Eucharistic meditation

1 John 2:15-16: Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

When John talks about "the world," he's talking, as we've seen, about a cultural, social, and political system organized in hostility or indifference to God or His word. In particular, he says that the world is shaped by "desires" and "boastings." The things that are in the world are products of desire, and they evoke desire.

For many Christians over the centuries, if the world is full of desires, then the goal of the Christian life should be to suppress desire. On the one side of the divide within the human race is the world with desire; on the other side is the church, which is characterized by not-desiring.

That's not what John is after. He says that there are two types of love: Love of the world and love of the Father. And this implies that there are two sets of desires – the evil desires of the world and the godly desires of those who are children of God. The line is not between desire and no-desire; the conflict is between two communities shaped by different sets of desires.

Do you want proof of that? The proof is here, at the Lord's table. God has set a table at the center of our worship. He doesn't tell us to leave our hunger and thirst at the door when we come into church. He puts food and drink in front of us, and invites us to come in with all our hungers and thirsts to find all our desires satisfied in Jesus, crucified and risen and offered through bread and wine.

This table is not only teaching us that God wants us to desire and to desire Him. This table is one of the places where our desires are trained toward love of God. The world arises from and arouses the desires of the flesh; but here we are given the flesh of Jesus and his blood; the world offers delights of the eyes, but here, as the disciples on the road to Emmaeus found, our eyes are opened and we see Jesus, the Wisdom of God; the world encourages the pride of life, boasting in our own accomplishments and achievements; but at this table we are trained to boast in the Lord.

All the gifts of God are given in Jesus, and Jesus is given here. Here God gives us the bread that came from heaven, His own eternal Wisdom made flesh and food, His glory through His Spirit. He offers all we could desire, and invites us to come to this table longing and fainting for Him.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, October 22, 2006 at 08:10 AM

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