A Lenten Reflection for March 14, 2013

“No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” (John 6:44-45)

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Romans 8:26-27)


It is interesting how we think about the ways that we approach God. We are an independent, free-will kind of people, and we know how to make our choices. So we choose to get up on a Sunday morning and go to church. We choose to take a particular seminary course because it fits our schedule. We choose to come forward to take communion, even though we’re not sure we really need to.

I’ll bet that Moses thought that way when he approached the burning bush. But he didn’t choose to be on holy ground—God summoned him there and then told him to take off his sandals.

I don’t believe in free will anymore. Will, yes. But not free will. My will just isn’t all that free. It’s polluted by all kinds of outside forces that have formed me over time and is influenced even now by voices and events around me. There is no purity of will to be had.

So I don’t think I can approach anything having to do with God as though I am a being with pure, unadulterated will. And perhaps, like Moses, when I think I am choosing in my freedom to engage with God on some level, I am actually responding to his summons. And by the time I realize where I am, he tells me to take off my sandals.

In all our fussing and worrying about choosing what will please us and stressing over things like our devotional life, it might be helpful to stop and consider that we don’t come to anything related to Jesus except that the Father has drawn us. And in our weak lives of prayer, it is the Spirit of God who steps in and intercedes on our behalf, not condemning our weakness, but carrying us through it.

The God of the Bible is not an abstraction. He is engaging, summoning, participative, purposeful. And having been summoned by him to worship, serve, learn, pray, love, and dine, how do we respond? Do we keep our sandals in tact because we choose to do so? Or do we remove them in obedience to the One who has always been calling us to stand at his flame?

Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:25-26)

The Messiness of Dining with Jesus

Maundy Thursday is the day that calls to the church’s memory the last meal that Jesus shared with his disciples prior to his arrest. It started out as a traditional Passover meal, but Jesus reframed it as he anticipated what was about to happen. We call that meal the Last Supper, but for us it really becomes the First Supper, one that the church has re-enacted for centuries. It now goes by different names—Communion, the Lord’s Supper—but the most traditional term is Eucharist, formed from a Greek word meaning thanksgiving.

I’ve always been fascinated, and sometimes perplexed, by the battles and boundaries that have emerged around the Eucharist. Christians have argued, divided, and even brought persecutions over the nature of the bread and wine. Most Christian groups have created boundaries designating who is eligible to participate in the Eucharistic celebration—boundaries that include church membership, baptism, right doctrine, proper confession of faith, and purity of heart.

It is interesting to me how both battles and boundaries seem to be absent from that original table of Jesus.

In the gospel accounts Jesus doesn’t offer much interpretation when it comes to the bread and wine. He simply declares, “This is my body,” and “This is my blood.” No one debates with him, even though such a reframing would change the meaning of the Passover elements. They seem to merely accept what he says at face value.

And while it’s true that the invitation was limited to his twelve disciples, they came as people sadly lacking in anything resembling solid doctrinal understanding, unity, or purity of heart. Around that table the disciples exhibited the weaknesses and sins that are common to all of us—fear, false expectations, cowardice, treachery. The one thing they all seemed to have in common was their response to the summons of Jesus. They wanted to be with him.

They came because he invited them.

I wonder if it is possible for us, with all of our weakness, our unbelief, our sin, our confusion, to begin to receive the elements of The Table in a new and fresh way. Rather than seeing ourselves as either qualified or unqualified, insiders or outsiders, good guys or bad guys, we start seeing ourselves as people sharing a common brokenness, yet still receiving Jesus’ invitation to come and dine. I wonder how that might change us.

There is a danger in this, I know. Some might come out of wrong motives. Some might not even be believers in Jesus. Others might be confused about orthodox faith. Still others could be harboring secret crimes. This can and does happen on a regular basis.

But when it does, we can take comfort in recognizing that each person still pulls up a chair and sits next to Peter, and Thomas, and Judas, and the others, and we can see that we’re all in good company. Like the original twelve disciples, we can only come to that table because Jesus has sent us his invitation.

And when Jesus calls, things change.

We Need The Table of Jesus

A couple of years ago I wrote a book about the Lord’s Supper, titled Shadow Meal: Reflections on Eucharist. After doing some speaking engagements on the book and trying to promote it (as authors have to do), I discovered something interesting:

It was more attractive to Catholics than to Protestants.

This is strange to me because the book is both personal and theological. It’s about my own journey as someone raised up in low church (as in non-liturgical/non-sacramental), trying to figure out why the Lord’s Supper has meaning. Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary, was kind enough to write the foreword, and in it he spoke of his own similar journey. It seems that I’m not alone.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have used the word Eucharist. It’s a very un-Protestant word, and maybe was off-putting to some. Even though it means Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, we Protestants don’t use the word as much as do our Catholic friends. But I’m thinking these days that we need to put it on again, and start exploring why the Lord’s Supper is still important for the church. And I don’t mean in the age-old debates about the nature of the bread and wine.

I mean the nature of the table of Jesus.

I believe that we who follow Jesus need a revitalized theology of The Table. I think it would help all of our arguments about doctrine, sexuality, gender, and all the other topics that divide and alienate us from one another. There are reasons, I believe, that a new theology of The Table might help us:

We don’t get to say who comes to dine. The invitation comes from Jesus, and he characteristically invites scandalous people to join him.

At The Table, all are side by side, shoulder to shoulder, allowing their humanness to physically engage. That’s why we ought to share the elements of Eucharist in a setting where we stand or kneel together.

When we consume bread and wine, we share together the most common activity of people: Eating. All must eat to live, and the need for nourishment transcends socio-economic status, ethnicity, gender, and politics.

And at The Table, we shed all of our pretenses and illusions of superiority because we are suddenly laid bare: We all need Jesus, and it is only Jesus who sustains us.

After that, we can re-engage in all of our debates. But I believe they will be different, once having dined at Jesus’ table, responding to his summons to come together to share his body and blood.

We need a new theology of The Table.