search for faith

In Acts 2:42, Luke says that the early church was devoted to the Apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. It's a passage familiar to pastors and planters, a sort of measuring stick to evaluate how we're doing.

Judging from an unscientific study based on visiting services and scanning websites, I'd say we're pretty strong on the first two elements, and making progress on the fourth. For teaching (or, more commonly these days, story-telling), we have text, video and cassette tapes available. For fellowship, there is the on-site or nearby coffee house. Prayer? It happens. The "breaking of bread"? Hmmm. Curious: the ‘breaking of bread’ component so important to those early believers gets little notice today. This deserves a closer look, especially since communion speaks to matters important among post-moderns.

Back in high school, I saw a guy standing in the parking lot one afternoon after the bell rang. His shirt was off, and a jagged, semi-circular scar from his neck to below his shoulder blade caught my attention. “A shark grabbed him once,” another kid said. “Oh,” I replied, my mind instantly filling with pictures.

Things you can see or handle evoke stories, stir memories and go deep into heart and mind. Physical objects regularly spark spiritual ruminations. Put a chalice and a round loaf of bread on a stand near the front of your worship space. Light a candle. Tell the story, over several weeks if you have to: there’s more than enough detail. Have people touch what's there, break it off, drink it down. The point of our gathering is wrapped by grape and wheat, in a shredded body and spilled blood. Simple things throw us back to the core of why we do what we do.

With communion we remember Jesus who came for us at our time of deepest need. He rescued us when we were on the brink of death. He did for us what we could not accomplish for ourselves.

We love a rescue; check the movies. A lot of pixels have been given over to the intricate spiritual implications of The Matrix, but seen more basically, it’s a rescue story-enabled by Trinity’s love. Or, Run Lola Run. Sure, the music’s cool, and the pace frenetic, but boiled down, it’s Lola rescuing her chowderhead boyfriend, three times. Mani’s a mess: his trouble is self-induced. And Lola, at great risk, goes out on a limb for him. She even dies for him.

Communion proves that we were chowderheads, too, that we had plunged ourselves into a hole so deep we couldn’t climb out: we desperately needed help. And help came, at inestimable personal cost.

Theologs have for centuries wrestled with communion: what does it mean? How does it work? Much as we’d like to, we just can’t quite get ourselves deep enough into the mysterious words, “This is my body…. This is my blood.” Did Jesus mean that literally? How could He, since He was still there, in the flesh, so to speak? Did Jesus mean this metaphorically? How could He, since earlier He had insisted that “My flesh is real food and My blood is real drink” (John 6:55)?

Demanding a simple solution flattens the mystery. What if instead we point to the cup and bread as another example of the intersection between physical and spiritual? You can describe bits of this puzzle, just as you can describe how light acts as waves or particles. But explain it? Fully?

The tradition I grew up with held communion in great, and grave esteem. We ‘remembered the Lord’ each week, and always in hushed tones. As I got to pondering this after some years, I began to have trouble with the sobriety on two fronts. First, there was the wine. Granted, some groups avoid trouble here by serving unfermented grape juice (or, as was the case with a church my family visited in Africa, orange juice). But putting aside the question of current or former alcoholics in the congregation (which is, for me, about the only reason I can think of not to have real wine), ponder the genuine article. “Wine gladdens the heart,” says the Psalmist (104:15), which is a good thing. Indeed, when Jews sat to their annual Seder, they poured four cups of wine, to symbolize their wealth (wine is the drink of the rich) and their joy. Jesus, at the first Last Supper, would have agreed with that precedent.

Second, there’s the hymn. The Gospel writers tell us that the disciples “sang a hymn” after finishing the meal (Matthew 26:30). We know the lyrics for this song, if not the music: it came from the Hallel, Psalms 113-118. Read those Psalms and you’ll be struck by their irrepressible praise. When the Passover meal concluded, it ended on an upbeat.

By integrating communion into our gathered worship, we have a magnet and a mirror for joy. The celebration of it draws our praise, and fires it, too. Memory of His death quiets us, to be sure. But as the impact of that death sinks in, joy cannot help but emerge.

How often should we take communion? When I ask this question, I get a startling response: Not very, because it might become routine. Routine? Like eating gets routine, or watching a sunset, or breathing? I wonder whether people who fear the routine have been gripped by the variegated nature of the Supper.

I wonder if communion is a little like Aldus’ (now Adobe's) Pagemaker (OK, I’m dating myself): an incredibly powerful piece of software whose marvelous features were rarely accessed by people like me. I could squeeze a decent-looking bulletin from the disk, but beyond that I did not venture. I settled for the functional, the practical; I was easily satisfied.

I wonder if communion is a threat to the ‘rest of the service’. Let’s face it: there’s only so much time to get done all that needs doing. Can we afford the time communion would take?

I wonder if communion might be feared as ‘too religious’, or come across as a sort of artistic jargon, accessible only to those in the know. I wonder what might happen in the hearts of those God calls into our services when they regularly face the story of the Cross that emphasizes by turns power, sin, grace, failure, love and need.

Could we who are influential in the shape of church life fashion worship around this table? I wonder.

Dan Schmidt pastors an international church in Costa Rica. He loves coffee, bakes bread and rides mountain bikes; he has a lizard living in the window of his study. In December, Baker will publish his book Unexpected Wisdom: Major Insights from the Minor Prophets.