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Eating and drinking are two of the most necessary and enjoyable activities of the human experience. Most always we have feelings of pleasure and delight, camaraderie and satisfaction, when we think of these basic acts of eating and drinking. Whether it be at our mother's table or our wife's, or at a favorite restaurant or at the home of a friend who is a good cook, the acts of eating and drinking conjure up some of our fondest memories.

I remember a few years ago when vitamins first were popular, there were predictions that some day pills would entirely replace conventional food. Want a steak for dinner? Take a steak pill. Want a salad? Take a salad pill. Like a dessert? Take an ice cream and cake pill. Those predictions never came true of course, for we enjoy too much the immense variety of taste, texture, smell, and satisfaction associated with good food.

Consequently, cookbooks flourish, restaurants capture us with their specialties, gourmet magazines and newspaper food recipes and reviews abound, and businessmen and advertisers constantly are dreaming up new ways to entice our taste buds. If it is true that an army marches as much on its stomach as it does on its feet, and if it is true that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, it may also be true that many societies live from one meal to the next. Not only is eating and drinking necessary, we love it.

We love it because it is more than a physical act. A rabbi speaking at our church was asked, why is it Jews are known for their good food? Well, for one thing, he quipped, persecution has put them in many parts of the world, and they have picked up good recipes wherever they have been! But more than that, for a good Jewish mother, food is love, and love is food. In times of illness, good chicken soup is more than soup -- it is warm, tangible, tasty love!

Well, today we long for both love and good food and at times both seem plenty hard to find. True, we eat a lot, some of us too much. And many of us are big on health foods or special diets. Others are concerned about preservatives, additives, and carcinogens in our food. So most of us relish pure food, cooked from scratch, served with love among family and friends. It is not quite true, of course, to say we are what we eat, for Albert Einstein and many an idiot have eaten essentially the same foods. But good eating habits obviously do contribute to better health.

There is physical food and drink, but there also is food for mind and spirit. Librarians are fond of saying you are what you read. But that again is only half true because many people presumably read many of the same books Abraham Lincoln read, and yet there was only one Lincoln. Nevertheless, food and drink for mind and spirit are as essential for health and wholeness as are food and drink for body. It is the mental and spiritual diet that largely distinguishes human beings from other physical creatures. We are what we are not only because we can eat and drink, but also because we can read and think, love and believe and decide. And just as what we ingest into the physical body affects our physical health, so too, what we ingest into our spiritual and mental being affects our spiritual health.

So what have we been reading lately besides sex and violence? Anything on philosophy or ethics? Anything on history or morals? Anything about love and prayer, God and Jesus? Anything about a sensible Christian family life? And have we been doing any spiritual exercises lately? Many of us are into jogging, but how about deep knee bends for prayer? Many are into tennis, but is anyone for hitting out against injustice or organized evil?

Paul said that if bodily exercise is profitable for little, then spiritual exercise is profitable for much. If bodily exercise tends to prolong physical life, then spiritual exercise develops the soul for eternity.

But in our text, Paul warns against a practice that is bringing harm to Christians -- it is the practice of observing the Communion in an inappropriate manner. Consequently, he advises them, and us, on ways in which we can eat and drink ourselves toward spiritual health.

I.

In the first place, when we come to the Communion, we should come with a sense of thanksgiving.

One common and historic word for the Communion is Eucharist, which comes from the Greek word, eucharisteo, which means to give thanks. In the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took bread and gave thanks. Thus for many Christians, Communion has come to be known as the feast of thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is an essential ingredient for spiritual health, especially in our day when we are so obsessed with greed, so concerned with getting and having, with moving on to more rather than giving thanks for what has been received.

At Christ's table we give thanks not for what we have achieved, but for what we have received. If at our family tables we think our bread is the work of our hands alone, we have to look farther, to the deeper miracle of life, to the miracle of seed bearing seed, to the wonder of seedtime and harvest. All we do is manipulate and process the life that is given by God in the harvest.

Likewise at the table of our Lord, we give thanks not so much that we have built a church, carved a table, and put bread and wine on it. Rather, we give thanks that Christ has invited us to be his own, that he has called us into his kingdom to share in the gifts of salvation.

And how has that invitation come? Not by our hands, but through the hands of faith that have preceded us. The majority of us did not receive our faith first of all at our present church. Somewhere else it was given by parents and teachers, who in turn received it from previous generations, on back to Christ himself. Consequently, we are at the table not so much by what we have achieved, but by what we have received from the patient faith and suffering love of previous generations, from prophets and apostles, missionaries and scholars and martyrs.

The great acts of life and salvation have not been wrought by our own hands so much as by the hands of God. Therefore we come to the table to rest from our fevered pace, to set our troubled minds at rest, to be absorbed in the larger act of thanksgiving, to be cleansed from the anxiety of greed and the distorted demands of pride. The true act of thanksgiving humbles us, causing us to acknowledge how much we are blessed beyond our deserving, beyond the labors of our hands.

II.

Another attitude essential for eating and drinking toward spiritual health is confession.

It is not popular to make confession of sins in religious services today. Many people who will pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to a psychologist or psychiatrist to confess guilt and wrongdoing will refuse to come to church to come clean with God. Others speak of their weekly session with their analyst or psychiatrist, as some people used to speak of going to weekly religious confession. And of course, many others have enjoyed making public confession in books and magazines. As someone has quipped, in Washington, D.C., confession is not only good for the soul; it could turn out to be a best seller!

