Accept the Cookies

The child doesn't have to struggle to get himself in a good position for having a relationship with God; he doesn't have to craft ingenious ways of explaining his position to Jesus; he doesn't have to create a pretty face for himself; he doesn't have to achieve any state of spiritual feeling or intellectual understanding. All he has to do is happily accept the cookies, the gift of the kingdom.

The quote above is another one from Brennan Manning's Ragamuffin Gospel, just so you know. I've taken the time this week to write a little on an experience of several years ago that was beautiful and painful at the same time. It was a church experience, I was a pastor there (one of two), and we left a year to the day after arriving. I've no desire to place blame on anyone; my intent is to be a witness.

The Manning quote is fun to read and it looks nice if you print if off and put it on the fridge. But if you try and live it, well, that's something entirely different. And if you try and preach it, well, well, well.

One example, o.k.? The Lord's Supper. Communion. Whatever you call it and however frequently you observe it. The issue is cleanliness before Communion. The N.T. text talks of examining yourself before coming to the Lord's Table. I grew up in a tradition that stressed this. I preached for years and stressed this. And our last church experience stressed this to the point of absurdity, just as I was beginning to not stress it. Feel a possible tension?

It plays out like this. You take some time before the bread and the cup come your way and you examine your heart to see if there's any sin there and then you confess that or those sins. It's essentially "don't come to the dinner table until you've washed your hands." Nothing wrong with that. But the subtle undercurrent is that you cannot come until you're completely clean, completely confessed, no sins lurking, either of commission or omission. I've sat in services where the pastor had us "down in prayer" for almost twenty minutes, making sure we were all scrubbed and spotless before coming to the table. And the emphasis shifted from an offering of God's grace to an emphasis on what a total schmuck I am. If I don't feel really, really bad about myself, then I haven't examined properly. And if I can't come up with anything to confess, well, keep waiting and searching and examining because something evil resides beneath the surface, just give it time. Twenty minutes ought to do. I don't believe that anymore. In fact, I believe it to be a distortion of the gospel. Not that I'm a schmuck. I am. A ragamuffin, whatever you want to call me. The emphasis, however, is on the Father and His extraordinary love for me.

I don't have to do anything before I come to the table. I don't have to scroll through all my shortcomings and "get them right." I don't have to scrub and scrub until the hands are spotless before I touch the body of Christ, broken for me. I don't have to have this peaceful, easy feeling that since I'm all clean, now the blood of Christ, spilled for me, can truly get where it needs to go. Nope. All I have to do is accept the cookies. Take. Eat.

And the whole issue of not being able to partake of the Lord's Table if you're not a member or haven't signed a covenant card? Father forgive us for our struggling and ingenious crafting and make-up applying and achievement mentality. You serve the cookies up hot and fresh from the oven and we putz around doing goofy stuff until they're cold and hard. Like our hearts. A child doesn't think twice about accepting a cookie. We don't want to be children, huh, Lord? We'd rather be Your peers rather than Your children. We think we like being grownups. But we don't, Lord. We hate it. And we hate ourselves. We hate that we can't take the cookies and run. We've thrown the childish out with the childlike. And that's left us old.