Blogging Towards Sunday
January 20, 2008
Communion:
New Meal, New Family
How's the Dream Coming?
Colossians 3:1-17 &
January 20, 2008
Communion:
New Meal, New Family
How's the Dream Coming?
Colossians 3:1-17 &
We continue in our third week of worship celebrations at our church organized around and built upon the experiential and participatory theme of COMMUNION. It's funny, in a sense Jesus invites us to eat our way to faith, community and justice-doing. Smart guy, food seems to motivate me to action much more than lofty rhetoric (maybe that confirms either that I'm a gourmand or just lazy.)
My reflections on these scriptures and the theme of "new meal - new family" are influenced by so much this week - coffee this morning with Susannah at Peet's (look out for her she is wise beyond belief), the events of our Presbytery Meeting this week (see my blogging on it), interactions with my kids, our ongoing communion celebrations at church, thinking of MLK Jr., 3 songs I heard on my ipod this past week, and the following quotes:
“But I am giving you a new commandment.
You must love each other, just as I have loved you.
If you love each other,
everyone will know that you are my disciples.
- Jesus of
“Diversity is the most challenging thing to live with
and the most dangerous thing to live without.”
- Rev. William Sloan Coffin
"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will they be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood."
- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The scripture of Colossians 3 is a bit of the letter written by Paul (or his followers) to encourage disciples of Jesus is ancient Southern Turkey. They are called, invited and challenge to live differently, to live by faith, for faith and from faith in a radical way - to love all - not to win favor but to reflect the love of Christ, to incarnate it, to proclaim it in every word, deed, action - even in silence!
The scripture of Acts 2 tells of the birthing day of the church community which is by nature multi-cultural, inter-generational and counter-cultural. Folks gathered together by faith - cement that community, proclaim what spiritual wholeness is, and reflect the super-natural love of Christ first and foremost around the communion table. It's a radical revolutionary meal gathering disparate and divided peoples of the ancient world together in a common action, shared belief and mutual generosity - free and slave, male and female, Jew and non-Jew. Radical gathering. Subversive community. Revolutionary and revolution-producing relationships.
This open-table fellowship is what we're called to continue in, to experience, to participate in and to lift up as proclamation, nourishment and prophetic vision. Divided peoples brought together. Unequals made equal around the table. It's not pc. It's not democractic. It's not republican. It's not something that Steve Jobs first presented at Mac World. It's not something that Disney can replicate. It can't be bought online or in a store. It can't be created. It can only be experienced by faith and through the dangerous act of committing to living life and practicing faith in community - not just for a year, or during the good times but through the hard and easy, bountiful and the desert.
Open table fellowship is the hardest thing to do and yet we can't live faith together without it. It's what nearly split the church in ancient Corinth, it's what most likely got Jesus killed, it's what our churches - including the one I attend - fail to do. It's not natural. It's super-natural. Something that only God can make happen. So we have to trust, ask for it, and then seize it when it's give to us - but with open hands rather than seized fists. It's a call to a new way of living that doesn't fit well in our racially divided, capitalistic-shopping based, and narcissistic culture.
Increasingly I'm convinced that it's truth through my experience of it and seeing how un-natural it is for the human race and the systematic powers of the world. Hillary and Barack fought over this idea this week - about who thought of it and who implemented it. It's neither MLK Jr. nor LBJ, only JC.
Madonna, American Life
I Am Somebody
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