Confession is the admission of our unworthiness. In the presence of important people, we often go through a ritual act of cleansing and confession, thereby acknowledging our sense of unworthiness.

For example, one woman told of her experience meeting the President of the United States. She went through elaborate bathing and grooming procedures. Her hair was especially coifed; her dress was the finest. In every way she was sensing her unworthiness to meet the President and was attempting to make herself presentable. I wish we might come to Communion with as great a concern. Regrettably, many of us come to Christ's table in a far more slip-shod manner. Slovenly at times, inattentive, sullen, insensitive, even boorish, we fail to receive his presence because we are not ready to receive it. Many of us are too arrogant in spirit, too hard, too prideful, too anxious to receive the spiritual food he has to give for our spiritual health.

Great coaches can do little with athletes who know it all. Great teachers of music make little progress with students who presume themselves better than they are. College professors make little headway with students who are inflated beyond reality. Humility and a teachable spirit are essential for success and health in all disciplines, including religion.

We all are unworthy. We have not been invited to the table because we are the world's most beautiful people. We have not received invitations because Christ wants to gather all the good people for a mutual admiration society. Instead, we come confessing we are not worthy to sit at the feet of so great a master.

III.

The third attitude essential for spiritual health is the cultivation of a sense of community.

It was especially here that the Corinthian Christians failed. In their day, about 54 A.D., Communion was still held in conjunction with a love feast. A love feast was the rough equivalent of our fellowship suppers. The Corinthian Christians would each bring their baskets of food and wine, but it got so many would eat and drink before the others arrived. In fact, some drank so much they became tipsy!

Consequently, the very intent of the love feast was shattered by the selfishness and thoughtlessness of the few. And when it came time to break their bread in memory of Christ, many had already eaten and now were loud and boisterous. And when it was time to share the wine in memory of Christ's lifeblood, some already had confiscated their supply and were a bit drunken. Paul sternly reminded them that if they wanted to have a private dinner party, they should do that at home. But when they come to the Lord's Table, they should be concerned about one another and share what they have.

It is important to remember that when we go to a dinner party with friends, we must relax into the host's hospitality. Who of us would go in a superior spirit, thinking to presume upon our host's graciousness by taking charge and by showing him how things ought to be done? Such arrogance of spirit is not only bad manners; it violates a sense of community with our host and the other invited guests. Instead, when accepting an invitation, we go to receive, not to achieve. We go to share with thanksgiving the favor and presence of a friend.

Likewise, at the table of Christ. We come because he has invited us. We would not come in arrogance, presuming upon his good favor by telling him how things ought to be done, or how fortunate he is to have us there. We come in humility, ready to receive with thanksgiving the food and presence of our host and his other guests whom he loves.

While Communion is a private matter between us and our host, it also is a community matter between our host and all of us. Just as at a dinner party we do not have the host all to ourselves, so at Christ's table we all share his presence. He is not our private possession. We commune with him and with one another. Thus rather than splitting us and the world apart, Christ, at his table, would bring us all together to be harmonious and peaceable, building one another up in love.

Paul gives warning to the Corinthian Christians who think only of themselves, who do not discern the body, his Church. By our selfishness, arrogance, and ingratitude we fracture the oneness and wholeness intended for the Church and the world.

How can we make headway against the spiritual diseases of our time? Against the disease of neuroses and guilt, depression and boredom, narrowness of mind and hardness of heart? By coming to the Communion table with thanksgiving for God's patience and grace; by unburdening ourselves through honest confession; and by having concern for one another, by caring, by building up the community of faith.

Prayer

Eternal God, who fills the world with all good things and who sustains your creatures, both great and small, with the earth's bounty, we praise you for all the good we receive at your hand. We plant the seed and cultivate, fertilize, and harvest, but it is you, O Lord, who through the ongoing miracle of growth, gives the increase. Make us aware again that we are agents of life, not its creators. Cause us to remember that without the promise of seed bearing seed after its kind, the labor of our callused hands would be as nothing.

But we have more than bodies to feed. In the depths of our beings we hunger and thirst after you. With our deep freezer full, we discover an inward hunger our daily bread cannot fill. Drinking from our abundant wells, we discover thirst again and again. We come to you to seek the living water and the bread of life.

Take then these sometimes impoverished souls of ours, and fill them with new meaning and purpose. When the routine of abundance hardens our hearts, awaken us to gratitude and thanksgiving. When the glitter of this world's gold captures our affection and allegiance, by your mercy, lure us to yourself again, that we may distinguish between ephemeral fool's gold, and true gold which is life indeed.

Speak then to the emptiness of each of us. Fill those depressed with a new sense of hope. For those exhausted in grief and wasted in remorse and regret, infuse with strength and courage to begin again. For those hardened by cynicism and evil, plant seeds of hope and faith which will spring forth like new life in the crevices of rocks. And for those parched and brown by the blistering heat of this world's suffering and evil, grant a full measure of your refreshing presence, so that like the new growth of spring they may come to life again, radiant and green.

Fill us then, O Lord, with your grace and Spirit, for the abundance of this world's good leave us empty still. Amen.