Partying with Jesus

Today at our church, we did something wonderfully unexpected that'll stay with me a long time.

We shared communion. And it was a party!

At this church, the opportunity to participate in communion happens smack dab in the middle of the worship service each week. In order to mix things up, the actual observance of communion cycles between passing the plate with the thimbleful of Biblical Welch's Grape Juice/fragments of matzo and inviting people to come to a table set with a little bowlful of aforementioned juice and a plateful of matzo pieces.

But today, the congregation was invited to a very different kind of communion celebration. At the close of the service, while the pastor was praying, someone uncovered two long tables covered with all varieties of bread: matzo, dense french bread, sweet breads, dark breads...and grapes...and chocolate! There was a table set with bottles of sparkling grape juices as well.

The ritual solemnity with which we Christians usually participate in communion was absent this morning. In my head, I've known these verses for a long time:

At His final Passover Seder on earth, Jesus said: "After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, "Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes." - Luke 22:17-18

Fast forward to the end of the story, where the angels proclaim: "Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready." - Rev. 19:7

And in my head, I've known that communion is SO MUCH MORE than a Barbie-sized religious snack. (Even wrote a little piece about this very subject for Group magazine a couple of years ago.) A lot of the meditations out there to help people engage with communion tend to target our cognitive response to God. "Oh yeah," we say. "I must now remember that this little cracker fragment and sip of room-temperature juice is meant to help me remember that I'm supposed to remember...uh...Jesus died on the cross for me."

This morning, people of all ages were taking handfuls of chocolate and grapes, sampling breads, pouring sparkling juice into clear glasses. This morning's celebration, communion with a group of a group of happy, surprised people smiling, laughing and actually eating and drinking together was an experience that burned itself onto my heart.

This'll be an experience that I "bring to active remembrance" when I participate with Jesus as I share communion with Him and others in the future.

Celebrating! Tasting grace! It made me soul-hungry for the real thing - the party in heaven.

But you know what? I think Jesus enjoyed the party at the church this morning.

The Biggest Loser

Last night's American Idol featured the abysmal auditions of wanna-be pop stars who were missing something - looks, talent, confidence, a decent wardrobe. The show's producers are counting on our need to feel better about ourselves at someone else's expense with these Auditions From Purgatory shows. Last night's show could have been called "Ain't Too Proud To Beg". There were a number of people that pled their case for stardom with the same kind of urgency you'd see from someone begging not to be sent to the electric chair for their unpaid parking tickets.

"Man, I'm glad I'm not like those losers," we smirk. "Don't they know they stink?"

Well, some of them do, but a lot of them have had their friends and family tell them they're awesome and amazing and a way, way, way better singer than [fill in the blank with the name of your favorite season 1-5 American Idol]. And then Simon pulls out his Uzi and guns them down. Some would say it's a mercy killing...and maybe it is.

But I wonder what's happened to some of those failures. No, not the extreme cases the producers cherry-pick for our public consumption. But the rest of those thousands of people who showed up at the nationwide cattle calls and were sent home by some assistant to the associate junior producer after singing 4 bars of a song they'd been rehearsing for weeks. The whole thing goes on their failure resume.

Then there was this one guy auditioning last night who got to the Hollywood round of the competition last year and then bailed right there on stage. Couldn't hack the pressure. And everywhere he went, he had people asking him, "Hey aren't you the one that quit?" The Failure Factor had come to define his life. It had become his identity.

Today, blogger king Dan Edelen writes about how desperately we Christians need a gospel of failure. Man, do I agree with him! I hope to be exploring this topic in blog posts to come.

But for today, I just want to make an observation. In Uprooted, I tell the story of these two women I once worked with who NEVER HAD ANY PROBLEMS. This wouldn't have been much of a problem if we'd been employed at McDonalds (in fact, it probably would have made working together quite pleasant) - but we worked at a church. Though church is supposed to be a place for people with problems, we all know that it freqently is a place we find ourselves auditioning for our own version of Spiritual American Idol.

Again and again, I heard from the people-with-problems who attended the church - "Those women make me feel like I'm a loser." The irony is that the women were perfect examples of what we frequently tell each other the abundant, victorious Christian life is supposed to look like. And as a result, the women served as a kind of defacto Randy, Paula and Simon judgment panel for the church, since they had perfected their own performances so well.

Man, we need some new paradigms.

The Full Moon restaurant

I met a friend this morning at one of the truly fine dining establishments in the Chicago area - the Full Moon restaurant, conveniently located on a desolate stretch of Hwy. 41 between the sprawl of Abbott Labs and Great Lakes Naval Training Center. They feature a concoction I've never seen on a menu anywhere else - the Carbetsi omelet. I think "Carbetsi" is a Greek word for "wipe everything on the greasy counter into the pan".

Besides the Carbetsi, this dining establishment had something I haven't seen for years: a cigarette vending machine. Maybe I don't hang out in enough divey places. I dunno. Seeing that machine jammed into a corner near the washrooms was like a 3-D flashback to a time when cigarette machines were everywhere. My dad, a 2 pack-a-day Parliament man, sometimes bought his smokes from a vending machine. And when I was first toying with adult behaviors as a 13 year-old, the tired Holiday Inn on the other side of the fence just behind my house had a vending machine. I could walk over there and buy (really stale) Marlboros any time I wanted.

The world quietly moved on from the days when gas stations, bowling alleys and restaurants way nicer than The Full Moon had tobacco vend-o-matics. And though Jesus spared me the anguish of a lifelong nicotine addiction, seeing that vending machine today was like a flashback to the ordinary moments of my childhood: my dad sitting at the table, telling stories about his day's adventures in insurance adjusting. He'd flick his lighter open like he had about a bazillion times in his life, putting blue flame to the end of a cig. While he talked, my mom would be pulling the electric broom out of the closet so she could vacuum the avocado carpeting in our kitchen. (Yes, we had carpeting in our kitchen. Eeew.) My sister was usually parked in the den, watching "Speed Racer".

Just like that - launched into the past by a Carbetsi and a cigarette time machine.