|
I was reading a book on the streetcar today, on my way home. It's for my Theologies of the Eucharist course and the chapter I was reading dealt with the sense of the Eucharist as a meal. The author goes on at length about the importance of meals in Jesus' culture and ministry. He describes banquets and family meals, and even describes early church practices at which the Eucharist was part of a larger feast. This was around 8:30pm, and the last thing I'd eaten was a bowl of soup at lunch. All the talk about meals was making my stomach growl and my mouth water. And I realized, closing the book until I could get some food in me, that this is precisely how we should approach the Eucharist - with hunger. I'm not talking about bodily hunger, though I do observe a Sunday morning fast until I've taken communion. I'm talking about hunger of the spirit, a deep and urgent longing for spiritual nourishment at Christ's table. Being in the church business, it's easy to start thinking of the Eucharist as just another task. We learn so much of the theory and mechanics of the altar that the spirituality of the sacrament can get lost. We can forget our own hunger, our own need to be fed. When I got home this evening I turned on the computer to check e-mail. Soon I was wrapped up in a variety of tasks and forgot how hungry I'd been. Similarly, we can sometimes ignore our spiritual hunger. We get distracted by other things, the hubbub of daily life that's always so urgent...though nowhere near so important. Sometimes we need a reminder, like that chapter about meals, to turn our attention to our hunger. Meanwhile, my bodily hunger has been assuaged by chicken fingers and seasoned potato wedges...which is a very mundane end to this entry. |
