I have the privilege of serving Communion at All Saints’ Church in Akron where I am an officer. We celebrate the Supper each week. I have become so captivated by weekly Communion that I miss it (badly) when I am gone and at a church—however good the teaching or service—where it is not practiced. This Sunday as Pastor Strawbridge worked his way through the Eucharist I was thinking about why I enjoy this so much. Here are some of the aspects of the Supper that are presently captivating me most:

1. It shows you what you are. You come to the Table needy. God made you that way. You are hungry and thirsty. You will be tomorrow as well. You stretch out empty hands to receive food from God. You did not make it. You did not bring it. You do not pay for it. You just come to the Table and are provided for. You are a child—no more, no less. You have a great Father.
2. It shows you how God cares for you. You come empty. You did not make arrangements for the Table to be there. Yet, your Father knows you. He knows that you are hungry. He makes provision for you. He does this at the Table. He did this through Christ perfectly.
3. He serves you good things, but things that are a mix of the divine and the human. (This has been what is knocking me over recently.) Pastor Strawbridge always mentions as he works through the prayers of the Book of Common Prayer. “Bread… which the earth has given and human hands have made…” “Fruit of the Vine AND work of human hands….” This could morph into some odd works righteousness, but that misses the point completely. This does not point to works being mixed into the foundation of our salvation. It points to the fact that in Christ, God deigned to become one of us. Jesus is just like the bread and the wine. He is completely God, but He is God come to earth through the womb of a teenage Jewish girl. He has taken on humanity (still has it). He is one of us.
4. Through Him, we are redeemed and all of our work is restored to what it should be. In the Supper, man finally becomes what he is supposed to be. The one who is placed in a beautiful Garden, in a fabulous world, who is given life and who has all his needs met by his Father (as we so often do as children, if we have a good father). In the Eucharist, we can give thanks for the provision of Christ; we can give thanks for the world; we can finally brim over with gratitude (of course, we are to take this thankfulness with us throughout the week). This is what the world was always suppose to be. God providing for us. Us simply giving thanks.
5. Finally, in Communion, we see God for what He really is. We see this obviously in the sacrifice of Christ. The bread is called His body. The wine is called His blood. We cannot miss the great sacrifice that was made for our feast. This, however, is not all that is going on. Don’t lose track of the other members of the Holy Trinity. It is on the role of the Father that I muse often these days. In the Supper, the nature of God is laid bare. In it, we see not just what we need we see what He wants. He wants you and I. He, like the old heathen gods, could have called us to the great table and made a feast of us. This is common in the ancient world. In the modern world, also, though it is harder to see idols (like money and fame and selfishness) devour their devotees. God, instead of making you a feast for Him, provided the feast by sacrificing Himself. He dies. We feast. At the end—at the very core of the Universe—is a Father calling His children to gather around the Table for fellowship. This is what Eden was like. This is what life will be like eternally. This seems radically impossible. If any of us were God this would not be. Once any human scrapes together a few jangles of power, he looks to make it work for him by clapping shackles on his brother. God would be justified if He called us to grovel before Him at the Table. (At churches where the Supper becomes a time for deeper repentance and introspection, this is sometimes what it becomes.) This, however, misses the point. There is time for groveling and deep repentance. (If your life is anything like mine, this is no secret to you or to any who are close to you.) There must be time for this, but the Supper is not this time. This is the confounding part (the breathtaking part) if you catch a glimpse of it. What God really wants is to sit down to dinner and have fellowship with His sons and daughters. Why? Why would He want this? Why would He desire each week, each service to dine with people who need, desperately need, to confess their sins at each service? But, this friends is not an answer that I can give. It makes no sense and it is the best news that you have ever heard. The hardly-ever-accused of being a-mystic theologian John Calvin said of the Supper, “I more experience it than understand it.” Good call.