Eucharistic meditation, Second Sunday of Lent

Luke 22:18-19: Jesus said, I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes. And when he had taken some of the bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.

I've said in the sermon that human life is always lived on the cross, distended between a past toward which we have debts and obligations and a future that calls us to do something new, stretched out between obligations to the groups we are members of and groups outside. We are pulled in various directions, and because of this life is painful, life demands constant decision, life is a dance from past to future, from inside to outside.

How can we live a unified life in this situation? How can we put all these demands together? The Supper is one moment that both displays the tensions of life in time and the way we are to live in it. The Supper, Jesus says, looks ahead to the time when the kingdom of God comes. Paul echoes this: By the Supper, we show forth Christ's death until He comes. This meal anticipates the final feast of the Lamb. At the same time, this meal looks backward. Jesus says that we celebrate the meal as a "remembrance" of Him. In the action of this meal, we memorialize His death 2000 years ago.

This meal concentrates the tension of the cross, pulling us in memory to the past but also pointing us in anticipation to the future. And this meal also shows that we live in the middle between past and future by faith, and specifically by faith in Jesus, who died and rose again.

We are able to stay at the center of life, suffer the tensions that life brings, because we are confident that the stretching and tugging and pulling and tearing is for our good. Being stretched out toward the past and future means that we have to "die" to many things in the course of life, but the gospel tells us that the various deaths we suffer in life are not final and not deadly. The gospel says that the various deaths we have in life produce more abundant life. We have this confidence because we follow Jesus, who went to the Cross, suffered death on it, and then rose again to a greater life. That’s the hope we have through the gospel.

This meal is a microcosm of life in time. This meal trains us to live in faith. This meal incorporates us into the life of the Risen Christ, and as it does it becomes possible for us to suffer the many deaths of life with hope that we will rise again. At this meal, we know that being torn between past and future is not and ending, but a gateway to a life, an abundant life, a life of feasting and communion in the presence of God. Through this meal we find that at the center of the cross is a table, spread with bread and wine.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, March 04, 2007 at 07:48 AM

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