It seems we stood and talked like this before . . .
One of my favorite Monty Python skits features Michael Palin as a TV host seated at a desk before a microphone and looking intently at his unseen TV audience. He smiles and begins: “Tonight we shall be discussing the phenomenon known as déjà vu.” At this point a hand reaches from the right of the screen and places a glass of water on Palin’s desk. He looks at it, picks it up, takes a sip, puts it down and the hand returns to take it away.
Again he looks at the camera, smiles and begins: “Tonight we shall be discussing the phenomenon known as déjà vu.” A hand reaches from the right of the screen and places a glass of water on Palin’s desk. He looks at it, picks it up, takes a sip, frowns quizzically, places the glass down and the hand returns to take it away.
Again he looks at the camera, smiles and begins: “Tonight we shall be discussing the phenomenon known as déjà vu.” A hand reaches from the right of the screen and places a glass of water on the desk. This time Palin looks startled, pauses, picks up the glass tentatively . . . and so on and so on.
The skit not only displays the nature of déjà vu but entertains us with the panic experienced by a man who gradually realizes he is trapped in the very topic of his evening’s discussion – in an everlasting sequence of déjà vu. I love that kind of humor!
There are similar experiences in Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time – where, for instance, Marcel dips a pastry into tea, the taste of which carries him back to an identical childhood experience that awakens him to a remembrance of his boyhood village of Combray – in all its charming detail.
All of which reminds me of a birthday present my wife gave me a long time ago: a CD featuring songs by Carly Simon – which included the Rodgers and Hart 1937 classic: It seems we stood and talked like this before / we looked at each other in the same way then, / But I can’t remember where or when. . . Some things that happen for the first time, / Seem to be happening again . . .
And so here we are today present at a table upon which bread and wine are set as they have been for centuries – ever since the Lord’s Supper of the Gospels. A déjà vu experience? At any rate a repeat of that Last Supper of Christ that perpetuates itself en route to our attendance at the heavenly banquet yet to come. It’s a supper ever recurring, never ending at which you among so many ancestors before you are privileged to be present – uniting you with the past and the future and more importantly with Christ himself – ever present in bread and wine.
This is basic sacramental theology, an improvement on Carly Simon’s lyrics, which can’t seem to remember when this meal happened – “for the first time.”