Thirty years ago,
while attending seminary, my wife Irene and I belonged to a church that
celebrated communion every Sunday. It was a church with many young families
like ours, and full of gifted musicians. During weekly communion, while Taizé
music played we stood in a circle and passed the bread and wine around. We all
knew each other. Flutes, guitars, and piano played. It is a good memory.
Communion is harder
for me now.
You see, I’m fine
motor challenged—which is a fancy way of saying I’m clumsy. Always have been. As a kid, when I kicked the
soccer ball, it never went where I aimed. If I swung a bat, I whiffed. I tried
hockey, one year, in a city league. I scored one goal. The team’s star shot
from the point. The puck hit my ankle and bounced over the goal line. I limped
off the ice.
Not much has
changed. If you walk through the church I serve and look carefully you will find coffee stains all over the floor
and stains in the carpet. You see, I’ve never learned the art of keeping my
wrist steady. Whenever I buy new shirts, it’s usually because the old ones are full
of wine stains. Ask Irene. I’m fine-motor challenged.
My clumsiness also shows
up on communion Sundays. When I pour the wine, I spill it. The lady who sets
the table got so tired of sending the white communion tablecloth out for
cleaning after communion that she bought a Plexiglas cover to put over the
communion table. I am all thumbs. When I read the communion liturgy, I can’t
figure out how to hold my papers, break the bread, and pour the wine gracefully.
I should probably get an acolyte to help me. But the effort to get it all right
also sets me on edge, makes me anxious. So I start mixing up lines, or I mix
the gluten-free bread with the regular bread and the wine cup with grape juice
cup. One Sunday I crumbled a whole loaf of gluten free bread on the floor as I
served it.
But I still look
forward to communion Sundays. In spite of my clumsiness and anxiety. Why?
I think the basic
reason is that communion is a deep psychic solution for a problem I have. You
see, Jesus seems very distant to me. Almost unreal.
I know about Jesus,
of course, from the Bible. I’ve studied Jesus carefully, using original Greek manuscripts.
In seminary I parsed every word of Jesus’ parables. And I’ve read hundreds of
books about Christianity, too:
commentaries on the gospels, systematic theologies, and lately, lots of philosophical
theology. But Jesus still seems very distant to me. So distant, in fact, that
if Jesus had been a student in my grade one class, I probably wouldn’t have
given him a Valentine’s card, except that my mother always made sure I never
left anyone out.
Part of the problem
is that I’ve come to know Jesus mostly through studying him from afar, through
books. I’ve never had a phone call from him. I’ve never had a cup of coffee
with Jesus. I’ve never heard him speak to me through my heart, like, “take this
job,” or “she’s the one.” I’ve never had dreams or visions from Jesus. I don’t
have what some Evangelical Christians call a personal relationship with Jesus.
How could I? Jesus hasn’t set foot on planet earth for 2000 years! When people
say they have a personal relationship with Jesus I think they must be kidding
themselves, that they are using the English language in ways that just don’t
make everyday plain sense.
And yet, I’ve
shaped my whole life around this stranger. My parents read me stories about
Jesus since I was a baby. I prayed to Jesus with my first words. I went to
Christian grade school, high school, college and seminary. I’ve made a career
out of telling people about Jesus, and to be like Jesus.
Do you ever have
this problem? This ambivalent relationship to Jesus? Where it seems that as
long as Jesus is out of sight, he is hard to keep in mind? My kids live far
away from Toronto. Sometimes, when I get busy, I forget to call, or write them
an email, or send them a What’s App message. But it's a vicious circle right?
Because when I don’t write, or call, or text, then they don’t write, or call,
or text back. Pretty soon a couple of weeks have passed, and a day or two goes
by when I hardly think of them—even though their ancient artwork is still on my
office wall, and even though my grandson’s Lego is all over the house. It’s so
easy for the living we love to drift apart.
But if this is true
for us and our kids and work colleagues and high school friends, how much more
so when it comes to Jesus? I never even knew Jesus in the flesh! He’s like my
first cousin, three-generations removed, Pieter Schuil, who died in 1901, but
whose diary is on my desk. It’s hard to connect those words to a real person.
And its even harder with this more ancient Jesus, to keep him top of mind, to
be inspired by him, to really, really want to love like him, more than anything
else in the world.
Which gets me back
to communion, and why I love it even though I’m clumsy and often make a mess of
it. Communion is the one place, you see, where all this Jesus stuff suddenly
seems less academic, less preachy, less distant. Communion—even in the wooden,
accident-prone, halting way I lead it—communion somehow mysteriously transports
me away from the theology and ethics and academics of Christianity into a strange,
but also deeper and lovelier appreciation of Jesus.
I think this is
why. On communion Sundays I smell the wine. I taste the bread, feel it crumble
in my fingers. The tablecloth is starched and clean, but with use gets spilled
on, just like at home. People shuffle up here, real people who I can look in
the eye, people I care about—love, even. We smile. And suddenly in my heart of
hearts I’m at a real table, a real meal, and realize that Jesus is much more
than just this ancient preacher man I study. He’s like me. He sits down with
friends. He fries fish over a fire. He slices roast lamb. He says, “I
shouldn’t,” but has a second and third glass of wine anyway.
And he does all
this even on his last day alive. With his best friend, John, laying his head on
Jesus’ shoulder. He hosts a meal so that they—his prostitute, tax collector, fishermen
and farm-laborer friends—he does this so that we will remember him, and
continue to love others as they love themselves, even after Jesus is gone. Because
he isn’t just for the books. We also share a messy meal and do it in
remembrance of him.
Communion. It’s for
people who need more than words preached or written on a page. It’s for people
who have a hard time feeling like Jesus is sitting on their shoulder or
speaking through their hearts. It is a divine tap on the shoulder for us, a
meal from the ancient past, to remember the wonder and reality and inspiration
of who Jesus was, for now. Communion comes to us crumbling and tasty, with
chairs screeching on the floor and cups dripping red to remind us that all
those words about Jesus live, that Jesus’ love isn’t merely an ancient
intellectual puzzle, but Jesus’ love is part and parcel of what we strive to do
ourselves, everyday.
