The Words We Most Want to Hear

This week, we continue our Lenten series of communal spiritual disciplines, by considering the spiritual discipline of "eating together."  Over the next few days we will consider both the sacrament of the Lord's Supper and the "regular meals" we eat every day.  If we look closely and listen to our Lord we'll see that the sacrament is a spiritual discipline and the "mystery" (which is, of course, what the word "sacrament" means) is nothing less than the extraordinary way that God comes to us and meets us in the most ordinary, everyday experience of all...breaking bread.

But to prime the pump here is a passage from Showtime where I wrote of the "words we most want to hear."

A few years ago a nationwide poll asked, "What word or phrase would you most like to hear uttered to you, sincerely?" Can you guess the first thing people wanted to hear? Not unexpectedly, it was, "I love you."  The second was, "You are forgiven." And number three, believe it or not, was, "Supper is ready." 

You know, I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on the life-transforming communion that the church is supposed to be.  But those three phrases of three words may be the best description of the church I have ever read. 

“I love you”: you are my brother, you are my sister, because of the love of God. 
“I forgive you”: no matter what you do, we can always be reconciled, because of the forgiveness of God.
“Supper is ready”: Let’s break bread together, let’s eat together let’s share our lives together. Let’s gather around communion tables and dinner tables and share our lives vulnerably, forgive each other generously, join ourselves together in enduring and loving mutual affection. 

I believe that God is calling us to be people who take his message into the world.  A message where God says through us “I love you, I forgive you, Supper is ready.”

But before we have the right to say it, we must live it.  Maybe more than anything else we need to be a community that communicates to each other in both word and actions: “I love you, I forgive you, Supper is ready”

And to do so we need to allow the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to permeate our experience of every meal, every gathering, every day.  How would our lives be different if we didn't "limit" the Lord's Supper to the Holy High Tea that we celebrate once a quarter, once a month, even once a week, but instead was the mystery in every meal, every time?  Wouldn't the discipline of remembering Jesus whenever we "eat this bread or drink this cup until he comes again" certainly change both the way we eat and the way we live?

Because this is true: Jesus has come into the world to say to us, "I love you; I forgive you; Supper is ready."