Do This! (Communion Meditation)

Luke 22:19-20

 

“Just do it!” was the slogan of the Nike Company a few years ago, ostensibly talking about exercising, but subliminally, I suppose, meaning “just buy our shoes, regardless of how much they cost.” Marketing ploy aside, there is something to be said of this simple stratagem. There comes a time when thinking, planning, preparing, and strategizing actually get in the way of the very thing they were intended to assist. Parents who have spent more time explaining to their children why it is important for them to keep their room clean than it would take for them to actually clean it, know what I mean. Or, if you have ever watched an ADD child attempt to study, you also have an inkling of what I am talking about. First, they find their book, then find their paper, then their pencil. Then they call somebody to get the assignment, which they forgot. Then they arrange their study area. Then they need a snack. Then they have to go to the bathroom. Then they have to sharpen their pencil. Then they have to call somebody again to get the assignment again because they forgot to write it down. Then they are ready for a “break.” You want to scream, “It’s only 30 minutes of homework! Just do it!”

 

Those of you who are (American) Civil War buffs know one of the best examples of the need to “just do it” was General George McClellan. McClellan was an honors graduate of West Point, and clearly, on paper, the most qualified man available to command the Union Army. He was a meticulous planner and organizer. He drilled his troops to perfection. He cared very much about the welfare of his men and made certain that they always had the very best of equipment available. And he was a brilliant strategist. All of his military campaigns were brilliant in their inception and design. But McClellan had one fatal flaw as a commander that was his undoing and almost gave victory to the much over-matched Confederates – he was unwilling to actually fight. He could never quite bring himself to risk the army and men that he had so carefully prepared.

 

Life is often like that. We can spend most of our lives preparing for the day when we will actually live our lives. I loved college. I spent six years as an undergraduate and two on a one-year graduate degree, and loved (almost) every minute of it. I met and married Sue there, and we lived a very blissful two years in the old Pine Oak Student Apartments (now a parking lot). But mostly I just loved learning and sharing intellectual ideas. I loved the relatively small and protected environment that was SLU in those days. I loved thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up and preparing myself for it. But the time did come when, at the tender age of 26, my conscience began to suggest that it was time to move on with life. So, I did the only thing sensible to me at the time. I went to seminary. There I took five years to complete a four year degree (spending an extra “intern year” as the Youth Minister at the Covington Presbyterian Church, learning more about what I wanted to be and do). It was all marvelous, but, at the age of 30, the Lord (largely through the voice of my loving but increasingly impatient wife) suggested that, perhaps, it was time that I actually got a job.

 

It is also possible for the life of our faith to be like that – all preparation for something we suppose will wonderfully happen to us later on, when we’ve “graduated.” But then Jesus has a way of tapping us on the shoulder and saying, “Just do it!” When Jesus took the bread and the cup and gave them to his disciples, he did not say, “And I want you to ponder this as to its possible implications for your life and the life of your family.” He said, “Do this, remembering me.” Christian faith is not about preparing for heaven, it is about living by the “vision of heaven” that God has given us in Jesus. No one would ever pretend that living by faith in Jesus Christ is always easy, but it is, most often relatively simple.

 

We may never fully understand God or the mysteries of his relationship to his creation, but most of what God would have us do to glorify him in this life does not require exhaustive knowledge of the bible or theology. We can act in love whenever we choose. We can forgive sins any time we will to do it. Doing so can be very hard, but it is not hard to understand.  Indeed, it is the very fact that the requirements of love and forgiveness are so easy to understand that often makes them so hard for us to do. And so we rationalize, we make the obvious obscure, and we cover Jesus’ simple commandments with layers of “practical” qualifiers. But here, at this table, the compromises and the rationalizations are stripped away. For here Jesus taps us on the shoulder and says, “You are my body. You are my blood. You show me to the world until I come. Just do it!”