We had a joke about today when I was a kid; you probably did, too: how can it be both Monday and Thursday at the same time? Yeah, it wasn’t really funny, then, either, unless you were a third grade boy. At least some third grade boys in those days knew that this particular Thursday was different from all others, something I tend to doubt about today’s children (but that’s my negative comment for today – sorry!).

Maundy Thursday: “maundy” from the latin “mandatum,” meaning “mandate” or “command.” This is the day, or evening, that Jesus established the most-important sacrament, Holy Communion, the Last Supper, the Eucharist.

I grew up in a church that practiced weekly communion. Actually, since we had communion at Sunday evening service as well as Sunday morning, it was practiced twice a week, now that I think about it. The question of whether you should take communion on Sunday evening if you had it in the morning never came up.

It did a few years ago when a church I attended attempted to have a contemporary service on Sunday evening and offer communion as part of the worship. One of our elderly planners argued that you should not take communion if you had had it in the morning. Ever the one to argue with her if a chance was offered, I simply said, “What difference does it make? If someone wants to receive communion a million times a week, what is that to us?” She just didn’t beleive it was “right,” she said, as though participating in Holy Communion was an obligation rather than an opportunity. And yes, I was evil and kept the argument going for another 15 minutes, just to be mean.

I was a young teenager in what was then called “Junior High” when I first heard of someone skipping church because of communion. I was in the school office for some reason (not disciplinary!) and overheard two of the administrative assistants talking about whether or not they would be in church the following Sunday. One of them said, “No, it’s a communion day, so we’re going to the mountains for a picnic.” It’s no wonder I don’t recall why I was there: this was scandalous to me! Miss communion?

In my home church, Holy Communion was done in the middle of the service, before the sermon. It was rare that anyone in my household missed church for any reason, but a couple of times a year we would go to worship and leave in the middle – after communion! I learned that the sermon was something done by people, but communion was something offered by God, and therefore you didn’t miss it. Sort of like kids going to school for a partial day: you have to stay a certain amount of time to have it count as a whole school day. Our church attendance counted because we had received communion from God.

What does communion mean to you? Is it something that distracts from the “real” service? Are you at worship only to hear the sermon, or to also receive communion? One of my mystical seminary friends once remarked, “It’s all communion!” and that’s an opinion that I have claimed as mine ever since.

Holy Communion is not, in and of itself, the only way that Jesus the Christ is present to us. No, it’s a signpost: yes, he’s here in this gluten-free breadlike substance and in this tawny port wine, but these are just a reminder that he’s with us in Coke and pizza, or beer and pretzels, or donuts and coffee. It’s a reminder that God is present with us. “As often as you do this…” is significant, and African-American preacher once told me, “with an emphasis on ‘often!'”

One of my college professors scandalized some of his students once by saying, during a class that was studying worship, that if we really believed that the words of institution (“this is my body…this is my blood”) really turned the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus, then we ought to be on the street corners handing it out to the world instead of taking up the “leftovers” and storing it in some holy box in a sanctuary somewhere. A couple of students almost fainted.

Holy Communion really has no boundaries. I’ve seen it done with creek water at camp. Fried chicken and sweet iced tea would be the Sacrament if Jesus had been from the American South. I have no favorite communion substance: grapes and cheez-its, s’mores around a campfire the last night of camp, matzo crackers and grape juice (what I grew up with – I still cannot taste Welch’s grape juice without thinking of Jesus!), whole wheat bread and tawny port wine (the communion at Duke Divinity School each Thursday when I was a student). All of these remind me.

Of what?

We had a camp communion service many years ago, and the young campers were the priests at the Table. One little ten or eleven year old came up to me and said, “Jamie, I don’t know what to say.” So I asked him what he remembered from church, then we wrote down the words. We got to worship that night, and while he had  remembered to bring his flashlight, his notes were left on his bed. None of us knew this: he was too embarassed to admit that he had forgotten his notes after all the time we spent writing them up for him.

He got to the Table, stood there, a chalice with grape juice and the paten with whole wheat pita bread before him, and it was then that he announced that he had forgotten his notes. He stood there for a minute, total silence filling the air – even the crickets were still for a moment, it seemed. We adults held our breath, trying to decide at what point we could rush forward to help him.

Suddenly, he took the cup and the paten, held them up, and said in a clear, loud voice:

“This is Jesus… for YOU!”