There is a reason that the rite central to most religious
traditions takes place in the context of a communal meal. Eating and drinking
with others at a common table is the mark of deep communal relations, the
sharing of one’s life-giving material goods, one’s time, one’s presence. It is
deep communal relations that marked the Jesus movement which celebrates the institution
of its communion rite on this day the church has called Maundy Thursday (from the
Latin mandatum, command). The day takes its name from the commandment
Jesus leaves with his disciples: "Love one another as I have loved
you."
For about 13 years after my return to Orlando, I found
myself unable to attend the Episcopal Church locally. Whatever else this
diocese had become, it had little to do with any sense of communality that
included everyone. And so a small group of priests and laity began to meet in our
home each Thursday night for eucharist set in the context of a meal. Everyone
brought themselves and a dish. Since several of us had Franciscan roots, we
called ourselves the Francis/Clare Community.
I began to line the walls of our dining room with images of
Communal Meals. While the community lived a healthy life-span as small
communities do only to finally wither away as members departed and died, the
images reflecting our time together remain. On this night the Christian world
remembers the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples, I offer some of the
imaginings of that event captured in the images that stared down over our shoulders
into the communal meal and eucharist rite of the Francis-Clare Community for
those 13 years.
Watanabe: The Gospel Through the Lens of
Japanese Folk Art
This vision of the Last Supper comes from Japan. The
artist, Sadao Watanabe, strictly painted images from the Gospels but
always through the medium of the folk art (mingei) of Japan. I have
always loved this depiction from the minute I saw it. This is a signed print. I
managed to put in the winning bid for it on Ebay, something I rarely do. It has a place of honor in the collection of
communal meal images lining the walls of our dining room. And it is the perfect
piece to open this discussion of art of the Last Supper.
Dali: A Modern Vision from the Heart of
Washington
This vision may be familiar to many. It came from the gift
shop of the Smithsonian National Gallery of Modern Art in Washington, D.C. Dali’s
Last Supper has long been one of my favorite visions of this communal
meal. The original is hung just outside a bank of elevators near two stories of
glass windows overlooking the National Sculpture Garden outside. It is always
breathtaking to step off the elevator to see this depiction which takes up the
entire opposing wall. I make it a destination of my pilgrimage when I am in
Washington.
An Irish Blessing: Women and Children Included
In 1998 a group in Ireland named 'Brothers and Sisters in Christ'
who were seeking a larger role in leadership for woman in the
Roman Catholic Church commissioned this artwork from Polish artist Bohdan
Piasecki. He has lived and worked as an artist in Italy, Canada and France. He currently
serves as Secretary of the Polish Academy of Art and now lives with his wife
Teresa in his home town of Okuniew, near Warsaw.
Bohdan painted this scene of the women, men and children
celebrating the Passover together, as Jesus ate his last supper. Each of the 22
figures are clothed in traditional Palestinian garb, rather than the Italian
Renaissance gear seen in one of the world's most recognizable paintings,
Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper.
What was striking for me was the presence of women and
children along with the men. My guess is that this is probably closer to the
actual event than the visions historically provided by a patriarchal
institution. You can see why this vision is part of the collection in our
dining room.
An Australian Vision: A Communal Meal in the Context
of Justice
For years I admired this vision of a
communal meal which I saw in the main room of The Spiral Circle, a metaphysical shop
in the heart of Orlando not far from our home. I always bought my incense there
(they had the best variety in town) and commented on this painting every time I
was there. One day, Bev, the owner, said that she had gotten a lot of questions
on that print, took it down and looked on the back of the framing. There was
the address of the shop in Australia from which it had come.
But there’s more to this story.
Between the time I ordered it and its arrival, our home was destroyed by Hurricane Charlie and we were just in the early stages of rebuilding it. The print was returned to the shop in Australia. There the shop owner was kind enough to contact me and ask if I wanted my money back. I explained to her what had happened, she was horrified. I asked if she’d resend it. She did with no additional postage as a gift to us. One of the first things I hung on my new, freshly painted wall in the dining room was this print.
Between the time I ordered it and its arrival, our home was destroyed by Hurricane Charlie and we were just in the early stages of rebuilding it. The print was returned to the shop in Australia. There the shop owner was kind enough to contact me and ask if I wanted my money back. I explained to her what had happened, she was horrified. I asked if she’d resend it. She did with no additional postage as a gift to us. One of the first things I hung on my new, freshly painted wall in the dining room was this print.
The artist is Susan Dorothea White who based
her work on Leonardo da Vinci's 1490s painting The Last Supper. In a challenge
to the patriarchal concept of thirteen men on one side of a table, shows 13
women from all regions of the world; the woman in the position of Leonardo's
Christ figure is an Australian aboriginal wearing a T-shirt with the Australian
Aboriginal Flag. One woman seen is in the position of Judas. She dines on a
Coca-Cola and a hamburger, while all the other women are seen with a bread roll
and glass of water.
The painting toured Australia in the Blake
Prize for Religious Art exhibition in 1988, where it was ridiculed, before
being exhibited in the artist's solo exhibition in Amsterdam, where it featured
in the Dutch art journal Kunstbeeld: "The work shows clearly Susan White's
thinking about human rights. It should be mentioned here that she sometimes
places her many faceted talent at the service of the struggle for human
rights".
The last communal meal Jesus shared with
his disciples was eaten in the fading hopes that a kingdom of G_d marked by
justice, right relations and peace, might yet “come on Earth.” Indeed, Jesus
had taught them to pray “Your kingdom come, on earth as in heaven.” But the king
of the Roman Empire had other ideas and within 24 hours of eating this last
meal, Jesus would be dead, the victim of a brutal public murder by the Roman
Empire.
