We are Each Other’s Bread and Wine
no. 5
by Rev. Joanna Harader
Peace Mennonite Church
Lawrence, Kansas, August 3, 2008
I invite you to dig into your memories and imaginations. Envision the table. It’s a big table, with all the leaves put in. The table is covered by Aunt Betty’s table cloth that doesn’t quite reach the ends. There are lots of chairs around the table—six nice wooden ones, a few wobbly chairs brought up from the basement, a couple of metal folding chairs, and, of course, the piano bench where the two smallest have to sit and share the curved end of the table.
It’s supposed to be a nice meal. The food is good. There is an air of celebration. Things are going well. Grandpa says, “Amen.” You say, “Please pass the Jello salad.” But then Uncle Herman says, “Can you believe those anti-family kooks up in Massachusetts, letting gay people get married?” And your cousin Frank, who is still in the closet, looks intently at his mashed potatoes.
Or maybe all is pleasant until Aunt Cindy whips out the brochures for the new product she is selling and encourages everyone to place an order. “Just don’t get gravy on the forms.”
Or maybe the doorbell rings. It’s your sister’s ex-husband here to see the kids.
Or Grandma says, “Now you kids know the chemo isn’t really working. Glenn has a copy of the will. Pastor knows how I want the service. When the time comes, please don’t fight over the china.”
I know this sermon is supposed to be about the Lord’s Supper and peace. It’s just that, based on my experiences of meals with large groups of people, I’m not sure how peaceful that last supper really was.
The whole thing starts off very strangely. According to the account in Matthew’s Gospel, “Jesus tells a few guys to go into town and find “a certain man.” They are to tell this man, “The Teacher is going to celebrate Passover at your house.” It sounds like a scene from a bad spy movie.
But we know that Jesus is being careful for a reason. He is the one that people—important people—want to kill. He and his disciples know that Jerusalem is a risky place for them to be. The authorities could break into this upper room and bust up the party at any moment.
And if the threat of capture weren’t enough to prevent a peaceful meal, consider this tension-filled conversation:
Jesus says to everyone: “I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me.”
This is understandably upsetting to his friends. “Surely not I, Lord?” they all say.
Jesus replies, “The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”
Then Judas, one has to wonder why, says, “Surely not I, Rabbi?”
Jesus answers, “Yes, it is you.”
Well, umm, pass the Jello salad, would you, John?
Peace is not the word to describe the mood in the room. And the scene can only get more tense as Jesus calls the bread his body, the wine his blood. Suggesting Jews drink blood, well, it’s not kosher. And it is a vivid reminder that Jesus will soon die a violent death.
So the first Last Supper, it seems, was not a peaceful event. And the practice of remembering and reenacting this meal was contentious for the earliest Christian church as well.
A letter Paul sent to the church in Corinth (I Corinthians 11:17-34), which contains the earliest written account of the Lord’s Supper, makes clear that the Corinthians are not observing the event in the spirit in which it was intended. They don’t even wait for the pastor to bless the food. They just start eating. And they figure you are entitled to eat what you bring—so some go hungry and others get drunk.
Surely this is not the peace, the shalom, the social harmony that God wants for the church.
And yet somehow the church has managed to hold on to this practice. We call it communion, or the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist. And most all Christian traditions practice it, with varying levels of formality and frequency, around the world.
Places like Central America. You know about the archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero. He used his position of influence to speak out against the oppressive practices of land owners. He most certainly participated in Eucharist—often. In March of 1980 he was leading the people in the mass. “This is my body.” The bullet went right through his heart.
They practice it at the United Methodist Church in Liberia—a country ravaged by civil war. Michelle Hovey, a Mennonite professor, writes of celebrating the Lord’s Supper with the people of Liberia and passing the bread to one whose hands had been cut off during the war (“Holy, Healing Madness,” Sojourners [December 2006]).
This Eucharist—this Great Thanksgiving—is fraught with violence. It was begun by one anticipating the cross and continues as we who seek to follow Christ gather and remember the brutal crucifixion. The violence of the world surrounds and sometimes even enters into this sacred Christian practice.
