ON "LONGING WITH ALL YOUR HEART"

TO BREAK BREAD
SENIOR COMMUNION
May 16, 1985
RONALD W. GRAHAM
Professor of New Testament, Lexington Theological Seminary

Text: "With all my heart I have longed to eat this Passover with
you before the time comes for me to suffer" (Luke 22:15, Phillips
Modern English).

1. Jesus
The Gospels, so the Form Critics have taught us, are not bio-
graphies of Jesus and they do not offer us even the raw material
for writing a life of the Galilean. The Evangelists, so it is said,
were not privy to the interior life of Jesus—who is permitted to
read the secrets of our heart?—and since "as a man thinketh in his
heart, so is he" (Prov. 23:7, KJV), they therefore can give us
few clues as to what made him what he was, even had they been
interested in providing us with such glimmerings. But in spite of
the Critics' skepticism, perhaps the Gospels do furnish us with
an authentic hint here and there that might be worth our pursuing.
First, there is that account in Mark and Matthew of the ex-
change between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman. As Mark
has it (7:24-30), he went away up into the hill country, some-
where up toward Tyre and Sidon, for needed respite and time for
reflection. But there was no hiding place; and this Greek woman,
at her wits end because her daughter was demon possessed, in-
sisted, to the annoyance of the disciples (Matt. 15:23), on invad-
ing Jesus' privacy and laying her case before him. And then this
two-liner follows: Jesus: "Let the children [i.e., the Jews] first be
fed, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to
the dogs [i.e., to the Gentiles such as this woman]"; the woman:
"Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's
bread." I rather fancy that interpretation of this battle of wits
which suggests that Jesus was caught off guard in a time of un-
certainty, wondering whether his vocation was to give to the Gen-
tiles that which in large measure he had not been able to give to
his own, so that the sharpness derives from its beginning to be-
come crystal-clear to him—especially with this pagan woman be-
 WITH ALL YOUR HEART 131

fore him, begging in desperation, prostrate in hope—that the good

news could not be confined lo his own nation. If so, that were a
sea change in our Lord's vocational understanding; but the door
on that is kept ajar only long enough for us to gain the barest
glimpse.
Second, there is this: there came to Jesus, or there were brought
to Jesus, the deaf, the dumb, the blind, the lame, the leprous, the
torn-apart-by-demons. One can sense in the stories of Jesus' min-
istry of mighty works the longings, the fears, the despair, the hope
of a whole people who had little or no access to medicine and
amongst whom disease was constantly present in a plethora of
forms. Blind Bartimaeus oí Jericho spoke for them all when he
cried, "Lord, have mercy; Lord, have mercy." But with reference
to particular individuals (cf. Mark 6:34; 8:2), only once in Mark,
and once in Matthew, and once in Luke, each referring to a dif-
ferent mighty work, is it said that Jesus acted out of compassion.
(The Greek verb, splanknizomai, refers to action that stems from
the inward source of our feelings and affections.) Mark tells of
how a leper once came to Jesus and said, "If you want to, you
can make me clean" (1:40, TEV). Jesus, "filled with compas-
sion," says Mark (v.41, NIV), reached out and touched this un-
touchable and said, "I do want to. Be clean" (v.41, TEV). That
Jesus performed a mighty work out of pity for an individual is
stated in Mark only here and it comes at the beginning of the
Gospel. It is as though the teller of the Good News wanted to give
us a peek—just a single peek, right at the start—at what the seat
of Jesus' feelings, the source oi his affections was: he was through
and through a compassionate person.
Third, consider the Synoptic accounts of the Last of the various
Suppers that Jesus had with his most intimate friends, the Twelve.
The three narratives agree in many regards: the day was the day
of Unleavened Bread; the guest room made available was in a
friend's home in Jerusalem; it was put at the service of the one
who was known as "The Teacher"; the preparation was made by
the disciples; the bread was taken and broken and thanks given
and it was distributed with the word, "This is my body." All ex-
ternals, stated as objective facts, bare of colorful adverbs, lacking
in emotive adjectives, devoid of sentimentality. Only Luke draws
aside the curtain for a moment to give a glimpse of the sentiment
that must have run deep through this meal, causing every particip-
ant to catch his breath. "With all my heart," says the Jesus of
132 LEXINGTON THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

Luke, "I have longed to eat this Passover with you before the time
comes for me to suffer" (22:15, Phillips). "With all my heart I
have longed to eat with you."

