The Eucharist -the simplest commandment, the richest of our
rituals, and by far the most misunderstood. I was raised in a very Low Church environment.
“Do this in remembrance of me” carved into the bench of our small-town Church
of Christ. Old people dutifully passing
brass containers of unblessed wafers and little shots of grape juice; a dying
faith in dying towns all across the heartland, modernist revivals wilting at
the waysides. Why? Has modernity collapsed under its own weight, leaving the
nihilism of postmodernism to fill the voids? Instead of little country churches, we have
meth. Instead of families, and communities with genuine purpose, direction and
meaning, we have a meaningless existence temporarily satiated by the false gods
of sports for the fathers, Netflix for the mothers and tiktoc for the children.
How did it happen? Possibly because we stripped the meaning out of one of the
most important sacraments of our faith. If there is not a real presence, or a genuine meaning in the sacrament, there will be no meaning in the motions behind it, they will soon cease, and the
muscles behind the motions will atrophy. As the church fell, the family fell, and as
the family fell, society fell.
The idea of the Eucharist is not simply a ritual that one
does by rote as in his morning ablutions. It is for one brief moment, heaven
and earth coming together with the angels and archangels, and all Company of Heaven
to magnify the glorious name of our savior Jesus Christ, saying “Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God of Hosts; Heaven and Earth are full of thy glory. Glory to thee, oh Lord
Most High + blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the
highest.”
During this absolutely supernatural moment of praise,
veneration, and worship of God the Father, we eat the flesh of his dear Son
Jesus Christ, and drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in
us. It is a chemical wedding where the sublime and the profane intermingle and
for a brief moment we transcend this earthly shell and get a peek though the
veil. That moment of transcendence stays with us, and we carry
a little bit of Christ with us out into the wilderness. It strengthens and fortifies us to forgive the
unforgivable, to love the loveless and to follow the first and greatest commandment
to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with
all your mind, and with all your strength and to love your neighbor as
yourself.