Guadalupe Attends: A Home Blessing from
A Conflicted Land
In the summer of 2006, I traveled to
Nicaragua for a two week seminar on Education for Global Citizenship organized
by the Center for Global Education, a division of Augsburg College in Minneapolis.
There were a lot of communal meals where students and professors alike sat down
to talk about our days of talking with a people who had withstood several years
of war and a thinly veiled and illegal invasion by American trained and armed
forces called Contras.
It was an eye-opening couple of weeks to say the least.
It was an eye-opening couple of weeks to say the least.
The last day before we left, a few of us
called a taxi to take us to the central market in Managua. One could find
anything from freshly butchered pigs to tee shirts to tables running over with
books. Amidst the noise and the crowds there, I encountered this vision of the
Last Supper. It is an odd mixture of European Renaissance imagery along with
some local color. I love the fact that the Virgen de Guadalupe (Tepeyac) is
present at the Last Supper along with a couple of motmots, the national bird of
Nicaragua.
The purpose of this plaque is clear with
the words across the top: God Bless This Home. And it has blessed mine for the
last 14 years, overlooking the table where our communal meals and eucharistic
rites were held.
Peace Amidst Great Suffering: A Campesino
Vision
During my time in seminary, I twice traveled to El Salvador.
The first time a group of seminarians spent 10 days in the country under the
auspices of the World Council of Churches serving as observers of the fragile
cease fire in Salvador’s bloody 13 year civil war. Like most of the countries
in Central America, Salvador had been the target of an American
counter-insurgency program that proved particularly brutal in this country.
Archbishop Oscar Romero would be shot down at the altar in the middle of the communion rites at the chapel on the grounds of the convent where he lived. Four Maryknoll nuns returning from their literacy and public health work in the country would be raped and executed by paramilitary forces and six Jesuit professors and their two housekeepers would be slaughtered on the campus of the University of Central America.
Archbishop Oscar Romero would be shot down at the altar in the middle of the communion rites at the chapel on the grounds of the convent where he lived. Four Maryknoll nuns returning from their literacy and public health work in the country would be raped and executed by paramilitary forces and six Jesuit professors and their two housekeepers would be slaughtered on the campus of the University of Central America.
The second visit to El Salvador occurred the following
year, 1993. I joined fellow seminarians as international election observers
under the auspices of the United Nations. We stayed out in the country near the
town of Chalatenango where the local school would serve as the polling place. I
watched illiterate peasants standing hours in the broiling tropical sun to dip
their thumbs into ink pots and make their X on ballots with pictures of the
candidates running for president. It was truly a humbling day.
The last day in San Salvador, I found this depiction of the
Last Supper in the market. It reflects the campesino artisan pattern that one sees
on wooden crosses, tapestries and ceramics produced in the northeastern corner
of the country along the border with Guatemala and Honduras, where American
forces and the Contras they directed were stationed.
I have always
loved campesino art with its vibrant colors and simplicity. This one reminded me that the communal meal of eucharist is always set in the context of
justice making. As Eucharistic Prayer C
of the Book of Common Prayer puts it:
“Deliver us from the presumption of
coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only,
and not for renewal. Let the grace of this Holy Communion make us one body, one
spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name.”
Indeed.
Grounding: Families of Birth, Choice
The largest of the images of this communal meal in my
dining room is the one with which I have the longest history. This Last Supper,
an adaptation of Da Vinci’s masterpiece, graced the wall over my Grandparent’s
supper table. I grew up eating under that reproduction on my many visits to see
them in Gainesville.
As a kid, I always thought that most of the disciples looked uncomfortable.
How could any artist ever have gotten them to pose like that, I wondered. Moreover,
Jesus looked like a Swedish rock star and John, the disciple that loved him,
looked a lot like my Mother.
It was always an intriguing image. My Mother inherited it when her Father died. Then when my Mother died, my Dad told me I could have whatever I wanted in the house. I only chose a handful of items. This was the first thing I picked.
It was always an intriguing image. My Mother inherited it when her Father died. Then when my Mother died, my Dad told me I could have whatever I wanted in the house. I only chose a handful of items. This was the first thing I picked.
In the 13 years our Francis/Clare Community met around our dining
room table, which was the table from my family home, this image connected me to
my roots in a good family. This image heard an awful lot of political arguments
and theological debates during my time as a child in the 1960s at my Grandparents and in the 1970s at my
family home. Somehow it fit right into this Francis/Clare Community where
social justice work was always rooted in a life of prayer and communal meals.
This Maundy Thursday, our dining room is empty much like
those of most people across the country. That emptiness is sorely noticed in a season of Passover and Easter, times when tables ordinarily bulge with food and guests. We are held captive by a virus in our
homes in a nation shaken to its core. And yet, in the midst of this silence and emptiness, there is something comforting
about sharing these images of communal meals with you this night.
My collection of Last Supper imagery is a visual reminder
of the loving families of birth and choice I have always had the privilege of
belonging to. It reminds me that my long life of peace and justice work has
always shared the company of beloved sojourners and emerged out of communities
that I have cherished. This Maundy Thursday, “the gifts of God for the people
of God” has deeply personal meaning for me as I survey the images adorning my
dining rooms. And for those many gifts I am profoundly grateful.
[Image: Sister Leda Miller, O.S.B., Holy
Names Monastery, St. Leo, FL; Last Supper (1985)]
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If the unexamined life is not worth
living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is
not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
For what does G-d require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? (Micah
6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)
Do not be daunted by the enormity
of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are
not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami
Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)
© Harry Coverston, 2020
