Taste & See: A Spirituality of Cooking

Over the past year or so, I have been getting more interested in cooking. I used to eat out often and eat simple stuff, sandwiches and canned soup and stuff like that. But lately I've been enjoying actual grocery shopping and cooking. 

Even better, my fiance, Ray, likes to cook with me too. 

I've been surprised to discover cooking is a spiritual experience, that my kitchen table can be holy like a Communion table, the steam arising from a pot as lovely as church incense. 

God teaches me patience with cooking. Real cooking leads to yummier food. My favorite spinach breakfast bake is slower than something out of the frozen food aisle-- waiting on the meat to brown, beating ten eggs, chopping onions, watching the timer on the oven until the whole thing is done. Patience goes against my nature, but every time I cook and wait for a satisfying meal I am reminded-- this is the spiritual life. Wait on God's slow work; be patient; it takes time. 

I think that's partly why Jesus tells the quick parable of the bakerwoman: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked through all the dough." The kingdom of heaven is present in an ordinary woman making ordinary loaves of bread. And yeast, like the kingdom of heaven, is on its own timetable. 

I think God has used cooking to bring Ray and me even closer together. When we cook, it's 50-50. We both chop, measure, stir, knead, wash dishes, and clean up. And eat! It's been another way to learn the rhythm of true love. We're in it all together, in joy, like eating, and in grunt work, like scrubbing stubborn pans. 

Maybe it won't feel that way after a few years of cooking often, but sitting down to a real meal made by my own hands still feels luxurious. Unless I screwed it up or picked a bad recipe, but that doesn't happen very often. (I avoid anything too complicated.) A healthy home cooked meal is a gift to myself. While eating my from-scratch asparagus soup this week, God whispered to me, You deserve this. You deserve to take care of yourself, you deserve to take time away from your work to eat well, because you belong to me. 

Fast food and takeout happen from time to time, but the extravagance of a homecooked meal feels even better, a reminder to keep on caring for myself in body, mind, and soul, a taste of Sabbath. It's a message I think we all need in a world that works too fast. 

I guess I'll probably have more to say about a spirituality of cooking as I continue cooking more. But I'm thankful for the insights I'm just beginning to see.

Schizophrenic Jesus

One of the places closest to heaven for me is Asheville, North Carolina. I spent six weeks there in the summer of 2016 that are as fresh to me as if they happened yesterday.

Haywood Street Congregation is a United Methodist church plant with a focus on reaching the poor and the homeless. Other people are welcome, of course, but there is a preferential option for the unhoused, just as God has this preferential option-- Jesus said he'd meet us in the hungry and the stranger.

After worship people lingered in the air conditioning and I lingered too, hoping to wander into conversation. There was a woman there whose name I can't remember. But I can hear her gravelly voice and see her ball cap covered in aluminum foil and duct tape. I introduced myself. She told me the government was spying on her through her microwave so she had to wear this stuff.

Quickly I realized she was a paranoid schizophrenic, afraid of so many people and places that could spy on her, capture her, hurt her. I listened as closely as I could. There was a loud hum of anxiety inside of me, too. How could I talk her out of this paranoia and confusion? She was talking so quickly it didn't seem like I could possibly get a word in edgewise. But I kept listening as closely as I could. Minutes flew by, and I realized I'd been listening to her for almost an hour. 

What seems obvious to me now hit me with profundity in that moment: There was no way to fix her mental illness. No way to stop her from thinking the government was after her. Perhaps a good psychiatrist or therapist could, but I was neither of those things. 

So I told her the only thing I knew to say, that could possibly reach through the paranoia-- God loved her and was with her in the apartment that scared her so much and God would never let her go. That Jesus had a lot of scary moments in his life and Jesus knew what she was going through and she was not alone.

"I don't trust many people," she said, "but you listened to me. I think I can trust you. Thanks for talking to me."

It hit me that it was not my job to try to fix her. Simply listening to her, loving her, pointing to the true Savior and Healer, was my role, and that role could accomplish plenty. 

