For their 50th anniversary, my parents flew the whole family—all 18 of us— to Greece for a lavish, once-in-a-lifetime vacation. One night at the foot of the Acropolis was dedicated as the “anniversary dinner,” and everyone looked forward to the celebration in honor of my parents and their exemplary marriage. I can’t imagine deciding to pass on the invitation. Nor can I imagine that if there were a conflict with my siblings, I’d allow it to ruin the evening. But sadly, the modern church often neglects the great invitation it has to a lavish dinner or ruins it with division. For all their failures, the assembly at Corinth still regularly met to obey Christ’s command to “do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19) by sharing a meal in which they fellowshiped with the Lord himself (1 Cor. 10:16–17). The New Testament refers to this practice with various names, such as the “love feast” in Jude 12 and “the breaking of bread” in Acts 2:42. But Paul describes the practice in 1 Corinthians 11:20 with a well-chosen expression that raises the stakes of its importance and sarcastically critiques the Corinthians: “the Lordly Supper” (kyriakon deipnon). Paul argues that whatever the Corinthians were doing, it did not constitute this “Lordly supper,” and by missing it, they came together as a church for the worse instead of the better (v. 17). With so much at stake, it’s worth thinking about what disqualified their religious communal meal from being “Lordly.” Paul’s use of this expression offers two correctives that have been needed throughout history and continue to be needed today: against apathy and against elitism. Against Apathy English translations usually have “the Lord’s Supper” in 1 Corinthians 11:20 as if “Lord” were a possessive noun (ESV, NIV, CSB, NASB, etc.). While this makes for the most natural reading in English, the word is an adjective that does not quite function as a possessive like we find, for example, in “the Lord’s death” in verse 26 or “the cup of the Lord” in verse 27. Instead, the word translated “Lord’s” in verse 20 is surprisingly rare, used only here and in Revelation 1:10. From inscriptions and secular usage, the lexicon by Moulton and Milligan prefers “imperial” (so also Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek; Liddell, Scott, and Jones; Lampe). I like the idea of translating this as “the imperial supper,” as it would grab our attention to the word’s uniqueness. Depicting this practice as imperial would have brought to mind images of elaborate feasts or symposiums in which only the most important and exalted could participate (see Luke 14:7–11). Yet the word looks similar to “Lord,” so “Lordly” might be the best option. It would not only communicate an imperial idea but also relay its obvious proximity with the word “Lord” (kyrios). By describing communion as a ‘Lordly supper,’ Paul emphasizes the dignity and honor involved in the ordinance. By describing communion as a “Lordly supper,” Paul emphasizes the dignity and honor involved in the ordinance. Though Paul clearly critiques the Corinthians’ practice in this section, his answer is not to disregard the meal, as if it were a dispensable part of their worship or to demote it to infrequent observance. Instead, Paul frames it as a royal feast that they would be fools to ignore. Debates about the presence of Christ aside, Paul nonetheless shows a “high” view of the ordinance. In doing so, Paul’s use of this expression rebukes the apathy that plagues so much of Christendom. Far too many today miss this ordinance because they do not esteem it as “the Lordly meal.” Against Elitism The Corinthians’ problem was not apathy toward the meal. It was elitism. And here’s the twist: The Corinthians thought they had accepted the invitation to this great supper, but Paul’s critique reveals they had shown up to the wrong celebration. The next verse says their practice amounted only to each eating “his own meal” (11:21). From the start of the letter, Paul has addressed their schisms (1:10–13) that manifested worldly wisdom in which one group boasted over another (vv. 18–31). The same problem evidently affected their practice of communion, too, so much so that Paul sarcastically says, “There must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized” (11:19)! The Corinthians thought they had accepted the invitation to this great supper, but Paul’s critique reveals they had shown up to the wrong celebration. According to this verse, Paul provides the reason why the Corinthians’ practice of communion had failed to live up to the standard of the “Lordly supper.” This is Paul’s sarcasm at its finest. By treating the meal as a Roman banquet in which one vies for honor to the exclusion of others (see v. 22), they had ironically demoted communion to just a common meal. Even worse, Paul jabs at them by saying that the one who should have been drinking “the cup of blessing” (10:16) now “drinks judgment on himself” (11:29). The Corinthians had rightly valued this meal as “imperial,” but they forgot who the true “emperor” was. Paul refers to Jesus as “Lord” (kyrios) seven times in the short span of 13 verses (vv. 20–32). It is this Lord—the Lord Jesus—whose death is proclaimed in this meal (v. 26). This death by crucifixion is foolishness to the world (1:18) and allows one to only boast in the Lord (v. 31). For the Lord In contrast to some who see little value in the meal, other believers today, like the Corinthians, see its great value but decide this is an opportunity to showcase their own spirituality or “genuine status” (see 11:19) over and above other genuine members of Christ’s body. But the meal proclaims the most exalted one, the Lord, dying—and therefore defies being co-opted for selfish purposes of self-promotion. Whenever it is used for selfish purposes, whenever it becomes anything besides communing with the crucified, risen, and returning Christ, we miss it as the “Lordly meal.”

