"....by our Lord's command"

"...by our Lord's command."  We Americans have very little experience doing anything that is commanded of us.  (This clearly excludes the military who inhabit a world apart that we civilians don't truly understand.)

We like to think of ourselves as consensus people, people of compromise, people who take a vote and allow the majority to rule.  We aren't people who take commands.

And yet, at the heart of the communion liturgy, in bringing back to mind Jesus' words at the Last Supper, we receive the simplest of commands:  Do this in remembrance of me.

Clearly there are two parts to this command.

Do this.  Don't neglect it. 
Do this.  Don't do something else instead.  Don't make up your own ritual.

In remembrance of me.   Biblical remembering is deeper and thicker than simply calling details to mind.  It is amnanesis in the Greek: a time where the remembering joins the remember-er into the original activity.  So a young boy goes hunting with his father, gets his first buck, and the father is transported back to the moment when that happened for him, and his father and back into time as fathers teach sons how to hunt.  (and regardless of your feelings about deer hunting, hunting is as primal an activity as humankind knows).

So we remember in the same way.  The story is not just a story, it is the here and now, and we are as much the actors as the original disciples.  The words of institution remind us that Jesus took the bread, broke it and gave it to his disciples and so it is today, only now we are the disciples.

In the same way, we welcome to the table unseen, all those who will be eating of this same meal with Jesus far away - both geographically and in time.  Those who are yet to be born will be participants in this meal because this meal transcends the moment and connects us on a different plane.

We tell the story each time we gather around the table so we remember the gift of bread and wine and so that God remembers the promises made to us...."for the forgiveness of sin". 

And we do all this at our Lord's command.  That is what it means to say that Jesus is Lord.  It means he gets to command, we are allowed to be obedient.  The grace is that God in Jesus always commands out of love for the sake of the whole world. 

Come to the table this Thursday and eat.