In her hospitality and trust she saved me from my own delusion that I could fix or save anybody. She taught me the real role of ministry (paid or not) is love and listening and pointing to Jesus. She saved me from the guilt and shame that often plagued me when I was not able to fix all the situations I thought I should. I met Jesus in her that day, and I think of her often, and I hope and pray she is blessed and safe and knows Jesus is living in her. 

That's why I have to keep making friends with the poor, the unhoused, the hungry, the differently abled. That Christ in distressing disguise saves me. I think that's true for the whole church, too. 

Three Hazards of Butts & Bucks Church

Wow. It has been a long time since I've written anything here. But it's time to get back to pondering out loud in the public space of the Internet, in part to keep practicing my writing and thinking skills, and in part in case it may in some way be helpful to someone else. 

So here is what I have been thinking about today. 

In the United Methodist Church, and in many mainline Christian denominations, we have an obsession with butts in pews and dollars in plates. In the UMC we measure these things with statistics every Monday morning. We fill out an end of year report quantifying our statistics even more. We are held accountable for growing attendance and money, and if we don't we are deemed ineffective. I'm most familiar with the Methodist part of Christendom, but I'm sure there are similar things in other denominations. It is an affliction of modern American Christianity. 

After nearly seven years of professional ministry, I've finally begun to grasp with the Spirit's help, how toxic the obsession with numbers is. Of course, we should reach out to new people. You'll never hear me say the church should go be an insular country club. But the way we reach out needs to be purified from this dangerous butts & bucks obsession. Here is a list-- ironically enough, numbered-- of what this obsession does. 

1. Number driven ministry poisons our motives for reaching out to others. It teaches us to begin to see others as numbers to pad our ecclesial stats and as a means for institutional survival, rather than as human beings whom God loves no matter what. It teaches us to love with ulterior motives rather than the pure motive of simply loving as God does, unconditionally. And I think many people can sense intuitively when they are being viewed as a means to an end of growing a church rather than a person to befriend, a human in the image of God whose very presence reveals God's glory. 

Judicatory officials, Christian writers and thinkers, and other kinds of church leaders sell the dream that clergy can save the church by improving these numbers. Not all of them, of course, but many do. They implicitly put clergy and church leaders who will join in that effort in the role of savior. We will save the church by growing these numbers. Of course, that's all wrong. Christians need to become humble enough to be thankful for the work of God and to continue loving the world as Jesus did no matter what the "results" are.

We need to trust God is at work and be content in that, even when the church is not the hero in the story. Maybe praying with that person on the sidewalk having a mental health crisis won't lead to that person coming to our pews next Sunday, but it helped them encounter the Spirit in a new way and planted a seed of God's love that will grow for a few weeks, months, or years before they'll come worship on Sunday morning. Maybe that friend we invite to church won't come right away, but they are slowly becoming more open to the Holy Spirit because they see in you a person at deep peace and they slowly begin to want that for themselves too. That isn't a failure. We aren't the Savior, Jesus is, so we entrust our work to Jesus. 

This obsession with numbers teaches us hurry and impatience, working hard to grow these stats as quickly as possible. Following Jesus teaches us to be patient with God's slow work, as Jesus frequently describes the work of ministry as planting seeds-- and everyone in that agrarian society knew seeds don't become trees overnight. 

2. Butts & bucks obsession crowds out spiritual formation and prayer. These things are simply a poor return on investment, timewise, if your only goal is to grow numbers-- both corporately as a congregation and individually as a Christian or pastor. Silence in the worship service, sharing of joys and concerns, corporate prayer, are neglected in many worship services as not entertaining enough for keeping butts in those pews. Of course this only gets us further away from God. 

3. Focus on numbers keeps us from speaking prophetically. In John 6, Jesus gives what the disciples call "a hard teaching" about the need for Christians to feed on his body and blood. It's a beautiful but gruesome passage as Jesus literally says we need to gnaw on his flesh. I think he's speaking about the Eucharist as well as the reality only Jesus can accomplish the healing and transformation we all need. But after Jesus says that hard teaching, many disciples quit (John 6:66). 

