Sacrilege

I grew up in a Christian home. That's how a lot of testimonies start out - I grew up in a Christian home. Of course, that could mean anything, really. There are a lot of different kinds of Christians. I don't think my parents ever felt bound to one denomination, and so we attended a lot of different kinds of churches. To my mind, non-denominational was the same as it's okay to disagree. Doctrine is a brick house, and Spirit is wind. If you're going to insist on having walls, it's good to have a lot of windows open.

Protestants don't really do sacraments, but we bicker about the two that we have - baptism and communion. Can you be baptized by having water poured over your head, or sprinkled over your head, or do you have to be dunked completely under? And can your father maybe baptize you, or does it have to be a minister? And how old do you have to be? If you were baptized as a baby, before you were old enough to make a personal decision for Christ, does that even count?

And communion - the symbolic body and blood of Christ - does that have to be bread and wine? Can we use grape juice and crackers? Actually, how about using Oreos and milk? And how old do you have to be before you can participate in communion? And what exactly does it mean to take it in an unworthy manner?

It's getting more and more difficult to know what is worth getting upset about. I don't personally have an investment in the particulars of how the sacraments are administered. I've participated in a variety of communion services, and have seen a variety of elements distributed in a variety of settings. I was taught that God is concerned with what is in our heart.

When my brother and I were young, our mom usually told us if she knew it was going to be communion Sunday, so that we had time to prepare our hearts - because that was the thing that mattered. Your heart. You have to prepare it. You have to make it fit for communion - because God is holy and communion is sacred, and you don't just do it. If you are fighting with your brother, you need to make that right before you leave for church. If there is sin in your heart, you need to repent of it. Quiet your heart. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. In your heart and your mind and your body, prepare yourself to take and to eat.

Maybe all she really wanted was quiet in the car on the way to church. I don't know. But it worked.

Do this in remembrance of Me.

What does that even mean?

Hey, remember Jesus? He was such a great guy.

Yeah, he was awesome. Remember when he died for our sins?

Well, you know I wasn't there, but I heard about it. Broken body, blood spilled out. It must have hurt a LOT.

Nobody loves like Jesus. Nobody will ever love you as much as he loves you, and don't you forget it.

All this talk about old times really makes me miss him. I wonder when he's coming back?

I'm not a theologian, but I don't think that's what it means. I don't think taking communion is about reminding ourselves and one another what Jesus did two thousand years ago on the cross, or how we are the center of his universe and how everything he did and does is for us, lest we forget. It's not about training our hearts to achieve appropriate levels of gratitude.

Wheat is such a great metaphor for the life of Christ in us, and for the Christian life. Jesus said, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. In this way, in the physical realm, we get it - that to die is gain. Spiritually, we have such a hard time with it.

What value is there in meditating upon the broken body and spilled blood of Jesus? He's not dead. Why meditate upon the crushed grain, the pressed fruit? Why do we take time to ritually reflect upon brokenness and death and its exponential power in our lives? Because that is the Christian life. That's it. It's not about privilege, it's about sacrifice. Like the Christ that we follow, for the joy set before us, we are called to a cross and to brokenness.

These little rituals that we do - they hold no power in and of themselves, but they do express something of great importance. They are acts of obedience. They are physical expressions of holy confessions. They impress upon our hearts those things that are sacred, to be set apart and reverenced.

And so this made me cry.

This made me cry because I was actually served this in church, and I was not in a Monty Python movie. This made me cry because it was so jarring - I hadn't had time to prepare my heart for this. I feared that, maybe for the first time in my life, I was taking communion in an unworthy manner. Honestly, I almost didn't - and let me tell you, there is something quite horrifying about finding yourself holding the elements of communion and considering letting them pass you by because they are offensive to your spirit. That is completely backwards, any way you look at it. I actually felt God tap me and say, it is God who sanctifies and who makes the unclean holy - including my own sanitized heart. And this reeked to high heaven of sanitized. I almost gagged on all the sin that was in that cup, and I didn't want to drink it.

I am a recovering Pharisee - I'm not saying this to be self-righteous. It was like being handed the quintessential metaphor for all the sin and the shame of the church today, and being asked to take it and eat it in remembrance of Christ, and nobody was being ironic about it.

