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Remember me

Remember Me

As a Regional Minister, I have the immense privilege of travelling around the association receiving hospitality from ministers and churches alike. Sometimes it is simply a nice cup of tea, sometimes a slice of beautiful cake (especially when meetings take place at Stop the World in Leigh-on-Sea – Google them, their cakes are immense!) and sometimes lunch. However, I am never ceased to be amazed at a spread put together for a minister’s induction service – all the stops are pulled out with the variety and quality of what is provided. Only just this past weekend, I conducted two inductions – at one we had a beautiful array of cakes which would not have been out of place at a wedding reception (see photo) and the other we had toasted crumpets (after all, it was Sunday evening!).

Hospitality and eating together is such an integral part of what it means to be family and in relationship with one another and this is highlighted in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry. Luke’s Gospel alone records eight such meals; we find Jesus eating with sinners and tax collectors, he ate in the homes of Pharisees, he was anointed by a prostitute at a meal and by a woman grateful to receive her brother back from the dead. He fed the multitudes with a few loaves and fish and after his resurrection he broke bread with two disciples in Emmaus and ate fish with his friends on the shores of Galilee.

But no meal is perhaps of more importance in the story of Jesus, or for Christians today, than the meal he ate after sunset the evening before he died. John’s Gospel devotes five chapters to describing what Jesus said and did at that meal. Each of the Gospels tell the story, as does Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians. Jesus commands his disciples to eat that meal and, as they do, to remember him. They were to see their eating of bread and drinking of wine as a kind of participation in his sacrifice and as a tangible way of inviting him into their lives. (In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul calls it koinonia  – a sharing or fellowship with the body).

I recently read a story of a man in his early forties who died after a long battle with cancer, leaving behind a wife and two children. There was a particular casserole that was his favourite meal and once a week his wife would continue to prepare this meal. As she and the children ate, she would tell her children stories of her husband and they would recall their own memories of their dad. His chair sat empty at the table, and they remembered him in a way that made them feel close to him and that continued to shape their lives. I wonder if this is not what Jesus had in mind when he said, ‘As often as you do this, remember me.’ Perhaps we should remember him not only in a morsel of bread and a sip of wine during a communion service, but every time we sit down to ‘break bread’ with others, as we enjoy koinonia. Here I am reminded of an old tradition, now nearly forgotten, of setting an extra place at the supper table as a way of inviting the Lord to ‘be present at our table.’

How might you truly remember Christ and all he has done, and continues to do, at each meal or slice of cake that you eat with others?

This week’s thought was written by Claire Blatchford, EBA Regional Minister