The table through the centuries

He takes the bread, breaks it, gives thanks, and says: This is my body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

They have been doing it ever since.

In the catacomb churches of Rome, by candlelight, with soldiers outside the door. In the basilicas Constantine built, with a thousand people and a golden chalice. In the desert huts of Anthony's monks, with bread baked that morning and water from the Nile. In the Reformation churches where the table was moved to the center of the room. In the Catholic churches where the priest still faces the east. In the Pentecostal storefront where grape juice and crackers are passed down the row. In the North Korean house church where bread from the market is broken over a kitchen table.

The same act. Different forms, different theologies, different controversies that have divided the church for five centuries over exactly what is happening here.

But always: the bread, the cup, the words, the remembrance.

Do this in remembrance of me.

When you eat this bread you proclaim his death. When you drink this cup you proclaim his resurrection. Until he comes.

The table is set. It has been set for two thousand years. Every person who has sat at it has received the same gift, from the same host, with the same promise attached.

Until he comes.

Until he comes.

Every time the table is set, it is set with that expectation. Not only backward — in remembrance — but forward. The meal is an announcement: he is coming. The table will not always be set in these conditions, in this broken world, with this bread that satisfies only temporarily. There is a feast coming that will satisfy permanently.

Until he comes, we eat this bread and drink this cup and proclaim what he did and what he will do.

Every communion service in history has been this — the backward look and the forward lean, the remembrance and the expectation, the already and the not yet.

When you next come to the table, come with both. Remember. And lean forward.