9

Do This. All of This.

Jesus passes the bread and the cup to his followers and says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Of course he was talking about eating the bread and drinking the cup. But it’s interesting the specific phrasing isn’t “eat this” or “drink this” in remembrance of him. It’s actually, strangely, unspecific.

Do this.

As if his handing them the bread and the cup, symbols of his self-sacrificial love, are included in the this.

If you watched someone hand a hundred other people money and say to them, “do this”, would you be surprised if many of them understood it to mean more than receive cash? Would you be surprised if many of them interpreted the “do this” as meaning that both the giving and receiving money?

Jesus invited his pupils to remember him within the whole scene: A room full of takers are being given what they need, being exhorted to receive it commemoratively and to perpetuate it for others.

We consume. We produce.

Both.

It’s what we are, apparently endorsed by the manufacturer.

“God’s gifts aim at making us into generous givers, not just fortunate receivers. God gives so that we, in human measure, can be givers too.”

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“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” Asked a scribe that was putting Jesus, a purported Rabbi, to the test. Jesus responded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

The entirety of the tradition hangs on loving God and loving others. And the quality of this love of others is measured by none other than an awareness of how I like to be loved. Selfishness isn’t eradicated. It’s the most important tool in my belt.

During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offered up something that makes me wonder why our Bibles are so thick.

“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

Awareness of what I want is necessary to fulfill this. Well calibrated selfishness is assumed, acknowledged and leveraged.

Jesus’ brother, James, wrote to his dear friends about their new lives and way of living. As he wrote out some course correction about their perpetuation of social hierarchy and relational superficiality, he included,

“If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well.”

Paul’s letter to the Romans includes these words toward the end,

“For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

The whole Bible hangs on this- love others the way you love you.

It’s as though Jesus comes to us saying, “You know how you’re pretty sure, most of the time, how you would like things to go? How when you screw up you hope your intent will be considered far more than your actions? How you know how you’d like others to talk to you, or not talk about you when you’re not around? You know how you love it when someone picks up the slack for you and you don’t get the sense that you’re now indebted to them? You know how good it feels, or how good it must feel, to be able to trust others entirely? You know how great it is to find out someone took the time to think through how something might affect you? You know how great it is to be honored, respected and included irrespective of your performance or lack of it? Provide all this awareness and preference for others. Give to others all these things you know you love receiving. In so doing, you will have fulfilled everything the Scripture was getting at.”

The key to compassion, to being what you are, is your selfishness properly adjusted. A tool to use, not a curse to be lifted. We can’t help but love, because that’s what we are. But in fear of everything from terrorists to not having a prom date we have it aimed in on ourselves. Aren’t all sin and crime love to some degree, bastardized and turned in on the self? Doesn’t love walk the old lady across the street or steel her purse, depending on its trajectory?

We’re made to give ourselves to each other. We do so by by the sober assessment of our own feelings and desires used as intelligence of what might be felt and desired in the other.

This growing ability to know the self and therefore the other feels pretty great. Don’t feel bad about that. Why else would Jesus have said, “It’s more blessed to give than to receive”? (Acts 20:35). He didn’t say it’s not a blessing to receive, let alone that it’s bad. He said we’re wired such that to have more of the arrows pointing toward others than ourselves is better, despite the whiny insistence of the vigilant mosquito who’s commandeered the helm.

We eat the bread and drink the cup, and we also mimic the giving-of-self represented in the distribution of those elements. Both dimensions of “do this.” Perhaps there’s no better way of knowing if you get the point of your human life than to come to minor in consumption and major in provision. A day-to-day awareness that the inner tick wants to focus on the self, yet we can subvert it by using its constant flow of nervous, self-obsessed, survivalist intel as a way to know how to best understand, serve and love the other.

We are born with a great capacity for compassion. To receive it as creatures who need it. And to give it, as creatures made to provide it.

If we can just get the dials right.