And yet, it is known as a meal of peace.
To put it most simply, it is a meal of peace because it was instituted by the Prince of Peace.
The apostle Paul clearly teaches the earliest Christian communities that Christ came to create peace. Paul is particularly concerned about peace within the church—peace among those claiming to follow Christ.
He writes to the church in Ephesus that “In Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, . . . He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:13-18)
These new Christian communities to which Paul was writing brought together people who did not really know how to live together. Rich and poor; slaves and free; men and women; and most notably—Jews and Gentiles. The church faced very real problems in trying to form community with people so different from each other.
Over time, of course, some of the categories of division change. Most of us are no longer concerned with distinctions of Jew and Gentile. The dividing walls of hostility shift from time to time and place to place. Catholics and Protestants. Americans and Russians. Blacks and Whites. Israelis and Palestinians. Hutu and Tutsi. Crips and Bloods. Liberals and Conservatives.
The categories change. The nature of the conflicts changes. But our human need for reconciliation remains.
Paul insists that such reconciliation is possible through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. That those who are far away can be brought toward each other and toward God. The meal does not deny the conflict, it brings together those in conflict. The meal holds out the hope of peace.
The earliest Christians understood this promise of peace quite literally. Those who participated in the Lord’s Supper were forbidden from participating in warfare. Cyprian, a third century bishop, wrote, “After the reception of the Eucharist, the hand is not to be stained with the sword and bloodshed” (Carol Frances Jegen, “The Eucharist and Peacemaking: Sign of Contradiction?” Worship 59, no. 3 [May 1985]: 202-210).
These early Christians understood that the meal, while surrounded by violence, is not in any way condoning the violence. The meal stands as witness to alternatives to violence.
As hostility toward Jesus grew, many of his followers wanted him to lead an armed revolt against the Romans. Instead, he ate a meal with his friends and offered himself to them in the most intimate way.
And so the earliest Christians respected the connection between the practice of the Lord’s Supper and the practice of peace. This seems to have changed with Constantine who needed Christian soldiers. Suddenly it became acceptable for those who participate in the Eucharist to also participate in warfare.
It is interesting to note, though, that the one who blesses and serves the bread and cup is still, most often, expected to be a person of peace. Military chaplains are completely exempt from combat. Even people engaged in war, it seems, need to know that somebody is set apart from the violence. Those of us in a violent world need to know there is some place set apart.
And so we come to the table. This table of peace. Sometimes we gather on calm, sunny days, surrounded by beautiful green trees and chirping birds and people we love. Sometimes we gather in places of deep oppression and violence, or in the wake of devastating floods, or with people we would rather avoid.
This is not a table of peace because it exists in a peaceful world. This is a table of peace because the Host—the one who invites us, the one who feeds us—is the Prince of Peace.
Yes, there was fear and tension in that upper room. But the words of Jesus brought a peace that reached beyond the turbulent circumstances. We are told that Jesus and his friends sang a hymn before they went out into the night.
Yes, the Corinthians struggled to live out the reconciling work of Christ. But the Church survived and thrived. In many places, communities of Christ-followers were known for things like including women, sharing their possessions, and welcoming Gentiles.
Yes, Romero was killed at the communion table. But the words he said to a reporter a few days before his murder have proven true: “A bishop will die. But the church of God—which is the people—will never perish” (http://www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/romero.html). The struggle for justice continues today, strengthened by Romero’s insistence on Christ’s peace and justice for the world.
Yes, Michelle Hovey shared the Lord’s Supper with those mutilated during the civil war in Liberia. But also around that table were those who had done the mutilating. The violence of that place was carried in the bodies of everyone who lived there. But around the table, all partook of the body of the one who came speaking peace.
Yes, even in our own churches and our own homes there is often tension around the table. And yet we keep coming to the table. We keep eating together and talking with each other and trying, by the grace of God, to love even those with whom we disagree.
This is a table of peace because those who gather at the table—here and around the world—are indeed reconciled to God and to each other through Christ Jesus, who is our peace. Amen.