RESOURCING THE CHURCH FOR ECUMENICAL MINISTRy A ...

“Christians cannot partake at the Lord’s Table unmindful that there are many human tables
that are bare. Power from the former must energize us to provide food for the latter.”
the body of Jesus Christ is dishonored. When the
holiness of the body is not acknowledged, let alone
affirmed, the whole body aches. Some even get sick and
die (1 Cor 11:30). Our soup kitchens are no Lord’s
Suppers. How do we truly break bread with those
who have no bread? How do we work toward
Christian unity while excluding the poor? Have we,
unconsciously or otherwise, denied that the bodies
of the poor—at times smelly, dirty, diseased,
disfigured, disabled, female, non-Anglo—are part
of the body of Christ and thus not part of our body
of Christ that is the church in all its expressions?
Have we dismembered the poor from our body?
Instead of re-membering at the Table, have we
engaged in dismemberment?
In my extensive travels and visits to our congregations
across North America these past five years, I
don’t see us inviting the poor into our church
homes. Instead, I see us walking over bodies to get
to church, driving past bodies on the streets, or
perfunctorily placing an offering envelope in the
plate to wash our hands of any deeper engagement
with hungry and dying bodies on a global level. I
have watched the body of Christ partake of the Body
of Christ at the communion table as another body
of Christ which happens to be poor and sleeping on
the church steps is never invited inside the so-called
church. Again, I ask, have we dismembered the poor
from our body?
As Robert McAfee Brown stated, “Christians
cannot partake at the Lord’s Table unmindful that
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there are many human tables that are bare. Power
from the former must energize us to provide food
for the latter.” 1 I believe that our work for Christian
unity today carries on the lifelong, generational
struggle that Jesus began as a poor, Palestinian
peasant in the face of an aristocratic and oppressive
Roman Empire. In the face of our current day
empire, let us vow to seek first the Realm of God.
Let us strive to honor Christ as the most welcoming
and hospitable host we could ever possibly imagine,
inviting all of us to embrace the mystery of our faith
that only broken bread can be shared. Communion
can’t happen without a broken body. To share the
bread, we must break it. So how do we break bread
with those who have no bread? How do we work
toward Christian unity without excluding the poor?
We welcome all to the Lord’s Table as God has
welcomed us. No matter what; full stop. As Disciples
of Christ committed to Christian unity, my hope is
that we, as the body of Christ on Earth, embrace an
embodied faith—one that we feel in our hands,
hearts, heads, and deeply in our bones—and one that
invites, welcomes, and breaks bread even with those
who would otherwise have no bread and whose bodies
would not otherwise be embraced so that we may all,
indeed, be one.
Notes
1. Brown, Robert McAfee, review of Broken Break
and Broken Bodies by Joseph Grass, Maryknoll:
Orbis, 2004.
Gopp • Understanding the Lord’s Supper for Our Vision and Work