To prepare for the trip, we are required to read about Iona. Today I read the following quote by the community's founder, George MacLeod:
Suppose the material order, as we have argued, is indeed the garment of Christ, the temple of the Holy Ghost? Suppose the bread and wine, symbols of all creation, is indeed capable of redemption awaiting its Christification? Then what is the atom but the emergent body of Christ?
The Feast of the Transfiguration is 6th August. That is the day we 'happened' to drop the bomb on Hiroshima. We took His Body and we took His Blood and we enacted a Cosmic Golgotha.
MacLeod supposes that the universe is God's garment, and that bread and wine are symbols for this garment. I recently suggested that the curtain of the Jewish temple was the garment of God, and that its tearing could have signified God's grieving the death of Jesus. If the universe too is God's garment, symbolized by bread and wine, then breaking bread is our way of tearing garments to grieve the death of Jesus.
I wonder if we can take it further. Paul writes, "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes" (1 Cor. 11:26). The church teaches that proclaiming the Lord's death means proclaiming the reconciliation between God and humanity, between God and the universe, even, and the forgiveness of sins through Jesus' death. Some early church theologians like Irenaeus taught that when God became a human in Jesus, the very matter of humanity changed, that the Word became flesh so that flesh might become Word; in other words, God became human so that humans could become like God.
In even other words, the atoms of God mingled with the atoms of creation, and thus God bound Godself with the universe in a way never done before. (Or perhaps God had done this before; maybe it had been this way from the beginning, but Christians see this union in the incarnation of Christ.) So when Jesus died, in a sense God and the universe died with him, but when Jesus was raised from the dead, every atom in the universe was resurrected too. This is called deification, the process by which humans and the world become holy.
This means, then, that to proclaim Jesus' death also means to proclaim the deaths of other people, and of other beings. When we take communion, we proclaim that many people in this world die. In the quote above, MacLeod proclaims the deaths of the victims of the atom bomb and of war. The author of the book I was reading wrote how ironic it is that, while the church takes communion, many people in the world die of hunger. When we break bread together, we tear God's garments and grieve the death of all people.
We may also proclaim the deaths of animals, stars, and worlds, because all matter finds its home in God. The origin of the word "matter" could be "mater," which means "origin, source, mother." Matter is the original substance of something, the first thing that begets the following thing. We were created in God's image, revealed fully when God put on flesh, so we share the same matter with God. When God took on flesh, God mingled with carbon and oxygen and nitrogen and many other atoms. The Incarnation suggests that every atom finds its home in God. God is the Mother of us all, people and plants and proteins; God is our matter; as a matter of fact, God is The Mater.
If we share matter with God, then when our minds, hearts, bodies, and souls ache, does God feel that ache too? Does God rejoice when we are joyful and happy?
There is more to communion than proclaiming Jesus' death until he comes. In Luke's Gospel, when Jesus eats the Passover meal with his disciples, he takes a loaf of bread, gives thanks, breaks it and gives it to them, saying, "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19). Jesus does the same with the cup. Christians take communion to remember Jesus.
What does it mean to remember Jesus? To name a few possibilities, it could mean remembering the life of a remarkable man, his teachings and actions, and all the good God did through him. It could mean remembering his death and resurrection and how they bring us peace. It could mean remembering Jesus' work among the world today.
Literally, to re-member something is to put it back together again, like re-assembling a Lego person who has lost his legs, arms, and head somehow. When we break bread, we mend Jesus. When we grieve his death, somehow he lives among us. If remembering is bringing to life, then forgetting is dying. When we do not remember Jesus, he remains broken in us. When we do not take communion, Jesus' life, death, and resurrection wither.
It is as though Jesus needs us to keep breaking bread in order to live among us. That, if we stop, then we forget the story, and maybe even forget who we are. That gives us much responsibility, maybe too much. If we forget Jesus, then perhaps the universe will have to remember him. What makes Jesus worth remembering? What would the human race, the world, the universe even, be like if we forget him?
Surely God remembers Jesus, and will remember us. Nehemiah weaves the prayer "Remember me, O my God" throughout his book, and I wonder if his prayer is one that we pray, or will pray. When our lives have ended, when existence reaches its limit, who is there but God to remember us and bring us back to life? Yet the strange thing is that Jesus asks us humans to remember him.
In remembering Jesus, we live. In sharing a meal together, we feast on God, and the life of God springs up in us. Could this be true even when we eat together and not consciously or publicly remember Jesus?
Unlike the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, in John's Gospel, before the Passover, Jesus does not share a meal with his disciples, but washes their feet. This suggests that foot washing is, for John, communion. Instead of breaking bread, we rub toes and soles; instead of drinking wine, we pour water. God puts all power in Jesus' hands, and Jesus uses that power to clean and refresh his friends, to welcome them as a host welcomes his guests.
A few days ago, while I was walking, it began raining. I wondered if God was baptizing me. Does God baptize the world with rain? I was walking through an alley, and the water rushed downhill, soaking my shoes and socks. It seemed like Jesus was washing my feet.
