The Last “Last Supper:” A Guide to the Communion Table
James A. Brenneman gave this sermon on the last Sunday of our series, “Anabaptism at 500: Looking Back While Living Wholeheartedly Into the Future.”
I.
Did I forget to say my prayers? Did I fight with my brothers and sisters? Was I bad in school last week? Did I listen to Mom and Dad? Did I speak badly about anyone? Have I been mean? Bugged my parents to buy me things? Taken what didn’t belong to me?
All those questions and more swirled in my 9-year-old mind as I prepared for my first communion. These kinds of questions come straight from a one-page prep sheet entitled “How to Go to Confession for Children in Primary Grades,” produced by a notable Roman Catholic Diocese.
The difference for me was, I wasn’t Catholic. I grew up at Ybor City Mennonite Church in Tampa, Florida. Our church reported to a Mennonite “diocese” in Salunga, Pennsylvania—a place I had never seen but whose rules on communion we seemingly had to follow. And unlike my Catholic friends, I wasn’t required to confess in a private booth to a priest. I had to do it publicly, in front of the whole church. Well, almost, it was in a circle with all the men and boys of the church. To make matters worse, I watched as each person around the circle coming to me would say in somber tones: “Before God and the church, I confess that I am right with God and my fellow man, now made worthy and ready to partake in communion.” I knew I had sinned, but I couldn’t even remember the words I was supposed to say. I panicked and fled.
Is it any wonder communion services became a trigger for me? Thankfully, we only had communion twice a year—enough time to rack up plenty of sins and misdemeanors, but also to practice the chant until I could recite it without running away. I trusted my parents’ assurance that God’s grace really was big enough for me.
II.
In this “back to the basics” series, we’re celebrating 500 years of the Anabaptist Mennonite movement. We rightly remember how our forebears broke from the 16th-century church-state, insisting that baptism must be freely chosen, not imposed on infants. But here’s the snag: historically, communion was reserved only for the baptized. Children, seekers, and even other Christians outside the fold were too often excluded.The Apostle Paul’s warning in 1 Corinthians 11 about not eating or drinking “unworthily” was taken literally. Baptism first, then communion. No exceptions. Our own Mennonite Confession of Faith, Article 12, still largely upholds this restrictive view. But being a free-church tradition, Mennonites today practice with more flexibility.
I confess against strict Anabaptist orthodoxy: I believe the Lord’s Table should be open to all—children, saints, sinners, believers, and unbelievers alike. Years ago, I had to defend this point of view before interlocutors at AMBS in front of “keepers” of Anabaptist faith and practice, who, for the most part, concluded it was outside Anabaptist practice. This morning, I lean on the church-freedom and Bible-freedom claims that are also part of the Anabaptist faith heritage. Let me unpack it a bit for you this morning.
III.
Today’s readings don’t directly describe communion. Instead, they highlight meals in Isaiah and Luke. For Luke, meals were a sign of peace and a critique of violence, most especially Luke 14’s parable of the Great Banquet, which Luke connects to Jesus’ Last Supper in chapter 22. At that meal, Jesus tells his disciples he will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until God’s kingdom comes (22:18). These comments point forward to a final, eschatological meal—the Last “Last Supper,” a great banquet where Jesus eats with us again in God’s final reign. Also, in the same story, Jesus’ disciples argue over the right to sit next to Jesus in that coming kingdom. So the Last Supper in Luke 22 points to a final Last Supper to come.
Luke 14 helps us imagine what that ultimate Last Supper may be like. You may remember the old children’s song: “I cannot come to the banquet, don’t trouble me now. I have married a wife and have bought me a cow / I have fields and commitments that cost a pretty sum / pray hold me excused I cannot come . . .” The excuses sound like ordinary life, but in Deuteronomy (20-21), they are the very exemptions soldiers used to avoid going to holy war. In this setting, those invited to the Lord’s victory banquet would ordinarily be clamoring for the VIP table. Instead, they turn down the invitation appealing to exemptions in the Torah, their Bible.
