prince

The average cell phone user would likely now claim that life without one would be more than inconvenient. Upon its  invention, we in a sense became untethered. We no longer get tangled up in phone cords while trying to make dinner,  set the table, and finish a conversation with Uncle Joe. Nor do we need to dash home from work in order to make  that important phone call; we make it on the way, while sitting in traffic, driving to the next appointment, making a stop at the grocery store, or all three. It is with great appreciation that I am no longer bound to a phone cord and operating with a five foot radius. Yet, this is not to say that I don't feel a tethering of a different sort, and I imagine  I'm not alone. Owning a cell phone can foster the attitude that its owner is always available, always working, always obtainable. While there is no cord to which we are confined, the phone itself can be ironically confining. 

But these kinds of shifting dilemmas are not all that uncommon. Just as the pendulum swings in one direction offering some kind of correction, so we often find that the other side introduces a new set of problems. The major movements of history possess a similar, corrective rhythm, swinging from one extreme to another and finding trouble with both. The pendulum swings from one direction, often to an opposite error, and at best, to a new set of challenges. 

Within and without its walls, the church too is continually responding to what we perceive needs correction. When the need to get away from dead, religious worship first initiated a shift within the church, it was of course an observation wisely discerned. But what this meant for many churches was unfortunately a shifting away from history, liturgy, and its own past--in some cases contributing to a different set of problems. While breaking away from the "religiosity" of history, perhaps we now find ourselves tethered in a sense to all things contemporary, unable to draw on the riches of the history from which we have isolated ourselves. While the intent was good, and the move did indeed separate us from certain problems within church history, it also seems to have separated us from all of history. 

So many churches now seem more divorced from history than ever, having swung so far in one direction that we can no longer see from whence we have come. Coupled with our culture's general devaluing of anything that is "outdated," the risk of seeing  the church's identity more in terms of today's form than its enduring essence seems both high and hazardous. 

There is something in the image of the ever-oscillating pendulum that reminds me of the importance of the unchanging creeds and practices that root us in an identity beyond the one that might exist at any given time before us. In the ever-moving world around us, where technological improvements and ideological corrections come more quickly than we often have time to process, Christians need not live in fear of the future or disdain of the past. Yet we do well to ask:

"What does it mean that we pray--'on earth as it is in heaven'? (Matthew 6:10). What does it mean that we are a community 'upon whom the end of the ages have come'"? (1 Corinthians 10:11). 

In the midst of a culture consumed with the contemporary, what does it mean that we are a people whose very identity is rooted in a man who lived 2000 years ago, one who proclaimed the reign of God on earth here and now, but whose future return we also look to expectantly? 

In this season of Advent as we prepare for Christ's coming, perhaps we might also consider something he left behind as a means to understanding our place and identity today. Before going to the Cross, Jesus imparted that the disciples were to continue breaking bread together as they had done so often before but that now these common meals would also hold new meaning. They could not go where Jesus was going, but they were to be partners in what was about to be done. 

The bread that is broken was to be his body which is given for them; the cup they share was to be his blood that is shed for them--and their repeated sharing in this common meal was to continually move them to participation in his dying, rising, and victorious life. They were to be united with Christ in an event that would inform all past, present, and future. 

Lesslie Newbigin explains, "At the point of separation, when [the disciples] are still far from beginning to understand what 'the reign of God' means, Jesus does a deed and gives a command that will bind them to him in a continually renewed and deepened participation in the mystery of his own being....The disciples will thus themselves become part of the revealed secret of the presence of the kingdom."(1) So, too, it is for us. 

We have a natural gift in this communion, a sacrament given for our good, in which we can discover again and again our identity and mission today. Though the pendulum swings, we live both here and now, and also with an understanding of all that is impending and at hand. We live as those who mysteriously participate in the death and life of Christ. We live as those who proclaim the reign of God presently. And we also live expectantly, preparing for the fullness of the coming kingdom. The Lord's Supper unites us with Jesus in history, roots us into a tradition beyond the swing of any pendulum, and sends us out into the world within a culture ever-restless for the change that will finally make a difference, and here we offer the Prince of Peace. 

-jill carattini