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From middle school to the
Middle East, most of us, most of the time, like to know who is more important,
and how we can be that. We guess and compare and rank, and pretend we’re not
doing it. But in Corinth, there was no guessing, everybody knew. There was no
vagueness about people’s ranking and value – it was very clearly delineated,
and everyone knew their place. They lived these distinctions and divisions
right out loud, as though they were unequivocally true. Some people simply
mattered more than others. Nobody disputed that.
Until this Jesus Christ
message came to town. And then, in the
shadow of overwhelming and intentional inequality, this little congregation
forms. And in defiance of all accepted wisdom and practice, this little
community weirdly welcomes in all- rich
and poor, slave and free, male and female, Gentile and Jew, it says - the Spirit works in and through each person and
all contribute to the whole – we need each other, and everyone here is a
valuable part of the Body of Christ.
And when each one comes in,
they are baptized – brought through death into new life, symbolically dying
with Christ and rising into his reality of intimate connection to God and
everyone else, so that it washes the grip of the old life right off of them and
gives them this concrete moment to look back on and say THAT. That happened. That brought me into the real, and all these
people saw it. And I don’t have to live like what’s true out there really IS true,
I can live the truer truth. I am God’s beloved child. And so are they. That is
who we really are.
But when the time comes to
gather for worship, and host the meal – whose house do they go to?
Well, it’s only practical
that they would go to the home of the wealthier member, the one with enough
space for everyone, the one with the staff to make sure things are prepared and
the table is set and everything is done right.
And once it’s all ready, who
arrives first?
Well, naturally, those with
more flexible schedules, more free time, the bosses and upper class folks with
servants to tend to them, in other words, those who are not busy laboring in
service to others.
So who is it that gets the
best dozen or so seats, reclining at the table, and then, once there, who just
happens to get a head start on the food and drink, then?
As the rest arrive,
gradually filling up the other spaces, sitting and then standing where they
can, filling other rooms and the courtyard, eating what is left, one might look
at them and conclude that perhaps the divisions and rankings that were true out
there actually are true, because they sure look true in
here too.
Maybe some lives just do matter more than others.
Maybe there is no
disputing that.
Now, these dear people are
not overtly trying to treat some
better than others, but deep inside, in well-practiced and widely-accepted
ways, they have all bought into these lies, and they can’t help operating out
of destructive patterns. So that by the time they get
to part where they break the bread of life and share the cup of unity, this sacrament resembles the very lies and divisions that Jesus Christ sets us free from.
As serious as this is, and
as MAD as Paul sounds, it makes me giggle just a little bit. Because Paul
doesn’t hold back, (and I paraphrase):
Look at yourselves; do you want a prize?
I’m sorry, do YOU think you’ve been behaving as you
should?
Do you know there are rumors going on about you?
Guess what, at this point, I totally believe them.
Please tell me this isn’t true.
Please tell me some
of you are not showing up, gorging yourselves, and then like drunken idiots, marginalizing
those who come later, who have nothing to eat because you’ve decimated the
table before they even arrive?
What?! Your own fridges are empty and you have
to come fill up here?
Someone PLEASE tell me you are handling things better
than this!
Are you kidding me right now?
Tell you what- I am going to walk you through this
one more time, and then I am going to tell you that you had better sit yourself
down and take a good hard look inside before you open your mouth and take that
first bite.
If you EVER eat this meal, without first looking to your left and
right and seeing your sisters and brothers around you, part of you, to whom you
are accountable, with whom you are set free, if you ever go plowing into this
table again with selfish and self-centered intentions, you are answerable for
the very body and blood of Jesus Christ.
You might as well be ripping Jesus
apart.
You are making baby Jesus cry.
And then Paul takes a big,
deep, parental breath, and his voice gets scary calm, and quiet, and he spells
out super clearly and slowly, so there is no mistaking, what exactly happens at
the Lord’s Supper.
“The Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over,
took bread…”
When these exact words are spoken all over the
world in all different denominations when people gather to celebrate the
Eucharist - we don’t typically think of them being delivered by a fuming Paul
to a people who have botched it so badly that they need it carefully spelled
out for them.
Paul is asking the people to
stop and reflect: Is God the host of this meal? Or are we taking over and
changing the rules?
How do we import our prejudices
and divisive practices to the very thing God gives us to remind us over and
over again that God is the one who claims us and makes us one?
An ironic thing has happened
in the church through the centuries since Paul wrote this scathing, sarcastic
and frustrated non-commendation of the Corinthians’ appalling behavior at the
table. He might as well write us a scathing letter too.
Because in wanting to follow
his directive we too have taken over from God as hosts at the table of God’s grace,
and turned it into a table of judgment, that reflects our own spoken and
unspoken prejudices, divisions and anxieties.
We have turned this sacred moment, when God promises to meet us, into something we withhold from others and
ourselves, something we direct and legislate and hoard.
That means, in part, setting
up rules about who can take it and who can’t – Kids? Non-members? People who
haven’t gone to church in a while?
People from other denominations?
