To be honest, for help seeing the Lord’s Supper as story just read the book Come to the Table: Revisioning the Lord’s Supper by John Mark Hicks. I enjoyed the book and recommend it but to be honest I still think there was too much Lord’s Supper as fact in the conclusion. I still think we struggle with Lord’s Supper as fact and so the book focused a great deal on revising how we see those facts and how we share those facts.
Because of this fact based mindset the discussions I hear usually are focused on the facts, doing the Lord’s Supper differently, instead of simply seeing the Lord’s Supper as story. I went and listened to a lecture that Dr. Hicks gave at a small church in western Kansas and found it to be profound, but I also found people only discussing the facts of the supper and whether or not this small church could actually implement any of the ideas presented.
You see I don’t think we have to change the way we do the Lord’s Supper, a simple change of the facts in my opinion, we must change the attitude that we have about the Lord’s Supper. For too many the Lord’s Supper discussion begins and ends with frequency and the right products. Can anything be sadder?
The Lord’s Supper is lifeless not because we need to do the facts differently but because we need to see beyond simple facts. In this place Hick’s does a great job of showing the beauty of the story. Do we realize that to sit at the table is to dine before our God? Do we grasp that it is in this space that we, like Adam and Eve, like Moses on the Mountain, are whisked into the presence of God?
That is the most interesting reality for a group that fights tooth and nail for the literalness of baptism. The same literalness was wrapped around the Supper by the early church. The same presence of God was understood but that fact didn’t fit with their rational understanding so it was ignored.
I have allowed my baggage to distort my treatment of the Supper. I have allowed it even less meaning because of this. I pray I never let this happen again. My goal is to speak about the story more often. Appeal to the story as we gather around the table and be reminded that that facts of Jesus body and blood are cold and harsh but the body and the blood represented as story hold power.
I am thankful to be in a place where people are not worried about facts, may I understand this and act accordingly.
