The Lord's Supper: Thoughts on Consumption
I have a couple of posts prepared this week on the Lord’s Supper, often referred to as Communion with a church setting. Today is the first of these posts and I want to focus on the consumption aspect of Communion.
We take Communion, the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, Holy Communion, Sacrament of the Table, the Blessed Sacrament (whatever you want to call it)…as a body of believers in community.
We are to consume the bread and wine as Christ’s body and blood shed for our sake.
We are consumers of many (too many) things, but Christ calls us to become consumers of just these 2 things.
2 out of the past 4 days have been dubbed “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday.” Both are titles used to get us to spend money (I know, I should feel guilty for even talking about this after buying a tv).
Is there any doubt that the consumerism in our culture is progressively getting worse? I wonder if the celebration of the Lord’s Supper isn’t one of the most counter cultural acts the church does…
We consume Christ. Alone.
But ultimately Christ desires to consume our lives for the sake of his glory.
I love how Rob Bell talks about this:
The way of Jesus is the path of descent. It’s about our death. It’s our willingness to join the world in its suffering, it’s our participation in the new humanity, it’s our weakness calling out to others in their weakness.
As we celebrate the life and sacrificial death of Christ, we are calling ourselves to death, for that is where life is found.
We consume, only to be consumed, in order to be used by God.
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Tyler Braun.
Great post Tyler! I don’t know if you are familiar with Paul Metzger’s Consuming Jesus, but I was introduced to a lot of these ideas and how the Lord’s Supper effects our understanding of how we interact with consumerism through him.
I’m sure you’ve read his article on Out of Ur on the difference in community united around the coffee bar and community united around the Lord’s Table.
anyways, good stuff, can’t wait to see some of your other posts.
Definitely, I’ll be hitting on some of those aspects in the next post.
Consumerism is definitely getting worse.
Kids nowadays have their ipods, PDAs, laptops…I didn’t even get a phone (you know..the one that only receives and takes calls?)until I was 27!
Don’t worry I have upgraded since then. I can send and receive texts too!
To defend my recent phone purchase, a phone allows me to stay more connected with people. So while it was an above the normal need type of purchase, I believe I use it for good reasons.
no need to defend
I was talking about them kids…like mid teens and younger.
@ yonas: think it’d be a bad idea to drag “them kids” by their ankles and dress ‘em elf outfits to feed the hobos? might be fun! wink
Tyler,
Like the post a lot. I get really nauseous around the Black Friday, Cyber Monday stuff. Not cause I think it’s wrong to buy something. Absolutely not….but at a deeper level I’m concerned that we have wrapped so much of our identity up in consuming things, that we believe we aren’t quite complete until we have made a purchase on something.
I think this definitely carries over into our Church culture, where God, Jesus, theology is just one more thing to consume. And we do things in churches like Black Friday, i.e. we promote sermon series, events and guest speakers with all the glitz that advertisers use to get us into their stores.
Consuming never fills us at our deepest needs and desires…always leaves us empty and wanting more…unless we are consuming/partaking in the one and only thing/person that can satisfy….Christ.
On another note…I love Nouwen’s book, Drink This Cup…maybe it’s Take This Cup….great reflection on the act of communion.
Rhett
Few men have more wisdom on faith and Christianity than Nouwen.
I think you could change it to 3 of the past 4 days. In honor of World AIDS Day, Starbucks is donating a nickel for every drink. Not bad in and of itself. But email blasts inviting people to come make a difference by paying them 3.50 so you can donate a five cents and “see how delicious doing good can be.” Even our giving is squeezed from our consumerism and has thus become a product.
Aaack.
Great question you bring up here.
I think we bring our consumer mindsets into communion in a very negative way in the sense that we take communion and then we will be blessed, not that we take communion and then we will be filled and consumed by God.
not all consumerism at christmas time is selfish. giving gifts can be quite a joy and i think God loves that. but sure he called us to take in his Body & Blood: all of him, and the matter of the fact is; He was born to die. So tis the season, that we too may die to ourselves for the sake of another.
[...] Tyler This is the second post on The Lord’s Supper. Last time we looked at the subject from the perspective of consumption. Today I want to focus on [...]