What about addicts? Divorced people? People who haven’t been to
confession or haven’t been baptized?
For me, growing up,
examining yourself and making sure you’re worthy before you eat the bread and
drink the cup meant to pray and confess everything I could think of, anything I
was holding back from God, getting as pure inside as I could, before taking my
individual thimble of juice and eating my precut square of bread. In fact, I
worked really hard to block out all those sitting around me, to have a just me
and God moment, and striving to become good enough, ready, to take it.
But Paul is saying something
entirely different. (And again, I paraphrase):
Don’t even eat until you are all there. In fact, if
you think you’ll get too hungry, have a snack before you come for crying out
loud.
And then examine yourself- Discern the body:
Are we
all here? Side by side, together in this moment, where God will meet us?
Are we
seeing one another as sister and brother?
Are we remembering, after all, whose
we are? That our lives are intricately bound up with each other’s and nobody
comes to this table in isolation?
Are we
in any way disregarding or dismissing those Christ has bound us together with? Treating
anyone as less than? Seeing our own selves as more or less deserving to be here
than anyone else?
OK, then, now let’s eat. Let’s serve one another.
Let’s hold the bread and lift the cup and acknowledge
that as broken as we are right now, and when we go back out that door into a
broken world, we need a broken savior, who takes on all that brokenness, and by
his death and resurrection, makes us whole. A savior who holds in front of us
this promise, embodied right now in this imperfect and weak gathering of
imperfect and weak people, and that one day we will all be one, with no
division and no ranking, no separation and no selfishness.
This is not an exclusive
club for the exempt and example.
This is the very body of the blessed, broken
and given.
Here, at this table, there
is no distinction between better or worse, more or less valued, holier or
highter. Here we all come sinners in need of forgiveness, and we all come as
saints participating with God in the salvation of the world.
This is Jesus’ table – and
he invites all to eat.
God, who can meet us
anywhere, promises to meet us at this
table, and in the act of baptism, what we call “sacraments,” – times when the
community gathers to share these holy actions, an imperfect and messy group of
us, claiming to be more than the sum of our parts, claiming in fact to be the
very Body of Jesus Christ.
And then we obey, we break that bread and drink that
cup, we pour that water on each other and we witness this truth – that we
belong to God, and we belong to each other.
It takes the community to do
that. It takes all kinds, not just one. It takes children and old people, and
people in their middle years, and it takes people who the world says are less
than, and people who swallow the idea that they are better than, and it takes
those who look to others like successes and those who look to others like
failures, and it takes ones who are different than me to reflect my humanity
back to me, and I to them, as we are the Body of Christ.
Today we get to participate
in both the sacraments, because in addition to communion, we get to baptize little
Robby. We will say over him that the most true thing about him is this
identity and belonging: beloved child of God.
And even
though he wont get what’s happening, really, here is some of what we witness.
Robby, – while we
don’t know what will come in your life, we do know a few generalities:
you will suffer,
you will have sorrow and pain,
you will have
deep and beautiful friendships and feel love.
You will
wonder who you are and be filled with doubt and darkness.
You will do
things you regret and be filled with shame.
You will
experience forgiveness and hope.
You will
discover what makes you feel alive, make you feel like you are contributing.
You will dream
and scheme.
You will let
people down that you love very much.
YOU will be
let down by those who love you very much.
You will do
things that make you proud and satisfied.
You will see
things that make you disillusioned and afraid.
And through it
all – you will continue belonging to God.
And through it
all – nothing will separate you from the love of God.
And through it all – you
will be invited to live with a wide-open heart to others, beloved sisters and
brothers.
And here, in this body of
broken people, you are welcomed into the house of the honest who say:
Sin gets me too! I believe the lies and trust the
fake promises. I perpetuate the divisions too, and I can be shockingly,
shamefully, selfish and self-centered.
But when I come here, I have to see you. Next to me.
Part of me. And that helps me remember that out there everyone else is next to
me too and part of me too. And here I have to be accountable for my words and
actions, and I can’t receive the body of Christ without receiving you, my
sister, my bother, beloved child of God, claimed and blessed, forgiven and
set free.
And so we
welcome you, Robby, to this table today.
Where Jesus does soomething powerful and life-giving, when friends and
strangers gather to say there is another reality and it’s the one that claims
us.
We will allow
ourselves to be defined and set apart by this practice of tearing up bread and
eating it and passing it to each other and saying it connects us to God and
fills us up for the work of God. Because it does.
From this table God sends us
out into this world run not by fear but by love, bound not by apprehension and
hesitation, but by trust and connection, sent with a purpose and held by
something truer than the lies and division we soak in from the world around
us.
We are God’s
people.
(That doesn’t
mean the rest of the world isn’t
God’s people- let’s not import division into this!).
Being God’s
people means that our very identity and calling is to live out the truth that
we all belong to God and we all belong to each other, so that we can embody
this reality in, with, and for the rest of the world.
Beloved, broken,
blessed and given.
That is what
it is to be the Body of Christ.
Amen.
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