Christian writers at their best seldom fail to mention that just as the Lord's Supper looks back to the Last Supper, so it also looks forward to the messianic meal in heaven, the wedding feast of the future, when Christ as bridegroom and the church as his bride will be united at the "marriage supper of the Lamb" (cf. Rev. 19:9 and 19:7; 3:20). The Lord's Supper is, at the same time, a feast of remembrance and a feast of hope-hope in the deeper sense of the New Testament, hope for the coming of Christ in glory. This Supper, therefore, is the remembrance of the hour when the Lamb of God was slain, and at the same time it is the joyful looking forward to the day when our redemption will be accomplished at the Supper of the Lamb.
Yet I cannot help but think that it is hard for most participants to picture the mystery of our participation in the eternal marriage feast in heaven, when they have as a model in their minds driving up to the window at McDonald's for a hamburger, fries, and a Coke. It is an inescapable fact that our lives are lived and the Lord's Supper celebrated in the context of a consumer society that places a high value on the production and consumption of material goods and services and an even higher value on physical convenience and comfort. That people are coming to the Lord's Table with a mentality and an attitude carried over from the culture in which they live twenty-four hours a day is often betrayed by the questions asked:
"What can I get out of the service today?"
"Won't celebrating the full Communion liturgy make the service too long?"
"Won't receiving Communion too often make it seem less special?"
It is beyond the reach of this short article to investigate the full effect of consumerism and the Christian faith. What I would like to do at this point is to engage in a bit of diagnostic work. First, how does consumerism condition our thinking about the Lord's Supper? Next, drawing upon the wisdom of Martin Luther's conception of the vita passiva, I will articulate how the church can respond to the effect consumerism has on the Lord's Supper.
Have It Your Way
Over the past few years, there have been major changes in the way items are made and services are delivered. Companies are starting to build products designed just for you. You can buy a computer assembled to your exact specifications, and you can buy a pair of Levi's cut to fit your body. But you can also buy pills with the exact blend of vitamins, minerals, and herbs that you like, glasses molded to fit your face precisely, CDs with music tracks that you choose, cosmetics mixed to match your skin tone, textbooks whose chapters are picked out by your professor, a loan structured to meet your financial profile, or a night at a hotel where every employee knows your favorite wine. And if your child does not like any of Mattel's 125 different Barbie dolls, she will soon be able to design her own.
But what makes a good servant makes a bad master. First, consumerism demands constant consumption and production of material goods and services. It calls forth constant activity-the use of objects or services. Consumerism belongs to an active lifestyle unrelieved by contemplation. Stores are open seven days a week, not only because people wish to make money or because some people's needs are best served that way, but because people need to be doing something, to be active, consuming, seven days a week. Many people experience the need to "get away" to "slow down," to "go on retreat." And they should, because the pressures of the consumerist society drive human beings to seek respite. The many Americans who seek relief of some kind (enjoyment of nature, music, or religious retreat) do not belie the fact that consumerism implies incessant activity but rather bear witness to it by their efforts to escape. Consumerism begins and ends with us.
Second, and more importantly, the relationship between God and us is subject to similar objectification; that is, grace is envisioned as a "thing" to be obtained as the result of a process of self-development-the latest program, the latest book, and so forth. Even worship is more like the payment of an insurance premium than an expression of faith and love toward the Beloved who calls and responds. The consumer mentality can push the understanding of ex opere operato to its ultimate deformity.
The question here, however, is how this conditions our thinking about the Lord's Supper. I once heard a man remark that the real weekend liturgy for the family was the trip to the shopping center. We can picture the children scurrying here and there in curiosity and delight. We can imagine Mother enjoying the clothes on the racks, even though the family cannot afford them now. Father can look over the power tools he dreams of having some day. An ice cream cone at Baskin-Robbins makes the celebration complete. How can the Lord's Supper compete with the multiple appeals of the shopping mall?
It cannot, of course. However, as a result of living in a consumer society, do we unconsciously expect it to compete? Do we come to the celebration of the Lord's Supper from our consumer society disposed for that purpose? Do we carry out the liturgy in a celebratory or a consumerist manner? Is there, for example, time to dwell on the Word of God, or do the words of the first reading, the response psalm, the second reading, the acclamation, the gospel, the homily, the creed, and the general intercessions follow upon one another as rapidly as one commercial after another on TV or the radio? What place do we give to silence in celebration? If the attendance is large, do we feel thrilled, even though the services may be poor celebrations and the participation poor, as the producer and consuming public exult in the novel that sells millions of copies or the film that attracts millions of viewers, even though novel or film lacks substance?
Have It God's Way
If it is true that we cannot compete with consumerism, then how can the church contrast the Lord's Supper with the world in which we are immersed and see its effects and benefits? I believe that Martin Luther's concept of the Christian life as vita passiva is helpful on this point. Vita passiva means the "passive life." However, Luther does not mean to say that the Christian life is static, but rather passive in the sense that God is the active subject and the Christian is the object of God's action. The Christian life is passive because it suffers; it undergoes God's work and so passively receives it. Because of this, oftentimes it is translated as the "receptive life." Regardless of translation, the vita passiva is crucial in that it is not an experience I produce or consume but rather it is that which I suffer or undergo. Instead of envisaging the spiritual life beginning with something in us, "we let God alone work in us and that in all our powers do we do nothing of our own."
Although Luther used vita passiva to describe the whole Christian life, he did assign a specific time where this vita passiva can be experienced and exercised in a most paradigmatic way-namely, in the Lord's Supper. "In consecrating and administering, the priests are our servants. Through them we are not offering a good work or communicating something in an active sense. Rather, we are receiving through them the promises and the sign; we are being communicated unto in the passive sense."
If this act is understood, everything is changed. We can no longer objectify the God from whom the gift is given. Neither can God sink into a consumable good to be obtained and possessed by appropriate technical manipulation of the means that lead to him, much as the desired expensive home is to be eventually owned by a series of carefully chosen purchases, sales, larger purchases, bigger sales, and so on. Rather, God in his gracious condescension gives himself to us in this meal. We are recipients; we receive his sacrifice. As Luther wrote in his Large Catechism:
We go to the sacrament because we receive there a great treasure, through and in which we obtain the forgiveness of sins. Why? Because the words are there through which this is imparted! Christ bids me eat and drink in order that the sacrament may be mine and may be a source of blessing to me as a sure pledge and sign-indeed, as the very gift he has provided for me against my sins, death, and all evils.
Nor can we root around in our own egos in a vain attempt at developing self-esteem or attempts at self-realization. Rather, God comes to us, available to us in all our senses. God comes to us, shattering our false self-images, and then sharing his own body and blood with us so that we can see ourselves, others, and all creation as God does.
This is the gift that, like all other enactment of the Word, sustains pilgrims who have their eyes on the abiding city of God. Then, when we have reached our pilgrimage, the Lord's Supper will be replaced by the "Supper of the Lamb."
2 [ Back ] Martin Luther, Luther's Works: The Christian in Society I, vol. 44, eds. J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald, and H. T. Lehman (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 72.
3 [ Back ] Martin Luther, Luther's Works: Word and Sacrament II, vol. 36, eds. J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald, and H. T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 49.
4 [ Back ] The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. T. G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Mu¨hlenberg Press, 1959), 449.
