A Common Intimacy

Luke 22:14-34


If the Christmas story and the Easter story are the two best-known stories in the gospels, then I submit that The Last Supper (which is part of the larger Easter story anyway) ranks third among those events from the gospels that have seeped into the greater cultural consciousness.

The rituals of the Communion sacrament are present in every Christian denomination I know of, and over the centuries countless painters have used The Last Supper as a subject, with DaVinci's masterpiece being so recognizable it is parodied probably as often as Grant Wood's American Gothic.

Why does this little scene resonate so much? I think it's the presence of food.

In this scene Jesus and his disciples are doing something that all of us do every day -- they are sitting down together for supper. This is an instantly recognizable means of fellowship. We gather in our homes for meals with family, or we invite friends over for dinner. When we want to visit with people we often suggest going out to a restaurant. Eating together is a common intimacy. It's what we do together as a people. While most of the gospels are filled with signs and wonders, this scene is extraordinary in its ordinariness.

Then, as he often does, Jesus takes something ordinary, something that we can all relate to, and subsumes it with a deeper meaning.

This was the Passover meal, of course; a time of remembering when God delivered his people out of Egypt. But now it speaks to another sort of deliverance. The bread and the wine are no longer just food, they are a spiritual sustenance, and that sustenance is actually Jesus himself. The ordinary meal is now an extraordinary communion with Jesus.

When Jesus breaks the bread, he says "Do this to remember me." Perhaps anytime we dine, especially when we gather with fellow believers, we should transform our simple meals into a time of fellowship, of spiritual sustenance, and of a shared communion with the one who delivers us.


Drew Clausen