One Bite to Remember, Another to Forget

Unless you are reading this on a Sunday afternoon, communion from the previous Sunday feels like a distant memory. Of if you are a part of a tradition that does not gather around the table every Sunday, it feels like forever since we ate the bread together.

Most of the churches in my tradition use matza bread for communion, which you have to admit is a little ironic. Dry, stale, unsalted cracker made in giant factories supervised by rabbis. That is what we eat to remember the body of Christ? Not that the bread has to be special, but... matza bread? Really? I wonder if any of the rabbis know that Christians use their bread to remember the death of the Messiah?

On my last trip to Israel we finished the trip in a nice hotel in Jerusalem. The dining hall had to be completely kosher. A young rabbi strutted from table-to-table with raised eyebrows like a principal making sure none of the kids were looking at comic books. Quite frankly, it set a tone I did not exactly expect in a place where many of us went to become praying pilgrims for a couple of weeks. That may also say something to us preachers, elders, and church leader types about the ways we have to be careful with our leadership. Too often in the western church, leaders drink the Kool-Aid and come to think of ourselves as authority figures rather than servants who help direct others to deeper servanthood. Even the Lord himself "took on the nature of a servant," emptying himself of the very authority that was his birthright. But I digress. That is tangential to the main point on this fine bloggerland day.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, matza bread.

Lent (for me) is a cruel season this go around, mainly because of this whole brilliant idea I had to give up bread. It has been tough, to put it mildly. But the conversation during communion with my daughter a few Sundays ago has actually been a spiritual fulcrum in time that has sustained me during this season.

First Sunday of Lent. Reese and I sat side-by-side. The plate filled with brittle matza bread was making its way hand-by-hand down the pew. We both turned our heads toward it, eyeing the plate in anticipation like fans at an Indy-car race waiting for the lead car to cross the finish line. She took the plate, did the Church of Christ double-break--(You know the one, where you break off too much and have to take your large piece and break it again in order to get it to the right size.)--and then handed me the plate. I broke off a big piece, and devoured it with joy.

"Daddy, I thought you couldn't eat bread."

I replied, "When I prayed on Ash Wednesday, I decided that the only bread I would eat from then until Easter Sunday would be the bread of communion."

Three Sundays have passed. That dusty, throat-stiffling matza bread has never tasted so good. I take one bite to remember the body of Christ nailed to the cross for the forgiveness of my all-too-abundant sin; I take another bite to forget the shame that the deceiver(s) stirs up in our hearts that tempts us to forget that we are God's workmanship, God's poetry, being shaped into a new creation.

That bread each week tastes good. But I have to admit, it leaves me wanting more.