I talked this week with Bar­bara Birch, who has a great arti­cle, The True Last Sum­mer, in the cur­rent issue of Friends Jour­nal on George Fox’s view that the final last sup­per was the spir­i­tu­al one found in Rev­e­la­tion 3:20.

As I admit in the author chat inter­view, this is one of my favorite passages:

Lis­ten! I am stand­ing at the door, knock­ing; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with you, and you with me… Let any­one who has an ear lis­ten to what the Spir­it is say­ing to the churches.”

Bar­bara’s using a mod­ern trans­la­tion. I must admit to being fond of the more archa­ic KJV’s “I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” What­ev­er the trans­la­tion, I find it a source of com­fort to know that the Heal­er, the Guide, the Christ Spir­it is right there want­i­ng to break bread with us. We are the lost sheep and He is out look­ing for us.

I think we mod­erns some­times believe that the Spir­it’s pres­ence is our midst is a rare occur­rence. We’re a skep­ti­cal peo­ple, ratio­nal and learned. We lock up poten­tial min­istry in sus­pi­cion and apply so many tests to our dis­cern­ment that we some­times fail to act at all. But what if com­mu­nion is just a qui­et knock away? What if the Com­forter is always near? A near­by pas­sage in Rev­e­la­tion says “because you are luke­warm and nei­ther cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth” and likens spir­i­tu­al gifts to a refin­er’s fire. “I reprove and dis­ci­pline those whom I love.”

On a warm day last year I was vis­it­ing the very love­ly Barnegat Meet­ing. I had been mulling this pas­sage the week before so laughed inward­ly with delight when I sat down and real­ized the promi­nence of doors on both sides open to the warm weath­er. I almost laughed out loud when a near­by wood­peck­er start­ed its rhyth­mic knock-knock-knock.

The True Last Sup­per: Bar­bara Birch 

A Quak­er author chat. Bar­bara Birch’s “The True Last Sup­per” appears in the June/July 2024 issue of Friends…

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