In one of our previous wards in Raleigh, there was a spunky widow named Joan Harper who homemade the sacrament bread. One week a “less active” man brought his daughter to church. It was her first week, and so it was no surprise that she was not quiet or still as she waited for the trays to be passed. But when the bread arrived, she took a large piece and ate it.
“Dad!” she exclaimed, “that bread is so good!” She looked around with the disbelief and disappointment of a girl who had only ever tasted wonder bread before. What had she been eating all her life? Had no one ever loved her enough to give her the real stuff? She was on the verge of an existential crisis. How could bread taste this good?! And then she came to the answer. “Of COURSE it’s good,” she proclaimed loudly. “It’s Jesus!”
The wisdom of children. Another primary child once expressed her favorite part of church is the snackrament. Our own son Clarence expressed gratitude to Jesus because “he gives me bread and water even when my Mom says no snacks.” Another child asked, “how many sacraments do you have to take before you’ve eaten a whole Jesus?”
The literalness of these children’s comments brings out the peculiarity of this ritual. Of course cannibalism is uncomfortable, but there is even something off putting about the consumption of ordinary animals. Living on a farm, I have had the opportunity to drink milk from a cow whose teats I’ve milked. This morning I ate meat from a pig I’d fed. And while I think it is incredibly healthy to be connected to the process of death by which my life is sustained, it’s not without discomfort. Eating the pork, I try not to think of the pig. And yet drinking the milk, I sometimes taste the barn, and I almost gag.
So what is it about the sacrament? Why don’t we gag? While I try not to think of the cow or the pig or the chicken, while I’m eating them. During the sacrament, we all get quiet and are supposed to imagine Jesus. We intentionally bring him into our minds as we eat him. We actually bless the bread as his body and the water as his blood. And then we eat it and drink it. What is this morbid act we call sacrament?
Now of course we have some consolation thanks to protestant reformers like Anne Askew who, during Henry the VIII’s reign, argued that the Eucharist was not actually the transubstantiated body and blood of Jesus. She was adamant. She was outspoken. And so she was arrested for heresy, tortured, and brought to trial for denying that the Eucharist was the literal body and blood of Christ.
The most famous question she was asked was, “What if a mouse eat it after the consecration? What will become of the mouse? What sayest thou, foolish woman?” The accuser wanted to know if Anne believed the mouse was eating Jesus, and if so, if the mouse was saved or damned? The stakes were pretty high (and give us another good reason to fulfill our cleaning assignments…). But Anne did not believe the eucharist was Jesus or that the mouse could save or damn itself by eating a crumb. And so she was put to death. She literally died so that you and I can eat the bread and water without the extra discomfort of literality.
But nonetheless, even if we don’t believe the bread is actually Jesus, even if we wouldn’t use the water in blood transfusions, we are still left to wonder, what are we doing in this macabre, weekly performance? Should we be sad and cry? Or are we meant to be happy and enjoy the meal? As the argument went in my household growing up, is this a feast or a funeral?
My dad took the position that we should arrive at church 10 minutes early, and then we should sit quietly, not socializing, entering the proper frame of mind. This is a perspective you have probably heard before by other church authorities. So he has a solid foundation for his belief. I remember a talk where my father gave a few suggestions for how to do this. We could look at the sacrament table. See the table cloth laid over the sacrament like the napkin over Jesus’s body or like the coffin after a viewing. See the bulge of the trays like a body stretched out on the block. There, look at the priest’s hands like spears in Jesus’ side. Breaking his body. Or like words or spit or rocks thrown at him. Imagine the nails prints in his hands and wrist and side.
This is a funeral. And not just a funeral, it is a sacrifice. The butchering of a man who died so we could live. And we live by death every day. Eating plants and animals. And eating Jesus. It’s a sacred reality. And perhaps my father was right, that we should embrace this imagination fully. Maybe we should gag a little. Maybe it should hurt as the cloth covers the table. Maybe rather than looking for the largest piece of bread, it should be more natural to find the smallest bit. Something we can swallow without even having to chew.
But this dark ritual never seemed right to my mother. She is a woman with a loud voice. You cannot tell her to sit reverently for 10 minutes while her friends enter the room. While a recent widow sits alone, or cancer survivor returns to church, or a new family comes through the entryway. No, she will move, she will hug, and she will welcome and it will not be with a whisper. If you are a temple worker, you would not be the first to tell her “shhhh” in the celestial room. And while her volume will lower out of respect to you for a few minutes, be assured it will rise again. Because to her, heaven is not a quiet place. To her sacrament is not a funeral. And if it was, it was like her father or mothers funeral where there was so much noise, so much singing, people from all over the world coming together, and greeting and cheering, and rejoicing in a grand reunion.
And while I don’t remember my mother ever making a doctrinal case for her behavior, let me do so now. Before even the last supper, there were similar rituals. They are described in the book of Leviticus. There were a whole series of sacrifices for things like dishonesty, or fulfilling a vow, or giving thanks, or getting sick, or accidentally touching unclean things, or menstruating. And most of these offerings ended in a feast. The meat was not just burned up. The fat was indeed burned, but the meat would be shared with the priests and often the offerers and their families.
