Exodus 12: 17
Inclusiveness
Communion or the Lord’s Supper was not celebrated in Paul’s time like we celebrate it today. It was a meal that could last for several hours. The best comparison I can see today would be the covered dish supper. We don’t think of the covered dish supper as a sacrament. If it were up to me, we would have a covered dish supper every month and we would celebrate it as the Christians did Holy Communion in Paul’s day. And we would bring people in to sit around the table who otherwise are not found in our churches. We would bring people to the sacred meal, the sacrament, just as Jesus gladly fed all who were willing to come to him.
But would there be an awkward silence at the table if we did that? Would it be uncomfortable to sit across the table with individuals who look different, smell different, speak differently, and maybe think differently? We all hate it when there is an awkward silence around the table. Imagine, there we would be with people we know well, but also with people we don’t yet, and no one would be speaking. It would be embarrassing. There would be that proverbial elephant in the room that no one would want to talk about. His weight squashes small talk.
I wonder how that would work out if we actually tried it sometime. I’m wondering how that’s going to work out when we join Jesus at the table in heaven. Would there be an awkward silence around the table with Jesus in heaven if Northern Irish Catholics had to sit next to Protestants? What if Rwanda’s Christian Hutus were seated next to Tootsies? What if the World War II vets, Japanese, German, American, were all in the same area. Imagine Christians from France and Germany, England, Italy, China and Japan, Russia and Poland, Iran and Iraq, and the United States – all mixed together like a tossed salad?
There is not a body of Christ for blacks and one for whites; one for Mexicans and one for Caucasians; there is only One Body and we are all equally members of it. This was the lesson the apostle Paul was at pains to teach his ethnically mixed congregation in Corinth
Paul said, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”
Jesus was a pretty inclusive person and he got in trouble for it. He celebrated the goodness of people others despised, sat down with heavy drinkers, talked at length with prostitutes, spent time with tax cheats, walked beside smelly fishermen, Jesus, in prayer the night before his crucifixion says: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
The phrase “in us” means that if we have some kind of status in life that makes us important leave it at the door when we come to Christ’s table. If we feel we are not important, leave that non-importance at the door. Here we are one in Christ. For Paul, Jew, Greek, male, female, slave, free, none of it matters. That is what it means to be a human being and to be in Christ. That is radical. It is hard to believe and hard to do.
Christ prayed that all who believe in him will be one, “So that the world may believe” – the whole world, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of history, regardless of looks, regardless of status. I wonder how today the awkward silences could be successfully avoided. Do we have to wait until we die to share Christ’s table as he prayed we would?
Christ knew that his followers might have many differences but he knew that they all would eat. So he gave us a meal to join us all together. A sacred meal in which all boundaries are erased.
So what are we to do in the mean time? Well, at minimum, we are to live in such a way now that there will not be any causes for awkward silences around that table. We are to live in such a way now that we do not deny our differences any more than we deny that there are dozens of ways to prepare fish. Rather we celebrate our differences as the variety that gives life joy.
The body of Christ is One. We Christians have One Lord, one faith, and one baptism. We have all been sent on the same mission: to declare that Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus Christ is not our tribal god, but the Lord of all! There will be a day when “every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. “ No nation can claim him; no social group owns him; he is not the mascot for any political party. Today, on World Communion Sunday, we gather around his table proclaiming, not an idea, not a wish, but the truth: Jesus is Lord.
As we come to the table today with the majority of our Christian brothers and sisters in this world, let us envision Christ in front of us, leading us toward a greater unity that celebrates our diversity. We may celebrate in different ways, but we share the same meal. We are truly one loaf, and on this day, we all observe the breaking and sharing of that one loaf. I thank God that Jesus gave us a tradition that communicates so clearly, so tangibly to my soul. As we partake in this meal together today, let us give thanks and pray for the restored unity of the church as we struggle to really be the Body of Christ.
Amen.
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