My first point, then, is that communion, rightly understood, is a memorial table of consequence — a prophetic table of peacemaking.
Think of May 9, 1945. In the same room where Germany had surrendered the day before, a lavish banquet was held for General Eisenhower. Toasts, wine, rich food, and dignitaries seated by rank—it was a classic victory feast. Such meals go back to Babylon, Greece, Rome, and the Napoleonic wars. Victors dine in lavish banquets, while enemies lie defeated.
These meal narratives can also be found in other Older Testament stories as well. For example, Isaiah 25 envisions God’s banquet at the end of time. Here, the “Lord of the Armies” (tr. “Hosts” in most English Bibles) prepares a victory meal, but not for generals. Rather, God prepares a feast for “all peoples.” Those with no money, no prestige, no power are invited to “come eat.” This meal is not a death-dealing victory lap, it’s death-destroying. God destroys death and wipes away every tear.
Like Isaiah, Luke flips the old familiar script: the meal of God’s kingdom for Luke is not a victory feast for conquerors but a banquet of peace for those left out of power. The communion table is a table of consequence for anyone attending. Every time we eat and drink at the table in remembrance of Jesus, we turn the tables of war upside down. Jesus’ table is a table of peace.
IV.
This leads to my second observation: the Lord’s table is open to all.
Luke’s narrative, in the stories leading up to the Great Banquet, makes it clear.Jesus heals a leper at a meal. He urges hosts to invite the poor and disabled. And when the original invitees decline, the banquet is filled with outcasts instead. The nobility and war heroes turn down the invitation. Why wouldn’t they, when the seating chart has them ranked beneath their station in life? The table belongs to those normally excluded. At Jesus’ banquet, those of prestige and power find excuses to stay away, and the poor, “the unclean, the crippled, the blind, and the lame” fill the hall.
Later at Jesus’ last supper, who’s there eating the Passover bread and drinking the cup of wine? Judas the betrayer, Peter the denier, the other ten who will soon fall asleep or flee at the hour of Jesus’ greatest need. Not exactly the worthy and the faithful! Yet Jesus serves them the bread of life and the wine of forgiveness.Our Anabaptist forebears captured this truth in their 16th-Century communion liturgy, where participants confessed: “God be gracious to us sinners.” It is apparent to me, then, and I hope to you, that communion is a perpetual invitation for all who need grace. In its own way, it’s an altar call. To turn food and drink into a weapon of exclusion is not only psychologically cruel, but it is to betray communion’s ultimate meaning.
The truth is, evidenced by experience and a myriad of studies, belonging often comes before believing. People want to belong, and when they are welcome at the table, they may even come to believe. As for children, we must remind ourselves, children at the Passover meal ask the all-important why questions that open the meal. Outsiders, doubters, seekers—all stand equally in need of grace. So do we. Every time we come to the table of the Lord, we come thirsty, we come hungry!
V.
I’ll close with a story.
My mother, Mary Kathryn Hostetler Brenneman, barely 100 pounds, loved to cook. Her love language was food—yellow rice and chicken with Cuban bread. In our little home near Ybor City, blocks from the housing projects and urban blight, no one was ever turned away from our table of six. Friends and strangers from all different cultures, colors and faith traditions, even from “Skid Row,” were welcome at our table. Mom always managed to extend her love language to others. There was always enough.
Mom’s open table shaped me. Perhaps it even seeded my skepticism about a closed communion table and pushed me to read the meal texts of scripture “upside down and backward.” Whenever I hear John McCutchen’s children’s song, I think of her:
Home to the table and the big, black pot / Everybody’s got enough, though we ain’t got a lot / No one is forgotten, no one is alone / When she’s calling all the children home.
Home to the table, home to the feast/ Where the last are first and the greatest are the least / Where the rich will envy what the poor have got / Everybody’s got enough, though we ain’t got a lot. / No one is forgotten, no one is alone / When we’re calling all the children home.
That’s what the Lord’s Table is meant to be: no one forgotten, no one alone. A foretaste of the final feast where Christ himself calls all children home.
Amen.