But even the intricate offering schedule of the early Israelites could never cover all the wickedness, all the falleness, all the sins of the people. Or to encompass all the thankfulness or loyalty or devotion of the people. There were sins and joys and successes and failures that were not individual creations. They were shared by generations. Passed from father to son, given from mother to daughter, shared by neighbors. And so God created a series of holidays. And these were mostly celebrations of eating together. Something a little similar to what we have today on Thanksgiving or Christmas. And on these days broad sins were atoned for, communal gratitude was shared, and shared faith was bolstered.
Such a day was the passover. A feast that remembered the deliverance from Egypt. And the meal was shared by a community. And they ate a lamb, all of it. That night. There were not supposed to be left overs the next morning. And they played games and sang songs. And they rejoiced together.
The week of passover is when Jesus entered Jerusalem, and people laid palm leaves at his feet. And shouted Hosannah. It was a time of celebration. There were parties and parades and noise and shouting. And when Jesus and his friends celebrated the holiday, with a passover feast, they must have had a lamb. But when Jesus administers the meal, the lamb, the center of the feast is not mentioned. Instead, it is the bread he breaks and says, this is my body. And it is the drink he pours that he calls his blood. As if to make the tradition a little softer, a little less meaty, a little easier to swallow. No animal had to die in his place. Just some wheat and a few grapes.
And the conversation seems to have been pretty rowdy. There were disagreements, accusations, disappointments, insults, and many kindnesses shown, all like a stereotypical thanksgiving meal. And Jesus washed the people’s feet and called them his friends. And they must have had a pretty good time because that night, everyone was so tired they could hardly stay awake.
This sacrament was instituted before the garden, before the cross, before his death, before his funeral. It was at the peak of his life, the peak of his popularity, just after his triumphal entry, at a feast of thanksgiving. And that is what Jesus asked his friends to remember. His living body, his coursing blood. His pumping heart. His real friendship, his gifts and foot massages.
They could not have remembered his blood streaming down his face or the fluid pouring from his side. They could not remember the cross or the soldiers or the stone. Those things had not yet happened. Instead they would have remembered when they first met Jesus, or chose to follow him, or things he’d taught them, or his fascinating stories or the goodness and wisdom that seemed to flow from him like a spring of water. But even these memories would have been displaced because there he was, right in front of them. And so they were not eating him up in their minds, not in their imagination, not devouring their memories, but devouring his living, actual presence.
And if they had known what would come next—if they had known how little time they had left with him, how short life can be—they would have eaten him up even more. Like the lamb that was not supposed to be left until the morning. Because time was precious. You never know when you have to pack up and go, or run away or die. You never know and so at a feast like this, people gorged themselves with the abundance before them. Like you might do with warm sun on a winter day. Bask. Soak. Drown in it. And Jessu tried to tell them to bask harder, to soak more, and drown deeper. Because death was around the corner. But they didn’t believe him, and we never do.
But death and suffering and cruelty came, and Jesus’ friends witnessed Jesus on the Cross, they watched him cry over his mother and call out to his father. They witnessed his head fall down, and his life come to an end. They lowered his body from the cross, and carried it to the tomb. They prepared the body, and sealed the exit.
We don’t know when the next time they took the sacrament. Was it Emmaus, when Christ broke the bread and revealed himself? Was it during the early church when they broke bread and prayed together? Whenever it was, it was after the resurrection. Or, as in the road to Emmaus, in the living manifestation.
And what do you think the people remembered? Was it the broken body, was it the wounded Christ, or was it the man they’d followed. Was it the person they knew? And what do you think you’d remember if a loved one came back? If they shared a meal with you? Would it be the funeral, or the coffin? Would it be their dead face, their manipulated smile, their makeup-ed expression? Or would a whole life of memories swarm into your soul, replacing the death, undoing the funeral, casting out the fake facade of a smile with the real things? Would even the good memories flee in the presence of the person you love? No more a memory? Can once upon a time ever compete with here and now, life and presence, face to face?
And so I ask again, what is this tradition? What is this sacrament? Is it a feast or a funeral?
There are many ways to answer this question. But for now, here is mine. I do not believe in funerals. I believe they happen. I’ve been to many and found them to be precious and powerful. But they cannot compete with time and eternity. Memory fades. Generations churn on. Suns grow, planets die, and funerals are far too weak a spectacle to compete in a cosmos full of stars. Where lives are measured in billions and space is scaled to light years.
But I believe in the sacrament. I believe in feasts and celebrations. Where time is shrunk to moments, and space is shrunk to upper rooms, and death is cast out of our minds. And presence beams around us. Jesus before us, breaking our bread, pouring our wine. The garden is just around the corner. Death days away. But this night is forever. This night Jesus touches our feet, washing them clean. This is God’s feast. This is sacrament. This is God with us. Emmanuel.
And with God, death is not proud. Stars do not outshine us. Formaldehyde does not sustain us. Memory does not preserve us. But we are there, with him. And we walk towards death not fearing it like a monster under the bed or a robber around the corner or a thief in the night. But like the day after Christmas.
And that day will come. And it will be hard to leave this world, this feast, this family. But you are already looking forward to next week, next Christmas, next sacrament. And so don’t let the fear of tomorrow, or the fear or your failure, the memory of a funeral, distract from this feast. This celebration. This time you have Jesus with you, in the room. And so I say, shout “Hosanna!” if you must. Welcome your friends. Let the kids take the biggest pieces of bread. Because we don’t want anything left over.