Jesus was moving too quickly, right? He should have been more of a centrist, focused more on unity, kept people at the table.

Of course, that's true if your only motive is growing numerically. But Jesus also wanted to talk turkey about tough things, and some people didn't like it and they left him. If we are going to follow Jesus, as Christians we sometimes have to say challenging things that may offend and push others away. In fact, Jesus says, "Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you" (Luke 6:26). 

Today the hard teachings of Jesus probably aren't the Eucharist, though. (In part because we don't value the Eucharist enough to find it controversial.) They might be matters of racial justice, LGBTQ liberation, criminal justice reform, welcome of the refugee and immigrant, care for the poor, etc., etc. But God is the business of transforming this world to look more like heaven, and sometimes participating in that work offends others, and sometimes we have to choose between joining God's work or chasing butts & bucks. 

Butts & bucks church bears a much closer resemblance to capitalism and big business than to Jesus' ministry which frequently lost followers who were frustrated by his demands to eat his flesh, drink his blood, welcome tax collectors and sex workers, and carry a cross. It looks more like manipulation and marketing than the work of the God who loves people unconditionally and patiently. It looks more like the hurry of the world than the slow work of prayer. 

I am in the process of allowing the Spirit to detox me from butts & bucks thinking. It is difficult because it is the water American Christians swim in. But every time I pray, I think I get a little closer. 

To The Great Unknowns: A Theological Critique of the Kia Superbowl Commercial

I can't stop watching this Kia Superbowl commercial on YouTube. It all was filmed in West Point, Georgia, right where I used to live and pastor. The scenes and places were so familiar. I drove by the Kia plant every day, I ate at Roger's BBQ, the restaurant in the opening scene, and I smiled at the boy narrator's thick Southern drawl, so slow and so familiar. The commercial made my eyes swim with nostalgia. 
But I also felt a deep rush of anger as I watched the commercial. Repeatedly, it implied that all that was worth knowing or caring about these people was that they make Kia cars. 
That is what big business often does. People are valued only for what they buy and make, not for who God created them to be. 
The commercial reminded me of what my task was there as a pastor, what my pastoral task always is, what the calling of the church is. "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me, to preach good news to the poor," says Jesus (Luke 4:16). In a world that tells lies to and about the poor, the unknowns, Jesus and his followers speak good news. 
"We are not famous," the boy narrator of the commercial begins. But God says God knows the number of hairs on the heads of each one of those factory workers. 
"There are no statues built in our honor," the boy intones. But God built a priceless statue in their honor, a cross by which they would be saved. 
"We're just a small Georgia town of complete unknowns," the boy explains. But the Son of God was born in a small Palestinian town of complete unknowns-- Nazareth-- and shows up again and again in ordinary places.
"The closest thing to a world stage is 81 miles away in Atlanta tonight," the boy adds, referring to the Superbowl, of course. But to God, the God of love higher than any height and deeper than any depth, the life of each person on that Kia assembly line is a whole world, worth the life of Jesus Christ. 
"We are not known for who we are. We hope to be known for what we do, what we build," the boy says, the slow southern drawl elongating the last word into two syllables as the camera pans over the new Kia SUV. "This thing we've assembled, it has a chance to be remembered. No, we aren't famous, but we are incredible. We build incredible things." But what finally matters in God's eyes is not the job a person has. To God, we are known for who we are. A Kia worker barely making ends meet just may be incredible, not for making a stupid SUV that will one day be a rusty pile of junk, but because he or she is incredibly generous, or kind, or faithful.
Then the SUV plows through a river as the music swells, with all the beauty and drama of a baptism. But in God's eyes it isn't an SUV but people, even each and every weary and overwhelmed shift worker, who are beautiful. 
Loudly the world proclaims the messages the Kia commercial does. Nothing matters about you except where you work and what you buy and how much money you've got. As I watched the commercial, underneath the anger I felt my heart swell. My calling, the church's calling, is to speak loudly against that whirlwind the gospel to every unknown we can find. Jesus' mission to preach good news to the poor and proclaim the year of Jubilee... and the fact that I get to be a part of it... now, that's incredible. 

