5.2
Communion with God: eat and drink Me
It is possible to know and to be known because we live in a world whose order we are able to apprehend and comprehend. Without order that predictably shapes and directs, it would not be possible to make sense of anything. Order is the means by which all things reliably unfold, within the order and nature of time. The shape of order in space and time is drawn by boundaries that define the form and function of each element as it exists both in itself and in its context. Boundaries explain our place in relation to self, others and environment. They are ubiquitous, extending to the farthest realms of the universe and penetrating places that are closest and hidden deep in the imperceptible. Some boundaries are simple and clear such as the one of space that distinguishes Canada and the US. Others are much more complex and easy to confuse. The boundary between a mother and her nursing baby distinguishes two lives with distinct bodies and souls but the strength of their physical and emotional attachment forms a very porous boundary that allows each to greatly define and be defined by the other. The living nature of boundaries informs the kind and quality of all relationships
Boundaries are too many to ever count. Their endless details will keep science busy exploring and studying them far past our last generation. Despite their great numbers and diversities, they all share one essence: the common stuff of matter that our senses can perceive and know. The boundary between God and the universe, however, is outside this common stuff and is not compatible with our order of knowing. God’s boundary smacks up against creation like a concrete dead end. There is no way to study or reach or traverse it because God ordered His relation to creation in holiness. The holiness of God is His absolute and essential boundary with all He made, incapable of being crossed or penetrated by any natural means. Any attempt to trespass God’s holy boundary is liable to be consumed by the fire of God’s breath or the mouth of His earth. Whoever presumes to violate God’s boundary ends up violating his own vital boundary, ripping apart the living order of his being with the chaos of his own making
The nature of God’s relation to His works is shaped by the pure and clear boundary of His holiness. Its order is unique, originating from dynamics that are one directional and not mutual as with all other boundaries. All depends on God’s giving; all exists in response to Him. It is at this most basic level of truth that God’s holiness can be most clearly seen and known. The nature of God’s holy boundary, then, requires that we approach God from Himself. If all is from God, then so is any relationship with Him. How, then, can we be expected to approach God if He alone can initiate anything? God revealed His way to Himself to Israel, establishing His law in a sacrificial system whereby Israel could approach and worship her transcendent God. Compared to all other boundaries, the one with God is by far the most simple and complex, the most clear and confusing. God made clear that He would only be approached by the order and pattern He gave Moses. His revealed boundary was as simple and clear as the one between life and death. When Aaron’s sons dared to approach God with their own formulas, they were instantly consumed by fire (Leviticus 10:1-2). When the household of Korah dared to transgress God’s choice of what is and isn’t holy, the earth opened up and swallowed them alive (Numbers 16:1-35). God’s holiness cannot be trespassed
At the same time God was clear with Israel that His holiness is non-negotiable, He appeared to regularly confuse or forget His own boundary. Israel often reversed roles with God, treating Him as if He were made in her image, as if He were the work of her hands to manipulate. She often expected Him to follow her will and complained when He didn’t. Israel regularly trespassed God’s boundary in her heart and deeds, but He did not destroy her. Israel survives to this day not because God’s holiness ever wanes but because He often covers its severe separation so that it is not trespassed in truth and destroys (Exodus 33:3). God’s absolute holiness is saturated with His absolute kindness, His boundary forever separating and forever seeking to unite us with Himself. It is for His mercy’s sake that God covers His holiness from us, so that we dare not trespass and be destroyed by Him. At the entrance of the Garden, God stationed a cherubim with a flaming sword to prevent Adam and Eve from returning and eating from the tree of life that was no longer theirs to eat (Genesis 3:24)
God’s holiness is the fierce passion of His will to be done, in love. He revealed the full extent of His passion and desire for intimacy with us at the last Passover seder Jesus had with His disciples. At His last seder, typically called the last supper, God forged a way to cross His boundary to make us one, in His holiness. God’s way is more horrifying and more beautiful than anything imagined. After Jesus blessed the matzah with the familiar Hebrew blessing to God for bringing forth bread from the earth, He added another blessing far greater than the first. With the first blessing, Jesus thanked God for giving earth’s provisions but with the second, Jesus blessed His friends by giving Himself. He gave them the matzah and said to them, “This is my body which is given for you” (Luke 22:19). Was Jesus giving Himself to be cannibalized by them?