One of the most surprisingly edifying moments in pop culture this year came at the Academy Awards on March 15. Accepting her Best Actress Oscar for her role in Hamnet, Jessie Buckley used a good portion of her speech to celebrate family and motherhood. She praised her husband, Fred, “the most incredible dad,” and told her 8-month-old daughter, “I love being your mom.” Then, noting that the Oscars fell on Mother’s Day in the United Kingdom, Buckley dedicated her award “to the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart.” Credit: Agata Grzybowska / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC It was a lovely moment and absolutely fitting, given the role for which Buckley won the Oscar. As Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes, in Hamnet (PG-13), Buckley delivers one of the most visceral portrayals of motherhood ever seen on film, inhabiting the emotions and physicality of motherhood in a way my wife, Kira (a mother of four), resonated with and posted about: I could not look away from Agnes in Hamnet. My body had a stress response as I watched her birth pains, her costly sacrifice raising her children—doing everything she could to heal her sick child, falling asleep as she served them at their feet. It’s an agonizing love, the love of a mother. Interestingly, one of the other Best Actress nominees, Rose Byrne, was also nominated for a role specifically exploring the intensity of motherhood. And though Byrne didn’t win, her acclaimed performance in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (rated R for language and drug use) is also impressive and visceral. She plays a mom, Linda, who (like Agnes in Hamnet) is left alone to care for a sick child while her husband is away working for weeks on end. I thought of these films as I viewed Omaha (PG-13), a gorgeous new indie film about a widowed father (John Magaro) struggling to solo parent his young daughter and son. All three films are about the distinct emotional architecture of parenthood and the profound difficulty of carrying the burdens largely alone. The ways the films differ, however, reflect the range of feelings about parenthood in contemporary culture. Parenting When Dad (or Mom) Is Absent Central to these movies is the burden of solo parenting. The harrowing trials Agnes (Buckley) and Linda (Byrne) endure as moms are aggravated by the fact that their husbands aren’t present during the hardest and bleakest parenthood moments. Omaha finds a father (Magaro) losing his house, out of work, and generally lost as he tries to care for his two children after their mother dies. It’s interesting how each film depicts and characterizes the absence of the other parent. In If I Had Legs (directed by Mary Bronstein), Linda’s husband (Christian Slater) is a cruise ship captain, almost always away from home. Until the final moments of the film, he’s only heard—a shrill, aggressive voice on the phone, barking at Linda for one reason or another. Naturally, Linda feels unseen and cruelly underappreciated as she deals with mounting problems on the home front. Linda’s motherhood journey is positioned as a lonely, thankless, rather bleak endeavor made worse by the lack of sympathy or partnership from the father. The film’s centering on the mother, and minimizing (even villainizing) the father, reflects a cynical contemporary view of parenthood that sees any asymmetry in a father and mother’s roles as inherently abusive. Hamnet (directed by Chloé Zhao) has a similar, but more nuanced, dynamic between Agnes and her husband, Will (Shakespeare, brilliantly played by Paul Mescal). Wanting to pursue a career in the theater, Shakespeare spends long stretches in London while Agnes is in Stratford caring for their home and children. There’s tension—but mostly a shared understanding and mutual respect. It becomes more tense when the bubonic plague visits the home and the parental burden falls on Agnes to nurse her children back to health and, sadly, cradle one of them in his dying moments. While Agnes certainly experiences the trauma of their son Hamnet’s death in a way her husband doesn’t, the film explores how shared grief ends up bringing them closer. Hamnet may make the mother the primary heroine, but the father isn’t villainized. And that’s a key difference—reflective of a view of parenthood that accepts asymmetry of roles and burdens without seeing it as unjust or a source of resentment. Omaha’s missing parent is a result of death, not vocational choice. But the resulting loneliness and struggle of solo parenting is rendered with just as much empathy. In some ways, the father’s plight in Omaha is even more agonizing because no one chose this plight. And while the film leaves many details of his situation undefined (Is there no extended family who could help? What happened to his job?), we see enough to know he loves his kids and is trying his best to protect them and give them a better future. Courtesy: Greenwich Entertainment The gut-punch ending (which I won’t spoil) puts an unexpected accent on the shape sacrificial love can take. Omaha is written by Robert Machoian, who often explores the moral quandaries of fatherhood and how doing the right thing can mean doing a hard thing. A handful of moments in Omaha had me in tears. One happens when the father and his kids are driving on a highway and the young son plays a recording of the late mother singing the American folk song “In the Pines” as a sort of lullaby to her children. It’s the only time the mom is “present” in the film, but it’s haunting. Her voice soothes the kids in a way the father simply can’t, and the forever absence of that distinctive, motherly genre of love leaves the dad both sad and also angry. It’s