastrophe but an achievement. He did not lose his life, he gave it up. It was not taken from him, he offered it up.

            According to the scriptures, he died “for us.” “This is my body, for you.” In I Cor. 15, where Paul accounts for that which had been faithfully delivered to him, Paul declares that “Christ died ‘for us,’ according to the scriptures.” No matter how you slice it, the Bible says he died “for us.”

            I have come to believe that we cannot explain the mechanics of expiation. It is not open to theory, theology, or philosophy.  A few years ago, Pat and I were flown to DeLand, FL, where I was invited to officiate at the funeral service of a dear friend from First Presbyterian Church there, where we served for seven years. The person who died was Bob Cook, founder of the Holiday House restaurant chain, of which there were 14 upon his death. Bob Cook had three sons, who never spoke to each other. We met each son the day before the funeral service. Pat observed that “you could almost feel the pain in the eyes of each of these three sons.” At the internment at the cemetery, when Bob Cook was laid into the ground, the two sons who had been the most estranged, and who had not met or talked to each other for at least the past eleven years, in tears, walked up to each other and gave each other a huge hug and embrace. I have no idea what will be the result of that encounter, but perhaps in God’s time it will be the beginning of reconciliation. There is a lot of money involved, but that hug and embrace was not about money. It was about reconciliation, brought about by the death of their father! Who knows or can explain the mechanics of “expiation,” of a dying that brings about life to others. Such matters are veiled in mystery. What the scriptures affirm is that God loved us so much, that he have his only son, that the world might be saved through him.

            It seems innocent enough on a mid-winter Sunday here in Durham to say that God’s love is made clear in the ancient supper. “Take, eat, this is my body, for you!” But when we find ourselves hammered by the blows and tragedies of life, we look in desperation for a place where this love might be authenticated. Look what is weighted against the statement that God is love: Man’s inhumanity to man, holocausts of nature or brought on by human beings, stillborn babies, senseless murders, barbarous wars, Palestinians and Israelis, fundamentalist Muslim terrorists, auditors of enormous companies who exemplify deceitfulness in high places and place the lifetime pensions of millions in jeopardy, senseless deaths of innocent young men and women. Against all this, the bread and the cup are set. Here the defense rests its case. Maybe that’s why, at 7:00 a.m. in a Roman Catholic Cathedral in London, on a weekday, there are those in quest of the wafer and the wine which would assure them of God’s immeasurable love.

            Those who know such things tell us that Peter DeVries’ novel, The Blood of the Lamb, is the best work he ever did. I confess to having been captured by that novel back in college. Basically, it is the story of a man named Wanderhope, and his bout with faith. His resistance to God, and his need for God. Towards the end of that story his young daughter Carol is dying of an incurable disease. She is taken to a reputable city hospital where the finest medical attention is made available to her. She is still there on her eighth birthday, so the family housekeeper bakes a beautiful cake for Wanderhope to take to the hospital for the occasion.

            The father had made it a practice every now and then in visiting his daughter to slip into St. Catherine’s Church nearby. On this particular morning he entered the church and put the cake down beside him on the pew. He said some prayers, and then, in his anxiety to be with his daughter, walked off and left the cake.

            He discovered when he arrived at the hospital that Carol had just died. His whole life passed before him in an instant. His strength vanished. As he left the hospital, a desolate and bereaved soul, he remembered the cake in the church. He went back over to St. Catherine’s, found the cake, and walked out with it. Outside, under the main entrance, he looked up into the figure of the crucified Christ carved in stone. In a burst of passion he removed the cake from the box, and hurled it up against the face of Christ. The icing fell against the crown of thorns, and dripped down over the visage of the Master. At length the frosting fell away and a face appeared that could easily have said, “Let the children come to me…”

            The chapter climaxes with these words: “Then the scene dissolved itself in a mist in which my legs could no longer support their weight, and I sank down to the steps. I sat on its worn stones to rest a moment before going on.” Thus Wanderhope was found at that place which… was said to be the only alternative to the muzzle of a pistol: the foot of the cross.

            The supper commemorates and interprets the death of Jesus. Every time we partake of these sacred elements our souls are confirmed in the knowledge that God is love, and that through this bread and cup the very Son of God is “for you.”