He did not stop with this blessing. His body was not enough to satisfy God’s passion. He insisted on also giving the life of His flesh (Leviticus 17:11). After their meal, Jesus blessed the wine and said to His friends, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:27-8). With these two new blessings, Jesus transformed the meaning of Passover into a new historical event: His own death. The matzah was no longer to mean Israel’s slavery and suffering, but was to be God’s own suffering. The wine was no longer meant to be the lamb’s blood that atoned for Israel’s life but was to be the blood of God’s own Son, the atoning life of Jesus. Jesus gave His disciples the matzah and wine as His body and blood. This is God’s way for communion with us, to keep and remember. Eat and drink and remember Jesus’ death. Eat and drink and remember He is returning (1 Corinthians 11:26). This is God’s holy way of violating His own boundary. This is what His holiness looks like when He breaches it to meet us. We must eat and drink His Son, ingest and digest Him so we can receive all we need to be made holy, as God is holy. It is as clear and mysterious as only a divine boundary can be
The revelation of holy communion was not born in a vacuum. God has been giving Himself from the beginning of time. He gave each of us His image to understand and live in the good order He gave creation. He also gave unique revelations to Israel, for her and all nations to witness. God chose the Passover for His communion because there is so much in this holiday that expresses and explains it. Even the multiple meanings of their names have parallels. The word Passover means three facets of God’s deliverance in the exodus. It is God’s act by His angel of death, passing over every house of Israel. It is also the lamb that was sacrificed so its blood would be placed on every home in Goshen to protect from the angel of death. And it is the annual feast God commands Israel to observe, to celebrate His redemption from her slavery (Exodus 12:24-7). Communion also refers to three similar facets of God’s deliverance in His new covenant. It is God’s act of sacrificing His Son. It is Jesus’ sacrificed body and blood identified with the matzah and wine. And it is a regular observance God commanded, to remember His sacrifice for us
Communion once again reminds us of the paradoxical ways God chooses to be with us. He commands us to serve and fear only Him, but at the same time He commands us to eat and drink Him. Isn’t the one who eats greater in power and importance than what is eaten? Isn’t the one being served greater than the servant? God says that He alone is God and commands us to confuse nothing with Him. Hasn’t God ever heard the axiom that we are what we eat? Why would He set us up to so easily confuse ourselves with Him, creating boundaries with us that not only appear to reverse His holy order but are so porous, they practically dissolve and merge us with Him in communion?
The paradox of God’s holiness finds its clarifying resolution in His holy love. The logic of God’s love is to withhold nothing in His giving, to conceal nothing in His vulnerability and confuse nothing with His perfect heart. There is no source but Him, no life we can feed on but His life, no love we can fully trust but His own. God gives Himself not only because He wants to make us like Him but also to make us His own. God transforms us into saints, His holy ones, not to confuse us with Himself but so we can intimately partake in His divine nature (Hebrews 12:10). We eat and drink Him and are forever in communion with Him because God wants us with the zealous passion of His holiness
I suspect Jesus’ friends felt very uncomfortable and even painfully embarrassed by their rabbi’s offer to eat the matzah and wine as His own body and blood. How could He give Himself to be eaten, knowing that He would soon be defecated? Has He no self respect or restraint? Doesn’t He know that it is much more socially acceptable to offer only as much as is expected in return? Is He so desperately in love that He would give everything He has for His beloved, even His reputation and life? It is humiliating to see Jesus offering Himself so entirely to these friends who offered nothing in return. They gave Him no response. Jesus gave them everything, even though He knew their hearts were divided and would eventually abandon Him. It is embarrassing to witness so passionate a love so patently unrequited
Communion resolves the paradox of becoming one with a distinct and holy God because it so completely distinguishes God from His children by remembering Jesus’ death. Jesus’ death marks both the great divide and the great way that unites God and us. Jesus hangs alone on the cross while everyone else stands against Him. The only hope of bridging both sides is in God, by Himself. If God were a human father, this would be the greatest example of child abuse that gives over one’s child for public torture and crucifixion. But when God transforms our judgmental perspective of His sacrifice into His holy perspective, we understand Jesus’ death as this world can never explain. We know what only God can reveal to our heart: the passion and power of His intimate and all consuming love