Privilege and Responsibility

Every privilege is connected to, and balanced by, a responsibility.  And each responsibility claims the benefit of a matching privilege.  Responsibilty without benefit becomes legalism, bondage to the static black-and-white of rule-keeping.  Benefit without the tethering force of responsibility and accountability becomes license, a bondage to the stormy winds of one's own whims.

Those who have been burned by the burden of legalism may see comfort and balance in what is really license.  And those who have seen clearly the destructive force of the unbounded pursuit of privilege and pleasure often do not mind settling in the lowlands of legalism.

But both extremes are slavery to an unyielding master.  Neither element consitutes the abundant life God has called us to.  Any life that does not seek a balance between them turns away from the teaching and guiding of the Holy Spirit.

So what do we find at this table?  What is the privilege of this table?  What are its responsibilities?  The privilege of this table is Life, a fulness and completeness of life that we could never create or discover on our own.  Through Christ's sacrifice, which we honor and remember here, God offers peace, wholeness, guidance, community, identity ... a package of living and learning that is impossible otherwise.  We open our broken selves, and God moves in.

And the matching responsibility?  If the privilege is God Himself, what responsibility could possibly match?  That's the trick.  None could match.  None will.  If we give everything we have, everything we are, it would still not fulfill the sense we have that this should be somehow an even trade.  Nonetheless, we are still called to give everything,* to open our hearts to obedience as well as joy, to perseverance and privilege, to patience as we do pleasure.

Communion, like the rest of life, is a package deal.  The good with the bad.  The privilege with the responsibility.  The life with the death.

As they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread and asked God's blessing on it.  Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take it and eat it, for this is my body.”  And he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it.  He gave it to them and said, “Each of you drink from it, for this is my blood, which seals the covenant between God and his people.  It is poured out to forgive the sins of many.  Mark my words—I will not drink wine again until the day I drink it new with you in my Father's Kingdom.”

[* "Giving everything" doesn't mean laying down at the front of the church and never moving again.  That would be a dead sacrifice.  The living sacrifice obeys.  The living sacrifice listens.  If I came up to you before Sunday School today and asked you a question, then just walked away, what would you think?  Did I want to hear your answer?  If I believed you would give me an answer, and I wanted to hear it, obviously I would listen attentively, trusting that you wouldn't speak in some language I didn't know.]