The Symbols of Holy Week: The Table
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the
meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our
strength and our redeemer. Amen.
We, many of us at least, are used to thinking
about symbols in connection with Communion. We know—at least in the Protestant
tradition we know—that the bread and the wine of Communion aren’t really the
body and blood of Christ even if the New Testament stories about the Last
Supper have Jesus say “This is my body. This is my blood.” We know that the
bread and the wine are symbols of the presence of Jesus Christ with his people
as they gather to remember him and what he did, and does, for them. So you
might expect a meditation in a Maundy Thursday service on the meaning of the
symbols of the bread and the wine of the Last Supper. Tonight, however, I don’t
want to talk about the bread and the wine. I want to talk about another symbol
from the Last Supper. I want to talk about the table.
There was, after all, a table. Jesus gathered
his disciples for the feast of the Passover, a real, full meal. There were, we
assume, at least thirteen people present, Jesus and the twelve disciples. I
actually think that there were at least fourteen people there because I am
pretty sure Mary Magdalene would have been there too. They came for a meal, and
they would have had a table on which the meal was served. The table of the Last
Supper was a real, physical object on which the food of the Last Supper was
set.
The image most of us have of the Last Supper,
and its table, probably comes from Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous depiction of the
scene. In that picture Jesus and the twelve disciples all sit or stand along
one side of a long table. None of the figures faces directly out toward the
viewer, but they are all turned toward the artist enough that he can paint
their faces. It’s a great painting that captures the tension and the agitation
of the moment when Jesus tells the disciples that one of them was going to
betray him. It’s a great painting, but I seriously doubt that it accurately
portrays the actual Last Supper. An upper room in an ordinary house in first
century Jerusalem probably wasn’t long enough to fit a table as long as the one
Da Vinci depicts. The room in his painting looks more like a room in a
Renaissance Italian palace than a room in a first century Jerusalem house. But
even if the room were that long surely the people present would have gathered
around it, not along just one side of it. Their being all on one side is an
artistic device that lets Da Vinci give them all faces. A friend imagines Jesus
having just said “Everybody who wants to be in the picture, on this side of the
table!” I’m sure a picture showing them around a table, not all on one side of
it, would be truer to what actually happened. People who gather for a meal
normally gather around a table, not along one side of it.
If we see Jesus and the disciples gathered
around a table we can, I think, more easily see the table as a symbol. The
table becomes central to the gathering of the people. It is the table that
draws the people together. They come to partake of what will be placed on it
and to have fellowship with those who will gather around it. The table becomes
the center of their time together. They form a circle around it. Gathered
around it they face one another. Across it they share food and drink and
conversation. Around it they become community.
Community is what the table of the Last Supper
symbolizes for me, and in symbolizing community it draws our attention to
something really important about Communion, something about Communion that we
too often overlook or even forget. There are of course different names for the
sacrament we celebrate this evening. Technically it is the Eucharist, a word we
get from the Greek that means thanksgiving. Sometimes we call it The Lord’s
Supper. Our most common name for it, however, is Communion. Why Communion? What
does Communion mean? Dictionary definitions of communion (with a small c)
include things like “an act or instance of sharing” and “intimate fellowship.”
What strikes me about the word is that it is so similar to the word community.
It clearly has the same root as the word community. Communion and community
aren’t quite synonymous, but they’re pretty close to it.
The symbol of the table as a symbol of community
reminds us that Communion—with a capital C—and community are inseparable.
Communion, the Christian sacrament of the Eucharist, to use it’s more technical
name, is an act of the Christian community. Yes, usually someone who is
ordained presides at the sacrament, but Communion is never something that one
person can properly do alone. European kings used to have their private chapels
where they could receive Communion without community, but that was an abuse and
a misunderstanding of the sacrament. Communion requires community.
More than that, however, Communion properly
understood builds community. In our kind of Protestant tradition that puts so
much emphasis on words and on right belief we might define Christians as those
who believe in Jesus Christ, but some other Christian traditions, on the
Protestant side especially the Episcopalians, define Christians as those who
gather around Christ’s table for the sacrament of Communion. In that way of
looking at things Christian identity and unity are established by Communion. We
could learn a lot from their way of looking at it.
So let me suggest that when you partake of the
bread and the wine—juice actually, but it doesn’t matter—this evening you think
of the table around which those first disciples partook of bread and wine with
Jesus just before his arrest and execution. Open your hearts and your minds to
the ways in which our coming to the common table forms us into community. Be
aware that we are partaking of the elements of which Jesus spoke around that
ancient table together, as community. Try seeing taking Communion not as
something you do by or for yourself but as something that we do as and for
community.
In a few minutes I will invite you to come to the
table up front here to partake of Communion. Around the table we gather as a
group of Christ’s disciples much like those original disciples did on that
fateful night so long ago. The table that holds the bread and wine of the
sacrament is a powerful symbol. It is a symbol of community. May our coming to
the table this evening strengthen us as a community, a community of Christians
with Christ as our head. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment