Atlantic District Publications

Letters from the President - Host and Guest

February 1, 2010 at 10:46 AM

It’s one of the most basic prayers most of us have ever prayed: “Come, Lord Jesus, be our Guest, and let Thy gifts to us be blest; Amen.” In the world of constant movement many of us call home, my question to you and your families is whether you invite the Lord Jesus to dine with you – at the McDonald’s Drive-Thru, or Panda Express, at school lunch, at the office, or as you grab some snacks called supper after filling the tank with gas. My hunch is that “Table Grace” is in a pretty sad state of disrepair among us, for reasons not the least of which is that we don’t sit down at a common family table to eat more than a few times a week.

As the pictures of food arriving in Haiti grab the headlines, crowds circling the truck-distributors grasping and leaning forward for some morsel, we are forced to consider the debilitated level of our own gratitude for daily bread. What I would ask us to consider anew is whether and how we are forming our church communities to gather for renewal and refreshment around the Altar. After all is said and done, the Meal as we understand it so wonderfully in our Lutheran tradition, is the Banquet Feast of Victory over sin and death in which our Host gives us Himself – for He is the very Bread of Life.

Do you connect your daily eating and drinking and living with the Holy Meal you receive on Sundays? I’d like you to consider that option seriously as we head from the Season of Light to the 40 days of Lent this February.

Most of us are of necessity doing more with less in the Great Recession, and yet we’ve been reminded anew in the Haitian earthquake that we have been blessed beyond measure in the basic commodities of life. And more, we have the opportunity to receive the forgiveness of sin, strength for daily living and community renewal at our Lutheran altars every Sunday, AFTER having heard the message of salvation. The central fact of life is nourishment – food and drink. Without it we falter, we fail, we fall, we exist no more. With it we can flourish, we can move and act and work and celebrate and make a difference.

In our offerings and desire to serve in Haiti, many of you have contacted me wanting to be there personally with care and compassion. That’s a sign that you have been fed and nurtured – you’re healthy in body, mind, and without question in Spirit. In this way what we receive from the Host at our weekly Holy Communion becomes the whispered prayer of our entire daily lives – that this Host, this Christ, this Lord Jesus, might accompany us, might be our Guest so that our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in daily living might be blessed. We ourselves then become, in Christ, a Gift for others, for He lives in us as we have partaken of the Bread of Life. Connect the dots of your lives then this February in eating and drinking and thanking and giving. The common thread is our Lord Jesus!