Easter is a season, not simply one day, in liturgical churches. So let me, a Low-Church Baptist, tell you about one of my most memorable experiences in an Easter Sunday service.
Pansy and I were in London's Westminster Abbey, sitting in the section known as Poets Corner. On the row just ahead of us was a middle-aged couple in their Sunday Best. With the couple were three young fellows of older high school or younger college age, all in neat casual wear.
As we stood and sat several times during the Anglican service, one of these youths caught my eye: His shirttail was out of his slacks, extending below his windbreaker jacket.
In the Anglican tradition, people go forward if they wish to receive Communion, and ushers that morning signaled each row of worshipers when it was their turn. When people on the row ahead of us stood, this young man began quickly tucking in his shirttail.
I wondered why.
Did he dress in a hurry in leaving the hotel and simply not bother about tidying up until he got to church?
Did he enjoy the tails-out look but fear the man and woman he was with would disapprove if they noticed?
Was this a conditioned reflex in response to years of etiquette training?
Or was he conscious of a holy dimension as he was about to kneel for a moment to receive bread and wine?
This ritual, by whatever name -- Communion, Eucharist, Lord's Supper, Sacrament, Memorial Supper, The Table -- is the most solemn activity among Christian churches around the world. It points to the death of Jesus, His self-giving which connects us to God through faith.
In John's Gospel, chapter 6, Jesus calls Himself the bread of life which came down out of heaven and says those who eat His body and drink His blood have eternal life. That may sound "too Catholic" for us Low-Church Protestants. But there it is, in Red Letters in some Bibles, as the very words of Jesus.
If we are offended by such language, we aren't the first. The Gospel writer says, "After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him." Not even His intimate group of disciples understood what Jesus meant.
Roman Catholics say the bread and wine become the actual body and blood of Jesus. Lutherans say Jesus is present in some mysterious way but not with the literalness of Catholics. And we Low-Church Baptists loudly insist, "It's just symbolic." One of my fellow Baptists said, "We squeeze every once of spiritual significance from the observance."
But what did Jesus mean by saying in John 6:53, "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you"?
What about this? We are to identify so fully with His life, death, and resurrection that we absorb the reality of His person into us.
If the young man in Westminster Abbey had absorbed such thoughts of Jesus into himself, no wonder he tucked in his shirttail as he readied himself to receive the bread and wine and in some sense encounter the crucified and risen Christ.