On the Church, Millennials, Marketing, and Love

Those of us who consider ourselves partners with the Holy Spirit in growing the church often fall prey to a particular kinds of temptation. It happens to pastors, to laypeople, to people in big, medium, and small churches, to progressives and conservatives-- this temptation to believe there is a magic bullet out there that will bring new people into the church. Preach this kind of sermon, use this kind of curriculum, sing this kind of music, do this mission project, hire this staff person... and the kingdom will come, and the church will be packed. 

Like the devil tempted Jesus to turn stones into bread, the enemy tempts us to believe in flashy shortcuts.

This past Sunday, I took vacation. I love being a pastor, and I especially love leading worship and preaching, but there is also something wonderful once in a while about worshipping from a pew. I slept in, something I never do on Sunday mornings otherwise, and by the time I got ready and scraped off the ice I was surprised to see on my car (and tracked down an ice scraper in my parents' garage), I sat in my car and was afraid I would not be able to find a place to go to church. Even if I left right in that moment I was going to be late for the worship service at the large, downtown church I had planned on attending. Irritably, I consulted Google and the closest option I had a chance of making on time was at a small Episcopal church in a small town at the southern outskirts of the Kansas City area.

When I got there, I saw the deacon and acolyte, robed and prepared for a procession into the church service. My face flushed with embarrassment at being basically late. The deacon actually broke from the procession, shook my hand, and introduced himself. He handed me a bulletin, explained it would contain everything I needed, and gave directions for looking up hymns in the hymnal. Instantly I felt myself begin to relax, the embarrassment at my tardiness fading away. 

The pews were sparsely populated, and nearly everyone I saw looked old enough to be my grandparents. As the service began, though, the people sang with loud enthusiasm, and just as the deacon said, all of the liturgy and directions for the service were clearly spelled out in the bulletin. The sermon was a short but lovely meditation on John 1:1-18, given by the priest, adorned in a golden chasuble and seated at a stool even with the first row of pews. 

During the passing of the peace, people introduced themselves to me and asked me about myself. I slipped out, in need of the bathroom, and found the path to the bathroom clearly marked with an easel outside of the sanctuary announcing, "Restrooms down the hall to your left." The bathroom had lotion, tissues, and air freshener.

After the service ended, people continued introducing themselves and urging me to stay for coffee hour. I declined politely, since my mother was cooking brunch. But I was impressed with this little church's hospitality. They did not assume I knew anything about the bulletin or about looking up hymns, but offered assistance. They didn't just say hello, but asked me about myself and encouraged me to stay for coffee hour. They didn't assume I'd know my way to the bathroom, but provided a sign. It didn't look like a public bathroom, but like a guest bathroom at someone's house. All of it helped me feel welcomed and cared for. And if I were not a United Methodist pastor,  and if I were looking for a church, I honestly think I would want to return to that little church. They didn't have people my own age, or lots of programming, or technology, or the best music I have heard. But they had hospitality. They had love.

Millennials are a highly sought after demographic by the church. Churches always say they want more young people. As a pastor, I certainly want to reach out to young people, too. But as a millennial myself, I believe hospitality and love are the most essential ingredients in reaching new millennials for Jesus. We grew up in a world where have been sold to our whole lives-- through television, and then in our adolescence, through the internet, smartphones, social media. We are used to sophisticated technology and marketing. When the church markets itself to us like another product, many of us say, No, having already been sold the promise of peace and happiness and wisdom and eternal life by Facebook, Apple, Google, clothing companies, makeup companies, car companies, etc., etc. But many people today, especially millennials, are lacking something that cannot be purchased-- community. A recent survey found half of Americans describe themselves as lonely, and millennials were the most likely to do so out of all the generations surveyed. Long work hours, busy schedules, economic struggles, and technology fray relationships. We have friends on Facebook, but struggle for real life connection. 

