One Holy Moment: This Is My Body…Take, Eat

April 2, 2010 · Posted in Devotional, Faith, Jesus Christ, Worship, nostalgia · 1 Comment 

Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, has always been a holy and solemn event to me, thanks largely to my grandfather.

I would not say that Pastor Bill Henager (my mother’s father) and I had a good many bonding moments. Ours was not the kind of grandfather/grandson relationship that led to many fishing expeditions or trips to the ballpark. He was a pastor, sure, but he was a working man. If he was awake, he was probably working. And, let me tell you, he woke up mighty early. Consequently, if you got too close to him, he would likely put you to work, as well. So, as a kid I steered as clear of him as was humanly possible most of the time.

Big Granddad, as we Strother kids called him, had been a farmer before he became a minister. He grew things. He raised cattle. He knew how to grow it, breed it, pick it, pull it, skin it, clean it, and cook it up. He never quit on such things. He carried them right into the ministry with him.

One thing my grandfather did that made an early and lasting impression on me was he baked his own unleavened bread. While other churches served little squares (or wafers, if you were Catholic or Episcopal) that were mass-produced in some factory somewhere, the members of our little congregation were served broken, uneven, homemade bits of unleavened bread, lovingly prepared by our pastor.

There was something ominous to me about that. Holding that broken piece of cracker with its jagged edges and irregularities, while listening to my grandfather read a portion of the passion of my Christ and then read the story of the Last Supper, where Christ reiterated to his bewildered followers the awful suffering that awaited Him only hours thence, always brought tears to my eyes.

I felt as if I were taking Communion under the very shadow of that Cross.

I confess that I made a conscious effort not to take many of my grandfather’s ideas into my own ministry when I became a pastor. I did not see eye to eye with him on more than a few things. That didn’t mean I didn’t love and respect him. I did. I do. I always will.

One thing, however, I did want to continue was the way he put a holy emphasis on the Lord’s Supper. I wanted my people to feel what I had felt as a boy. So, when I took a church in east Texas, only an hour from where he was pastoring the last church he would serve before being called to his reward, I planned a Communion for our congregation and then a personal trip to Mount Pleasant. Easter was just a couple weeks away.

In my grandmother’s kitchen, where her famous rolls were made and where her even more famous monkey stories were often told, my grandfather and I bonded. The sweetest moment I ever had with him was the day he taught me to bake unleavened bread.

I will never forget that Communion the following week. Easter was only days away. I stood behind the communion table. The deacons had served the people the bread and the cup. I read a portion of the story of the Last Supper, and then I picked up a rather large, uneven piece of bread from the silver tray on which it lay and snapped it in two. In the holy hush that had settled over us, that breaking of the bread could be heard all over the sanctuary.

I remember the way this one kid sitting near the front winced when the bread snapped in my hands. I remember hoping that holy moment would stay with him the way those moments from so many years before had stuck with me.

And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. ~1 Corinthians 11:23-25

Broken. His body. Broken. For me. For you.

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Worship is More than Good Packaging

February 7, 2010 · Posted in (Gene)tic Rantings, Blog, Church, Worship · 3 Comments 

A week or so ago, I received an email from the Editor-in-Chief of an Internet sports site to which I contribute. It was addressed to all of the Featured Columnists. He admonished us to think more about packaging and less about content when we put together our articles. He talked about using multimedia presentations, slide shows, and other creative means of packaging our work to increase interest and drive traffic.

This editor talked about how the days of just writing a great article and letting it stand on its own merits are forever gone. He held up the newspaper industry as proof positive that the game has changed. Across the country, once-mighty traditional newspapers are dead, dying, or reinventing themselves to survive.

It all made sense.

It also struck a rather sad chord somewhere in me. I know I have heard all of this before…not in another secular industry, but in a sacred one. Have ministers not been told for a decade or so that the packaging has become paramount? Sure, we give lip service to the message, but you can tell that too many believe that if they have enough sizzle and pop in their presentation, the message could be in Na’vi (no, I haven’t seen Avatar, but I don’t live under a rock, either) and the congregation— I know that is an old-fashioned term: let’s call them the consumers— will eat it up, dance in the aisle, tell all their friends, and, perhaps most importantly, drop their wallets in the plate.

Whether you are writing a sports article or delivering the gospel, the prevailing message is that you have to keep up with the Camerons (as in James Cameron, Hollywood innovator) in order to be relevant. Maybe it is true. Maybe the package is more important than the Gift.

Or maybe we have turned church into some high-tech infotainment nonsense that feeds our egos and arouses our senses, and then confused that with worship. Maybe we think that providing entertainment that is arousing enough to pull this generation from their iPads and HDTVs just one time per week (though they may Tweet a “totally awesome” point you make while you are talking) is the essence of the Great Commission.

Look, before you pop a hernia or froth too much at the mouth, I am not saying we should not use available technology in presenting the Gospel. I am not saying that churches that are “cutting edge” are dens of iniquity. I am not even saying that I do not appreciate a multimedia presentation of the gospel.

I am saying this: if you spend most of your time consumed with the packaging, the presentation, until the message is more of an afterthought than you will ever admit, you have missed the mark and the meaning of ministry. Moreover, simply arousing the senses is not worship.

At least, Abraham didn’t seem to think so when he grabbed Isaac’s hand and his trusty knife and said, “The child and I are going up that mountain to worship.”

Go ahead and write me off as the Crusty Crab if you want to, Spongebob, but deep down in that dried out inside where you once soaked up Jesus until he oozed out your pores, you know I am right.

Who am I to talk? Forget I mentioned it.

God bless your Sunday.

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