To sum up: a single glimpse of a man's struggle over his voca-

tion, which has to be for him a determination of what the will of
God is for him—a very personal decision indeed, which no other
can make for him. . . . A singular peep at what it is that is at
the source of a human being's affections that becomes the secret
spring of action—a source for which every human being in the end
is personally responsible. . . . A solitary glance at the feeling with
which a meal was fraught—a particular feeling that was peculiarly
The Teacher's.
2. Ourselves
In a very real sense this is the Last Supper in this upper room
of our Jerusalem that The Teacher will have with this particular
company of his disciples. What are the inner secrecies of our being
that we bring to this special breaking of bread?
First, our vocational decision. They say we are here because
we went through college and knew nothing more at the end than
to continue schooling, depending in large measure on the bounty
of others to preserve us from the buffeting of the real world for at
least three more years. Or that having been frustrated in three
other jobs perhaps in ministry it would be different. Or that here
we might find a spouse congenial to our Christian lifestyle. Or
that we like the idea of professional ministry—a seductive term
is "professional"; but the requirement is ordination and ordination
calls for the possession of the Master of Divinity degree, so if union
ticket we must have union ticket we shall get. Or that . . . Well,
they say a variety of things and any number of them may indeed
be true of each of us, some more, some less.
But at our best—though we are not always at our best—we have
some sense of an aptitude wedded to a task, an endowment that
can be used for worthy and constructive ends, an opportunity to
express the powers that are within us or within easy reach of us.
Seeing the Lord, "high and lifted up," sensing a greatness and a
glory, a grace and a goodness far beyond our own, we say, "Here
I am," Lord, "send me" (Isa. 6:1-8).
Second, the source of our affections. They say that deep within
us is the need to be needed, to be praised and tangibly rewarded
and appreciated. They say that we religious "love the place of
 WITH ALL YOUR HEART 133

honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues, and saluta-
tions in the market places, and being called rabbi by [people]"
(Matt. 23:6-7)—clergy privileges, clergy discounts, the being first
in line at pot lucks, and so on. They say we have a Messiah com-
plex: we know for certain what the world needs—our definition
of the good and the right and the true. They say . . .: oh, they say
all kinds of things, and, to be sure, any number of them may be
true of each of us, some more, some less.
But at our best—though at times we fall short, far short, of our
best—down deep within us is a genuine, disinterested caring about
where women and men and boys and girls find themselves, through
their own fault, through no fault of their own; a caring about the
ends for which life is lived and the purposes to which this world is
put. We cast our own burdens upon the Lord, dependent upon
the great burden bearer, who enables even the captives in exile to
sing their Hosannas in a strange land (Ps. 137). We seek to be
responsible for our own lives and so carry our own burden; for,
in the last analysis, no matter how tall Johnny's grandfather and
how tall Jeanie's grandmother may be, every Johnny and Jeanie
have to do their own growing for themselves. But, perhaps above
all, we seek to bear one another's burdens, for that, said Paul, is
what it means to "fulfil the law of Christ" (Gal. 6:1-5). We care
because Jesus cared; we have compassion because Christ had pity
on the pitiable. He has taught us to care.
Third, this Last Supper. What do we bring to it? Our feelings
about the end of another school year: fall, January, spring, com-
pleted in carefully catalogued order; a syllabus devised and an
evaluation of how it all worked out, finished. Hosanna! Feelings
about a teaching career brought to an enjoyable and fruitful end-
ing. Hallelujah! Feelings about a degree program completed:
school's over. Hosanna again, for the proof of ministry is not
Seminary but ministry. Feelings about a journey begun with scant
resources and an unknown future before us; now a journey ended,
with a Promised Land in sight. Hallelujah again! (Though, we
may note in passing, that in truth the ending is only a beginning:
school's finished, but life-long learning is ahead, and our Promised
Land is but a stage in our pilgrimmage.) . . . Lots of deep-down
and some surface feelings we bring to this Last Supper.
But best of all is the "longing with all our heart" with which
we come to break bread. The Reformers used to speak of water
and bread and wine as the "sensible signs" of God's grace and of
134 LEXINGTON THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

the presence of our Lord among us: water that is wet to the face,
bread that is solid between the teeth, wine that is sweet to the
tongue: the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper entered
into and partaken of feelingly.
Feelingly. We break this bread because of the One who loved
his own and "loved them to the end" (John 13:1). We take of
this loaf because "for century after century . . . this action has
been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every
conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old
age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the re-
fuge of fugitives in the caves and the dens of the earth" (Gregory
Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, p. 744). We drink of this cup be-
cause we witness to our loyalty to the woman we wish to be, to
the man we may be, and by the grace of God intend to be. We
take this bread broken to "shew forth the Lord's death till he
come" (I Cor. 11:26, KJV): to declare the mystery of our divine
life, the secret of our greatest power, the fuel of our love, and our
sweet consolation.

"With all my heart I have longed to eat this Passover with you,"
says The Teacher. "With all my heart we long to eat this Last
Supper with you," say we disciples.
 ^ s
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