SERVING THE SUPPER — BACKWARDS!

It has probably happened many times. In fact it happened to me the first time I attempted to serve the Lord's Supper when the elders had me to take charge of the service to a handful in a back room on a Sunday evening. I picked up the tray of multiple communion cups first, perhaps because I was nervous and it was the biggest. But anyone knows is is the loaf (or rather crumbs) that conies first, for Mt. 26:26 says Jesus took bread, and the next verse says "Then he took the cup . . ." There can be no question about the order. I really botched it, but I don't recall that anyone said a word. They might not have noticed. That was 40 years ago. I learned my lesson for I haven't made that mistake since.

But it happened to my son Ben the other Sunday, and under much more auspicious circumstances than in the back room of a small town church on a Sunday night. It was a Sunday morning before 600 or more onlookers. But he had company for his misery. It was youth Sunday or something of the sort. Anyway, the teenagers were serving the Supper. The boys, that is. In our Churches of Christ the girls can't serve, not even the Supper. Neither can they usher or even take up the visitors' cards. Very small boys can do the latter, but not little girls.

The boys started out right, thanking the Lord for the bread, but the quarterback started passing out the trays, lots of them. The gang dutifully passed through the congregation in the usual drill-team style of their seniors, serving the cups first. But at one end of the line some of the boys saw the mistake and managed a few plates of bread. So some were serving the cups and others the bread. When our Ben, with tray in hand on one end of a long row, saw his buddy on the other side with a plate of bread, he panicked and cried to himself, "Holy horrors," which was a far more appropriate remark for the occasion than many of his more audible remarks!

The boys made it through the service even if in reverse or partly in reverse, with part of the congregation partaking in the "scriptural order" and others not. At least they got the collection right. They got it in the third slot and it was "Upon the first day of the week." All in all they were about two thirds right that Sunday a.m. Not bad for teenagers. In a few more years they'll be letter-perfect, just like their seniors.

Many in the congregation must not have noticed the faux pas. They may have been thinking about the crucified and risen Lord, and He does have a way of distracting one from mistakes, even big ones. But some were upset by the irregularity and did not partake of the Supper at all. Even some of the leaders let the bread and the cup (rather the cup and the bread, in that order) pass them by, lest they partake unscripturally, and joined a number of others in the second serving of the Supper that night. I understand that at the night service they got it right. They always do it right at that church, for almost a century they have. And it was my boy, a Garrett, along with other fumbling youths, that spoiled a perfect record. It is a very sad situation.

Ben is the Bob Hope of the family in that he likes to tell things funny. While that blunder in the assembly was not funny at the time, you would have to laugh to hear him describe his predicament. "When I saw those freaks passing out the trays instead of the plates I could have croaked." And when he saw that some of them had the bread and others the cups, "I could have crawled under the pews and hid." He tells that story better than Bob Hope could. He always has one to tell. Last night he told us about the Texas Aggie that moved to Oklahoma and raised the IQ level of both states. It is just as well that he not tell that one in Oklahoma — or at College Station!

The fun aside, I've been thinking about that "backwards Supper" at one of our true and staid Churches of Christ. It tells a lot about what has happened to us as a people, and it provides a hint or two on what we have done to our kids.

If it is really that big a deal that the sequence of the Supper be so right that our folk have to pass it by when not in sequence, why did not one of the elders step to the Table and gently advise the boys to start over and pass the bread first? "It's OK, boys. No harm done. We are all a family and the Lord is with us, and that's what we are thinking about just now. Just start over and pass the bread first," he could have said.

But, no, even mature Christians, shepherds of the flock, business men who handle more sensitive problems than that every day, sat there like a wooden Indian in front of a cigar store, doing nothing, even when they themselves could not conscientiously partake when the boys flubbed the order. It shows how hung up we are in our formalities and how tense we are. Everybody is scared to say or do anything when the disc on the record player gets stuck. Humor would have done it. An elder sitting nearby could have stepped up to the quarterback and whispered, "Maybe you'd better back up and start over. The preachers might get us!" I doubt if anyone could seriously suppose that the Lord would care all that much. After all, He looks upon the heart, not outward appearance. That is what we are supposed to believe.

It also reveals how far we have gone into an insipid, oppressive legalism. Imagine not being able to "celebrate the festival" because a few nervous boys got mixed up on the order of the meal. This business of "make sure that we've got it right" is driving our people crazy and causing our kids to laugh at us. We have no right to pity the Pharisees when we see them looking over each other's shoulder to make sure that no one used a second hand in tying a knot or spat on a rough surface instead of a smooth one.

The boys would not be all that nervous to start with if we'd come down off our legalistic high horse and play it cooler. The kids can relax on the gym floor or at a pizza parlor with each other because mistakes are forgivable in those places. But when they gather with the righteous at the Be-sure-to-get-it-right Church of Christ, where folk line up and march like tin soldiers to share a simple meal with the lowly Jesus, they are indeed ready to cry Holy horrors! when something goes wrong. We teach them without realizing it, that they are to forget the humble Galilean in order to perfect our System. Instead of, "Boys, let's be sure to get it right!", somebody ought to mention Jesus. And when we really think of Jesus, things like that do not matter. If He could speak forgivingly to a street woman taken in a sinful act, and show more judgment toward her accusers than toward her, He is not likely to get beside Himself when excited boys pick up one dish instead of another.

Dear reader, stop and think. What are we doing to ourselves and our children with this kind of religion?

Mark it well. As long as those kids live they will remember how they blew it when they served the Lord's supper. They'll remember men and women, with long years in the faith, taking the Supper from their hands and then passing it by — because it wasn't in the right order. The "symbols" had to be lined up right before they could remember their Lord. They'll remember them coming back to church that night and partaking of it, in simon-pure sequence from the hands of those who know how to do the Lord's work right.

Yes, they'll remember those things when they are in college where they will see more love, compassion, and understanding — and more humor and relaxation — on the part of skeptics and infidels than they do in the elders of the church. They may well be driven to infidelity when they see people of the world displaying more of the Spirit of Christ than the church folk back home.

As for the Lord's Supper, they realize now if not before that the most important thing about it is that you do it right.

I am a third generation Church of Christer, born and bred in our best circles. You would think that if anyone could understand us, I could. But sometimes I am at a loss to perceive what has happened to us. At times I just can't believe it. I know there is a better way, the way of the heart, and I am resolved to stand with that host among us that is set upon liberating us from our debilitating carnality.

Let's not give up! Never! — the Ed.