The little Episcopal church reminded me of something important. The church-- any church-- can offer that kind of connection, by very intentionally and lovingly welcoming each person who walks through its doors. Not as a target or a customer, but as a friend. And when the church does that, it points to the welcome of Jesus Christ. Love costs no money, requires no technical skill, and can be done even by a little band of senior citizens. Don't get me wrong-- it's good to use technology, to preach good sermons, to construct good programs, to sing new songs, etc. But none of it means anything, especially not to this young generation, unless it is done in a spirit of Christlike hospitality, of love.

Writing has always been a kind of prayer for me, and there are times I can pray no other way. As I reflect on that Sunday of worship from the other side of the pulpit, it seems I hear God's reminder, to me and to God's whole church, "The greatest of all is love" (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Mission and the Table

Liberation theology is a term for a network of theological systems that have in common the belief that God takes the side of and sets free the poor, the needy, the oppressed, etc. And I have become convinced that liberation theology, and Communion, are inseparably linked. At least, they have been for me, and I think that rediscovering that relationship can bring renewal for the church. 

Most Saturday nights in Georgia, those strange and intense three years I juggled seminary and the pastorate, I would go to Mass at the Catholic church. I'd wear jeans and a hoodie and savor the thrill of being a totally anonymous worshipper in the pew. Yes, it's a holy and precious privilege to preach and lead worship. But it is also wonderful to connect with God without worrying about my sermon. It is a holy privilege to relate to people as a pastor. But it is also restful to occasionally lay that down, and simply be a person in a pew. In that town, that could only have happened in a Catholic church on Saturday night. Ironically, that priest resigned to be a hospital chaplain, and left on the same weekend I left my churches in Georgia to move to Missouri, perhaps in part a holy wink from God to me that Father Patrick and I were really more alike than different. In the life to come we will approach the Table together, Catholic and Protestant, male priest and female pastor, or so I told myself each time I approached the Catholic table for a blessing instead of the Eucharist. But there was a line from one of their liturgy that has stuck with me-- "May this sacrifice we pray, O Lord, advance the peace and salvation of all the world." And that part I believed, that the sacrifice at my hands the next morning at United Methodist altars in tiny country churches really would advance God's plan of liberation. 

As United Methodists, we hold that this is an open table. And so I would wince as I watched Catholics on Saturday night receive. I know a lot of other mainline denominations have open tables in practice, but we do both in practice and in official doctrine. Everyone is truly welcome to come receive, regardless of social status, income level, employment, or anything else. Communion teaches us and reenacts for us that God's grace truly reaches for everyone. It therefore witnesses against the world's systems that exclude, divide, and oppress. It teaches the church to be sure whatever we're doing Monday-Saturday, it's also an open table, welcome to absolutely everyone.

Communion leads to correct missiology, to liberating missiology. Communion is a meal, not a program or a charity project. It is fundamentally relational, binding individuals together into church through this common sacrament-- at the breaking of the bread in the United Methodist traditional Eucharistic liturgy: "We who are many are one body, because we all partake of this one loaf.". It teaches the church to make sure that whatever mission we engage in with the world, it is loving, and relationship oriented. Anonymous handouts and paternalistic programs that dictate and manipulate have no place in the church's missiology. They contain nothing of the intimacy of the Communion table. 

Communion is also a promise of God's provision. We come empty and hungry to simply receive grace that we cannot earn. It is a promise for the poor that God will feed them and care for them. It is a promise for those of us who are materially wealthier, and seek to be in ministry with the poor, that God will make it possible. I must not and cannot romanticize it. Being in ministry with the poor, with the working class, really is hard. Those years in Georgia were beautiful but difficult, standing with people in crisis after crisis, trying to make church happen with almost no resources. There were times I thought I couldn't keep going. But every time I received the Eucharist, whether in my churches or at weekly chapel in seminary, or received my weekly blessing from the Catholic priest and imagined myself receiving the wine and wafer, it was a reminder-- Jesus is enough. Jesus will feed my people. Jesus will feed me. Grounding my spirit in the Eucharist began to save me from patronizing delusions of grandeur. I can fix nothing and nobody. All I can do is offer Jesus, bread made holy not by my hands but by the Spirit. The Eucharist also saved me from paralyzing anxiety. I am not useless. I can offer Jesus, the bread of heaven. 