God is holy. We say that, but we don't even know what it means - because we don't consider anything sacred. In the Hebrew Bible, if a person laid hands upon the ark of God's covenant, they died. The ark was a carved box of wood and gold, and it was not to be touched. It was constructed to be carried on long poles on the shoulders - an honour strictly reserved for the Levites. It was the place of the Mercy Seat. It was the place of the presence of God. It was probably incredibly heavy.

In 2 Samuel 6, David decides it would be more convenient and expedient to put the ark onto a cart for transport. He is not intending to be disrespectful - he just wants it to be quicker and easier in the delivery. He puts it on a brand new cart. He gives it an escort. He and his entourage go before it celebrating with all their might before the Lord, with castanets, harps, lyres, timbrels, sistrums and cymbals. When they come to the threshing floor of Nakon, the oxen stumbles. Uzzah, walking beside the ark, reacts, reaches out his hands to stop the ark from toppling, and drops dead. David was angry. At God.

What kind of God kills a man for touching His stuff? We might as well say it - because I suspect that that's really what we think. We think that when God acts like that He is not being very loving - maybe being a little full of Himself. We think we are sacred all on our own, without any help from Him.

We don't like our God to be angry with us for doing what He asked us not to do. We are actually offended at the thought that God should be so petty as to demand that level of reverence. David was. How much more so are we, now that we hold the cross of Christ like an ace up our sleeve. We are so grateful for Jesus - we can dispense with all that reverence business. We have been made holy, co-heirs with Christ, and we can put our hands on anything we want to. We're like a kid who just inherited his Daddy's business - we take every opportunity to streamline and to simplify God's expectations in His covenant of mercy with us. We want to make it all more marketable, more convenient, more efficient, less burdensome.

We want the body and the blood of Christ. We want his life, we want his joy, we want his power, we want his grace. We want his peace that passes all understanding. We want unrestricted access to his presence. We are more than happy to take and to eat and drink, and to reflect upon how loved we are. We are not obedient. We have dispensed with reverence. We have lost the fear of God. We are brazen and without shame, and have actually allowed the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ to be a market, for the sake of our own convenience. And why not? The whole entire bride of Christ is one big, fat, trillion dollar market.

We are so far from reverencing the depth and the magnitude of the beauty that the act of communion symbolizes, that we permit God's perfect metaphor - the very emblem of His own sorrow, His own suffering, His own glory completely emptied and spilled out, His own Love - to be placed into a pre-filled, pre-portioned, pre-packaged, gluten free, dairy free, sugar reduced, spill free, disposable, dove stamped juice cup/crispy cracker combo with a long shelf life that makes a little crackling sound like candy wrapper when you open it.

Because it is convenient. Because it is practical. Because it is cost effective. Because we don't have to worry about left-overs. Because we have dietary restrictions and we are afraid of germs. Because people are busy and tired. Because the more people you have, the longer it takes to fill all those little cups and break the bread into tidy little pieces and clean up after. Because there are just too many of us. Because just look at how darling they are.

We have made it all about us. And it's not about us - it's about Him.

What is in our heart? If communion isn't sacred, then why do we bother? In everything, if the sacred is not worth our effort, then what is even the point? If we are always just going through the motions of our Christian faith as pleasantly and efficiently as possible, we are not remembering what it means to be a follower of Christ - we are acting. We are making all kinds of clanging and gonging, and singing songs with all our might, but we are being disobedient to the very heart of God's word.

Here's a thought. Why don't we just all pretend we are taking communion - just say the words, and imagine it - and just dispense with the elements altogether. Because it's not a pill. There's nothing in it but the solemn remembrance of our Christ and our own call to obedience, to brokenness and death and life abundant.

We are called to a life of radical inconvenience. We are the People of the Way, and the way is through the cross of Christ. The way is pouring yourself out in love, even to the point of ridicule and pain, even to the point where you have no more to give, even to death.

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 

Remember that when you take communion. Remember what manner of love it was that bought us, Whose we are and who it is we are being asked to be in return.

To die is gain.

Do this in remembrance of Me.