In my opinion, when the Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, died, the world of economics lost one of its most influential thinkers. He is perhaps best known for popularizing the saying "There's no such thing as a free lunch," which is now a common English dictum (a new word for me).
Through my consumer-trained eyes I think I understand this phrase as Friedman intended it to be: Anything billed "free of charge" still has a bill attached. Yes, it’s my layman opinion, but checking, I find it also to be an economic theory. Being a multiple business owner for the past twenty five years I have experienced that whatever goods and services are provided, someone must pay the cost. Thus, economically, I see that the world of business is first and foremost about profit and market share. And cynically, I have the suspicion that every kind gesture or free gift has a hidden motive, cost, or expectation attached.
It was strange, then, to find myself thinking of "free lunches" as I was standing one of two times, this past week, cup in hand, preparing for communion. Could my consumer mindset apply to this sacrament as well? Was this really a free meal? Certainly the compulsion, I experienced at one of those gatherings, brought a sense of nonchalance which could be interpreted as a sign of its cost-lessness. Theological instinct immediately recoiled at the thought. Is this Christ's cost or one I have determined myself? Inherent in Jesus's invitation to the table is the very freedom he came to offer: "Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away" John 6:37. And yet, even as I am called to freely come forward, am I not asked simply to empty myself before the one who calls? Is there a cost to partake of the Bread of Life?
I believe Christ says openly that the way of the Cross is costly, but it does not require the kind of transaction my consumer-hungry mind is quick to expect. The cost is his, even as he invites me to share in it. As the disciples gathered together in the upper room where they would participate in the first communion, Jesus told them, "I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer" Luke 22:15. He is both the Bread of Life and the one who paid the cost that it might nourish me. My consumption at the table holds a great deal in which to participate.
Unfortunately, I am, at times like the poet Alison Luterman who admits it is quite possible not to see the connection between what feeds us and the one who made it possible. I found the following quote by her in searching the internet. She writes eloquently, "Strawberries are too delicate to be picked by machine. The perfectly ripe ones even bruise at too heavy a human touch. It hit her then that every strawberry she had ever eaten--every piece of fruit--had been picked by calloused human hands. Every piece of toast with jelly represented someone's knees, someone’s aching back and hips, someone with a bandanna on her wrist to wipe away the sweat. Why had no one told her about this before?"
I confess, holding the elements of the Lord's Supper in my hands, trying desperately to tear the small plastic cup tab to remove the wafer and then the secondary tab to expose the wine, all within thirty seconds, was tremendously difficult, for me, to remember I was indeed faced with a costly meal. "And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, 'This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me. This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you'" Luke 22:19, 20.
Stories of hunger and consumption pervade the world in 2015. The same theme pervades the gospel story, but in a manner that transforms both my hunger and my ideas of what it means to consume. I, as a consumer of Christ, am not stockpiling one more product for personal use and fulfillment. Nor am I partaking of a free service that requires a minimum purchase or small commitment. Jesus's words are neither selfish nor small: "Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them" 6:56. It is a horrible thought for me at seventy one to approach the communion table, with the same disconnectedness with which I consume countless meals and materials. Or leave the table in a sense that I have been feed and now can go about having my best ever desert. I am ushered into a community, an interconnected life, the Body of Christ himself. Every broken piece of bread represents nothing less than the Person who was broken for me. And He calls me to come willing to empty myself as completely as he did on the Cross.
Father, God, I confess that this free meal which is offered in remembrance of Jesus has overturned my life as a consumer and turned my hunger inside-out. Your only begotten Son is unlike anything else I can consume in this world. I plead that Your Spirit will assist in the increase of my spiritual hunger for the Bread of Heaven that has come down, given Himself, risen from the dead and now sits on Your right hand making intercession for me.