The Eucharist is also liberating because Jesus' flesh is liberating. In seminary, I spent a summer doing ministry on the streets of Asheville with the unhoused. I felt guilty for leaving my churches in Georgia, but I needed to learn more about my interest in liberation theology, and I needed to explore it in a different context. But in the middle of that summer, I got pretty sick. I was too sick to do anything but lie on the couch and read James Cone. I don't agree with everything Cone says but reading him is like drinking wine, sharp and pure and beautiful. And addictive, really. It was perhaps providential that I had nothing to do but read him in that time and space. I did not know what lay ahead of me after graduation, but I knew whatever I did it would have to involve serving the God of the oppressed, to quote the title of one of Cone's books. Central to Cone's theology is that Jesus is black. Not literally-- Jesus was Middle Eastern, not African (although his skin and hair surely looked more like a black person's than like mine). But Jesus, a homeless Jew born in poverty, murdered unfairly by an unjust state's worst tool of torture, is the Word to the world that God is on the side of the oppressed. And of course, the cross ends not with murder but with resurrection! The resurrection is God's promise to liberate all the oppressed, like Jesus. Unlike Cone, I do believe the cross and the empty tomb are also about the forgiveness of sins, and life beyond death, and sanctification, and so many other things. But the narrative of liberation is an unmistakable part of the Christ event. 

And in the Eucharist, we enter into the story. We join the feast of the resurrection. We participate in God's plan to redeem broken bodies. Our own, and all the ones around us.  

I think that modern Methodism has lost its historic focus on both the Eucharist and liberation theology. Wesley insisted on community with the poor as a means of grace, and though he would have been a millionaire because of his popular writings, he lived just above the poverty line because he gave so much money away, and taught his followers to do the same. Wesley also taught the duty of constant Communion, trying to receive it every day. In fact, Methodism as an institution, rather than a para-church movement loosely affiliated with the Church of England, began because there were no priests in America to give American Methodists Communion and baptism. Perhaps one of many reasons we have lost a focus on Eucharist and liberation is because we have lost the relatedness of these things. 

If Eucharist is all about me and my relationship with Jesus, let's just nix it and sing another song. But if Communion is also about God's plan of liberation for the oppressed, then I have a sacred duty, a wondrous privilege, to participate. If liberation theology is just Monday-Saturday stuff, it becomes easy to ignore and easy to write off as a liberal agenda rather than essential to the character of God. 

No, we need both. We need to follow Jesus, from the backwater town of Nazareth, who served the poor and the outcast on the other side of the tracks in Galilee, whose humble meal of bread and wine enfolds us in God's plan of liberation. 