a gutting scene. It captures how the void left by an absent mother or father can be a powerful apologetic for God’s good design of complementarity. A father and a mother play distinct, equally valuable roles in a family. It’s difficult for one parent to play both roles. Centered on Children Another fascinating way these three films differ is in the way the children are portrayed. A jarring stylistic choice in If I Had Legs, for example, is the total perspectival focus on the mother, whose stressed-out face we see in close-up for much of the film. Even while her 7-year-old daughter—who refuses to eat and must be fed through a feeding tube—is a major character, we never see her face (at least until the film’s final seconds). The daughter is unnamed, faceless, just a voice imposing constant stress and burdens (never joy) on her mother. Courtesy: A24 While this conceit effectively centers the film on motherly mental health and captures real truths about parenting (how one-way and claustrophobic it can feel), it ends up dehumanizing the daughter. It risks turning the child into a villain. In this dynamic, the film removes a key element of “the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart.” A child is never just an abstract thing prompting a parent to ceaseless sacrifice. A child is an embodied person, one who comes into existence within the mother’s own body and is forever bound up with her identity. A child is never just an abstract thing prompting a parent to ceaseless sacrifice. A child is an embodied person. Hamnet more effectively captures this enmeshment. As it foregrounds all three birth moments of Agnes’s kids, it situates the children as not abstractions but tangible beings holistically linked to their mother. The film goes on to humanize the children in delightful ways, giving them meaningful scenes where they love and are loved by their mother, their father, and their siblings. As it does, it dignifies childhood and makes the grief of losing a child more personal and heartbreaking. Omaha’s story is even more centered on the children. Magaro delivers a powerful performance as the father, but the kids are the heart of the film—especially Molly Belle Wright as the daughter (you might remember her from The Best Christmas Pageant Ever). The film at times reminded me of Debra Granik’s sublime Leave No Trace, also about a daughter of a struggling dad. Given the story’s heaviness, Omaha might have felt more somber than it does. But first-time director Cole Webley fixes his camera often on the children, capturing their innocence and joy in little tableaux every parent will recognize: flying kites, swimming in hotel pools, jumping on beds, playing “would you rather?” with silly scenarios, pulling too many paper towels from a bathroom dispenser. While the other two films focus more on the oft-harrowing hardships of being a parent, Omaha centers on why parents endure so much: for the love of their children and the preservation of their innocence and joy. Bet on the Future Throughout Omaha, and even as it nears a wrenching climax, there’s a sense of hope and future. Images of blue-sky-reflecting puddles after a storm. Butterflies after metamorphosis. There’s a sense of this hope also in Hamnet, where even the boy’s tragic, untimely death catalyzes a hopeful future in the form of masterful art (the play Hamlet) that has blessed millions over centuries. For parents, the future is a huge piece of the puzzle of how and why we endure such sacrifice, pain, and anxiety on behalf of our kids. We do it for their future and the future of the world. It helps to remember the biblical wisdom in Psalm 127 that characterizes children as a gift we receive (“a heritage from the LORD,” v. 3), steward as arrows in a quiver for a time (vv. 4–5), and then shoot out for a purpose and legacy beyond us. Our kids aren’t our eternal possessions. They’re transitory gifts we steward. We pour ourselves out presently for our kids’ fruitful futures. Children aren’t accessories we selfishly collect to enhance our lives but gifts we gratefully receive and then willingly give, for the sake of mission. Children aren’t accessories we selfishly collect for the enhancement of our lives but gifts we gratefully receive and then willingly give, for the sake of mission. On Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, watching a film that realistically depicts the joys and struggles of parenting is one way we can honor this high calling. But we should never sever the experience of parenthood from its purpose, which is to shape and steward lives for a future world they’ll bless. This is a message we especially need to remember as the world’s fertility crisis grows and we move ever closer to the sort of “no more babies” dystopia of Children of Men. Yes, child-rearing is hard, and babies are kind of inconvenient. But as Ben Sasse recently remarked in his astonishingly wise 60 Minutes interview, “Babies have always been an inconvenience and the most glorious thing you can do to enrich your family and to make a bet on the future.” So pursue parenthood, be fruitful and multiply. Bet on the future. The exhausting days, sleepless nights, and stressful responsibilities are worth it.

As America celebrates 250 years as a nation, some ask, does it matter if our nation prays together on the National Day of Prayer? Does God even pay attention to or hear us when we pray corporately as a nation?

When disappointment, loss, and uncertainty shake your faith, how do you stay spiritually steady?

As our nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its birth, let us, as believers, put our denominational differences aside for a day, so that we may join together to pray for our country.