Communion
1 Corinthians 11:23-28
Steve Cornell tells of when he was a young boy, two things stood out for him on communion Sunday. First, he knew it would be a long service because the pastor had no intentions of cutting short his sermon. Second, he was afraid because n his deep voice, the pastor would always make a strong point of reading our Scripture from today from the King James Version and speak of guilt, the body and blood of Jesus, damnation and even death itself if you took of the elements with an impure heart. Communion can be a strange experience for many, even believers but maybe even more so for visitors. Randy Mueller tells the story of a friend who attended worship for the very first time and it was a communion Sunday. When they called people to receive the elements, he thought it was pretty cool that they were taking a break in the service for a snack. So you can imagine the shock when the person serving communion saw the man rip off a handful of bread and drink not one small individual cup of juice but four, drinking one after the other. The guest didn’t quite understand why they used such small cups.
From the outside looking in, Communion can be a little strange, frightening, confusing and even uncomfortable. It’s a bunch of people standing in line to dip a piece of bread in some grape juice and say they’re eating the body and blood of Christ. But there is a reason why followers of Jesus have gathered around this table for nearly 2,000 years. For the past few weeks, we’ve been in this series, “CSI:Church” attempting to rediscover the deeper meaning behind a lot of the stuff we do at church. Today, we’re going to take a closer look at Holy Communion.
Holy Communion is a sacrament. The early church borrowed the word sacrament from the Roman Army. A recruit for the Roman army became a soldier by undergoing a sacramentum or initiation which included taking an oath of office, and being branded behind the ear with the number of his legion. This resulted in new responsibilities as a soldier and new advantages soldiers lived better than the average citizen and veterans received special privileges and benefits. The church chose the word sacrament because communion is a rite that is simultaneously a spiritual and physical act, and in that the sacrament simultaneously receives new responsibilities and a new spiritual status before God.
A sacrament is basically an outward and visible sign of an inward change in a person’s life. Communion is one of two sacraments in the United Methodist Church, the other being baptism. A sacrament is determined by a simple question, “Did Jesus do it?” Communion was given to us by Jesus during the Passover celebration which was his last meal with his disciples. Jesus changed the meaning of the Passover bread and wine with these words, “’Take and eat; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’” Matthew 26:26-27
Paul’s letter to Corinth is the oldest book in the New Testament. Written before all 4 Gospels, it provides our earliest glimpse into the early church. What we see is that Communion has played a very important role in the life of the Church from the very beginning. Now the Corinthian church had all sorts of issues, one of which was thinking that since they professed their faith in Jesus and were assured of eternal life, they could keep living the life of sin and sensual pleasure Corinth was known for. Some of their dysfunction also had to do with how they were treating each other in communion. Back then, communion took place during a communal meal. Some wealthy Corinthians had turned this gathering into an excuse to eat too much and get drunk, leaving little left over for the people who really needed it, the poor. Paul writes to address this and other issues. So what is communion?
First, it’s participation in Christ’s death. “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” Communion isn’t just something we do in memory of Jesus, but somehow by receiving communion, we are caught up in the work of Jesus on the cross—right now, in the present. In 1 Corinthians 10:16 Paul asks, “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?” When we take comjunion, we are responding to Jesus’ call to die to ourselves and to sin itself and so one of the questions we need to ask when we come to this table is: What needs to die in me so that I may be like Christ?
Second, we experience the presence of Christ. These ordinary everyday elements become vessels for the very real presence of Jesus and his sacrificial work on the cross to meet us in a physical and tangible way. That alone should slow us down a bit. When we come to this table, the very presence of Jesus is here with us. For Jesus said, “Wherever two or three are gathered…” The Holy Spirit is always with us, but the mystery of communion is Jesus himself meets us through the bread and the cup. When you think of it that way, is there anywhere else you would rather be? That’s why Paul to mistreat the communion meal is to mistreat Jesus himself, “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.” And when we encounter the presence of Jesus, it changes us.