Why Real Presence at Communion Changes Everything

In seminary, I took a class called "History and Theology of the Eucharist" only because it was held on Tuesday afternoon when I was otherwise free and I needed an upper level history elective. I'm really thankful I did. I learned that my assumptions about the meaning of Communion-- that it was a nice way of remembering Jesus' sacrifice on the cross-- did not match the Eucharistic theology of the early church, of John Wesley, or indeed of most of Christendom for most of Christian history. For Methodists, Communion is not just a memorial, a metaphor. It's a sacrament-- Jesus is really present in that bread and cup. Communion really conveys grace; God is at work; it's not a merely human activity. (That memorial theology came from Zwingli during the Protestant Reformation and was really only embraced by the Baptist wing of the ecclesial family tree. From a historical perspective, the burden of proof is on them to explain why this meal in which Jesus says "This is my body" is "just" a symbol, not on the whole rest of the Christian family to explain why Jesus is clearly here.) I think a lot of Methodists don't understand real presence, many of us formed by more  Baptist leaning preaching. We fail to understand our real heritage. We repeat the cliche, a misquote of Augustine-- Communion is an outward and visible sign of an inward, invisible grace. Augustine actually said VISIBLE sign and INVISIBLE grace. All Augustine meant was that the bread and cup are physical manifestations of God's invisible grace. He did not mean that Communion only matters on an inward level. (Augustine got a lot of stuff wrong, at least from a Wesleyan standpoint, but he was right about Communion.) No, Jesus is really there at the table, bigger than our inward thoughts. Jesus is really there, not just in my soul but in the whole communion of saints gathered around the table.
So why does a robustly Wesleyan theology of real presence matter, practically speaking?
(1) Communion puts the role of the pastor in proper perspective.
It was a month or two into my first year of ministry back in Georgia when a wonderful church member invited me to come to an event on a Saturday night and offered to pick me up. I was too inexperienced to consider why that would be a bad idea, and so busy that week by the time Saturday evening rolled around, my sermon still wasn't done. I figured I'd wrap it up after my time with this family was over. Long story short, I got home at about 2 am. The whole thing was my fault and taught me valuable lessons about keeping Saturday nights unscheduled and about how "no thank you" can be a loving, pastoral response. My sermon the next day was terrible-- rambling and unfocused and finally, mercifully, over. But then, thank God, we had Communion. And in spite of my ineptitude, Communion fed everybody, and I could rest secure in that. When the sermon is the climax of every worship service, it communicates that worship is the pastor's show. It perpetuates the misconception that the pastor is the expert. But in a service of Word and Table, properly understood, Jesus is revealed as clearly the true host of the meal, the true bread and wine and source of life, the true Lord of the church, really present.
(2) Communion is real.
I think there's a lot of bad liturgical theology (meaning, understanding of what worship is) out there. We often think about worship as primarily for us. We are there to see our friends, to sing our favorite songs, to hear a message that makes us feel good. The way a lot of people talk about worship exposes this common misconception-- we say "I was fed today" or "I didn't get a lot out of that service." We are often practical atheists, to borrow a Wesleyan term, professing belief in God but acting as though God isn't there. We but often don't think of God as an active presence in the worship service, acting on us. A proper Eucharistic theology opens our eyes. (As Luke puts it, He was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.) Communion isn't a memorial we act out. It's the risen Lord Jesus Christ really there, for real! Digesting this truth over time helps us think about and talk about worship as a real encounter with God. Which is crucial in a time of declining worship attendance. If worship is just a human thing, a time of learning or a time of inspiration  I can get that just as well or better on my couch with Spotify, Ted Talks, or a book and a glass of wine. Unchurched generations will not be compelled by worship as another product of inspiration in a market already saturated, nor will the nominal, C&E (Christmas and Easter only) Christians. But worship as an active encounter with the living God... that's unique. That's an extraordinary claim. In my opinion, it's one worth getting out of bed for. It's real. 
(3) Communion teaches us about real faith. 
It takes faith to believe Jesus is really there in a special way. It takes little faith to believe it's just a symbol. It takes faith to believe in a mystery we cannot see or explain. Communion properly understood, therefore, inculcates precisely the same kind of faith we need beyond Sunday morning. I found my own faith grow exponentially the year I shed my quasi-Zwinglianism. I learned to see Jesus not only in bread and wine, but in similarly humble places. A traffic jam on Atlanta's crowded highways leading me to prayer. Shooting the breeze with seminary buddies. Making omelets with the farm fresh eggs gifted to me by parishioners. My own slowly improving preaching, as Sunday morning filled me with an energy I did not understand and could not have come from me. My parishioners-- their sporadic attendance, their rough voices that in my ears sounded like choirs of angels, their patience with their young and over-eager pastor. Belief in the real presence of Christ at the Communion table cultivates a sacramental imagination, teaches us to see Jesus everywhere. 
This is just the beginning of what I want to say about why sacramental theology is so important, about how it has been so transformative in my own spirituality. More to come...