The Last Supper

 My dad was a youth group leader in the 1970's and was talking about the Holy Spirit, he used a metaphor from a new movie called "Stars Wars" and said it was like the 'Force' that surrounded us and all living things. Being a practitioner of Tai Chi, the Chi is likened to an energy that runs through all things and binds the universe together. When we connect to this chi and remove and blockages in our body, we have health. In practicing Spring Forest QiGong, we are invited to center and connect ourselves to the strongest force in the universe, love. In reading the Cultural Toolbox, by Anton Treuer, Native theology call what connects us all together 'medicine'. Where there is good medicine, there is health for all living things and the planet itself. There are many differences between religions and world views, and we practice in many different ways, but I do think that there is a part of each that connects us one to another, to all life, and the universe and to whatever is beyond the universe, whether it is called Chi, or Qi, or Spirit, or Love, or Medicine, or the many other names in different languages.

We, as Christians, can look to our Bibles which contain many different books and many different views of who or what God is and what is our relationship, or covenant. I center my faith and theology on that God is love and we are to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and body, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. As the Sunday School song went, 'Love, love, love. That's what it's all about, for God loves us we love each other, mother, father, sister, brother, everybody scream and shout! Cause, that what it's all about. It's about love, love, love. It's about love, love, love."

In the Gospel of Matthew, we have Jesus portrayed as the new Moses, who goes up to give the Beatitudes instead of the 10 Commandments, and institutes the Last Supper which replaces the Passover. "On the night of Jesus' betrayal and desertion.." is how a part of our liturgy for communion starts. The Passover, of course, is the meal which the Hebrew people eat that remembers their ancestors prepared themselves for the journey from slavery to freedom and they splash blood of the lamb on the doorposts of their dwellings so that the angel of death will pass over them when it visits Egypt to force Pharaoh to free the descendants of Israel. So in theology that I don't fully understand, Jesus becomes the lamb and the bread becomes his body and the wine becomes his blood. I am comforted that in a church meeting when I was young and there was a debate about whether kids should be able to participate, one objection was that they were too young to understand what they were taking. The conference minister, Rev. Jack Seville, was there and he freely admitted that he didn't, and he didn't expect anyone, much less the youth to understand it, for it was an act of faith. 

In our denomination and many other mainline denominations, we have two sacraments: baptism and communion. A sacrament is commonly defined as a ritual commanded by Jesus for the church to perform through which we receive divine grace. We have generally three views of the Last Supper in Western theology: transubstantiation, consubstantiation, and memorial. Transubstantiation is the Roman Catholicism view that the blessed bread and wine become the literal flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. The bread and wine transform into body and blood. Consubstantiation is the view of Lutherans, and maybe others, that the bread and wine are both, bread and flesh, and wine and blood. Our denomination, as does most Calvinist churches, hold that the bread and wine (or juice) remain the bread and wine and we take it in remembrance of Jesus and his sacrifice. 

Yet, however, this is true, that when we have communion, we ask for the God to bless the bread, and cup, and all of us with the Holy Spirit. So this makes it more than just a meal of remembrance, there is something more happening that just a ritual. It was thought that this meal, this sacrament would bring healing, forgiveness, grace, and God's love in our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies. When I was in Wahpeton at a ministerial meeting, a Lutheran Brethren minister was telling us that he was trying to get his church to have it more than 4 times a year. The common refrain was that communion was so special that by taking it too often, it will lose its meaning and sacredness. He boldly asked, "If I were to say that married couples should refrain from making love too often because it will become common and not special, would you agree?" And he was a little nervous as an 80-something matriarch of the church stood up, but then she practically shouted, "We should have commonion every week then!" 

I don't fully understand all the ins and outs of communion. I don't believe we have to. I believe it is a memorial meal in which we remember Christ's love for the world in his death and God's love for the world in Christ's resurrection. I believe that being together and taking it binds us together in ways we only have an inkling of. I believe that it does open us up to the Spirit and to love to heal our bodies, minds, and souls and strengthen us so that we can love more fully, more deeply our neighbor and the world to bring about peace, joy, and justice. Amen?  Amen? Amen.