Third, we receive God’s grace. When we take this bread and drink this cup, we are receiving the benefits offered to us through Christ’s sacrificial death, God’s grace and forgiveness. That is why John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement referred to communion as a Means of Grace. This isn’t just a snack, and it isn’t something we do to simply remember Jesus, but communion presents us with an opportunity to encounter the grace of God offered to us through Jesus Christ in a real way. What is grace? It’s God’s unmerited favor or an undeserved gift of love and forgiveness. It is given and not earned. The only way to experience grace is to receive it.
Brenning Manning tells the story of Fiorello LaGuardia, who, when he was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression, was called by adoring New Yorkers 'the Little Flower' because he was only 5’4” and always wore a carnation in his lapel. He was a colorful character who used to ride the New York City fire trucks, raid speakeasies with the police department, take entire orphanages to baseball games, and whenever the New York newspapers were on strike, he would go on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids. One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter's husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. "It's a real bad neighborhood, your Honor." the man told the mayor. "She's got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson." LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said "I've got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions--ten dollars or ten days in jail." And then he reached into his pocket and paid the fine. Then he turned to the crowd in the court and said, “I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom 50 cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Baliff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant." $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren, 50 cents of that amount being contributed by the red-faced grocery store owner, while some 70 people, petty criminals, people with traffic violations, and NYC policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation. That’s grace.
Grace blesses us when we don’t deserve it. Grace is received when we fall down and fail, when we fall flat on our faces, when we’re exposed and are found out and forgiveness and restoration meets us. In fact, it is grace that finds us out. Grace meets us in the middle of our mess and offers us forgiveness and restoration. And grace takes away the power and control that fear, sin and failure have over us. It frees us up from our baggage. It empowers us to address our failure. In doing so, it takes away fear’s power and control over us so we don’t have to run anymore. That’s why Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” In other words, “Blessed are the ones who don’t have it all together and who are deeply aware of it because it is there that grace meets you and freedom begins.” When we come to this table we admit we are broken and thus make ourselves ready to receive God’s grace.
Grace calls us beyond ourselves. Grace speaks a fresh word about who we are created to be. To the woman who has been caught in adultery, Jesus said, “Go and leave your life of sin.” Grace meets us in our brokenness and then points us in a new direction. Grace says, “This may be what you have done, but this is not who you can be in me. This is why Paul says in Romans 2:4, “God’s kindness (or God’s grace) leads us to repentance.” God’s unmerited, undeserved love and acceptance moves us beyond where we are and points us in a new direction. N.T. Wright says, “Jesus wants not just to influence us, but to rescue us; not just to inform us, but to heal us; not just to give us something to think about, but to feed us…That’s what this meal is all about.” Communion grounds us in the truth that God loves us just as we are, but God also loves us enough to not leave us that way. I don’t know about you, but I need a fresh reminder of that. It can be way too easy to forget about what is true; to lose touch with my need for God’s grace.
I heard a story about a 4-year-old boy who was his parent’s first born and only son. His mother was pregnant again and the little boy was very excited about having a new brother or sister. Within a few hours of his parents bringing a new baby girl home from the hospital the boy asked is if he could be alone with the baby and the door shut. This made the parents a bit uneasy, but they had installed an intercom system when they found out they were having another child. So they let the little boy go into the baby’s room, shut the door, and then they listened to the intercom in their bedroom and heard him say to his three day old sister, “Tell me what God is like, I’ve almost forgot.” Communion is our opportunity to have a fresh encounter with God, to be in his presence, to be reminded we are loved and accepted and made new. We receive grace from that which is greater than us. This is why we serve communion regularly.
In a moment, we are going to receive communion. There may be people in the room who have never said yes to this grace in the first place. You’ve been trying to hold all of the pieces of life together on your own and it just keeps falling apart. Remember, the first step in being put back together is admitting you’re broken—we are all broken, and Jesus is the only one can make us new. If you have never said yes to the grace of God offered to us in Jesus, then now is your opportunity. God loves you and accepts you as you are, no matter what you have done or who you have fallen short, and calls you to what you were created to be in Him. What are the things you need to release to God—your fears, your anxieties, your habits, your failures, your addictions. And what do you need to receive from God? God’s grace is right here waiting for you. Thanks be to God. Amen and Amen.
