What Happens in Vegas . . .

A couple of years ago my wife and I decided to take a wedding anniversary trip to a place we had never been: Las Vegas. I have lived in southern California my entire life and, except to pass through once on my way to somewhere else, I had never been to Las Vegas. The town simply does not connect for me. I have no interest in gambling and the never-ending nightlife offers no appeal, since I find the night a very convenient time for sleeping.

We chose to drive there, however, in order to see the Cirque du Soleil show, Beatles Love.

We are both fans of the Beatles and have been since their arrival in the US in 1964. I was just entering the netherworld of male puberty when I was imprinted with this music and it has been echoing in my brain ever since. I think that if someone were to do study about the kind of music you listen to when puberty hits they would find that the music forms your appreciation for a certain type of music for the rest of your life. That’s my theory.

We arrived at the hotel in the afternoon and decided to walk around the Strip for awhile. It was December and the Nevada desert was sparkly and chilled. I marveled at the garish architecture and tried to steer clear of the street hawkers attempting to hand us invitations to strip clubs. Then we had a very nice dinner and entered the theater, where we ran into one of my students and his wife (reminding me that God's watchful eye is even in Vegas, and nothing will just stay in Vegas).

The show was delightful and clearly worth our time and money. We then stood outside with all the other tourists and watched the fake volcano spew water all over the place, forcing us all to clap our hands as if we’d never seen such a thing.

The next morning we had breakfast and then walked through the casino part of the hotel as we prepared to head for home. As we walked the curving, carpeted pathway that drew us through the aisles of slot machines, I heard music playing over the hotel speakers. Holiday music had been playing at the hotel constantly since our arrival. It was the culturally-correct stuff that you often hear, fun but having little to do with Christmas. My eyes were taking in the images of early morning gamblers staring at the lights and flashes of the machines, some with drinks from the bar at their elbows, when I stopped in my tracks. The music was different now and the difference hit me like rock. Rather than hearing Mel Torme or Bing Crosby, I heard a choir, and these were the words I could make out:

He rules the world with truth and grace
And makes the nations prove
The glory of his righteousness
And wonders of his love

It was Joy to the World, but with a boldness that I had never heard before. It was a proclamation of the kingdom of God, not coming from a small band of the faithful out in the street, but right in the middle of a casino. The good news that God is king resonated through the building, and I may have been the only one to hear it.

I looked again at the floor of the casino. There it was: The place of empty promises and broken dreams. And into the midst of that false reality came the proclamation of the only thing that is real—the kingdom of God.

How amazing that the good news that Jesus proclaimed and lived out would come to us as invitation to his table. How amazing that, just for a few moments, voices would call out to the bleary-eyed Las Vegas gamblers that a new reality was theirs for the receiving. I wondered: Who were the people in the casino who were being called through this song? Surely there were just everyday people off on an excursion, but there might also be a pickpocket or two and maybe some prostitutes. There might be people who had lost it all and were dumping their last dollars into the machines that they prayed would change their lives. The music went out to them all.

While I couldn’t hear it, there is a verse that precedes this one:

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found . . .

Sins—the many ways that we humans forget about God—and sorrows—the consequence of believing that God has forgotten us—are, we hear, no longer allowed to grow. Jesus has come to bring blessing to the world and the song was sung that December morning in a Vegas hotel casino. I wonder if someone else took notice. I wonder if someone got up from a slot machine, looked around, and headed outside to find the wonders of God’s love. I don’t know.

But I know that I heard it. And I believed it.

(From my book, Shadow Meal: Reflections on Eucharist)

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.