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When I was a very young child, six,
seven, something like that, my parents took me to church. It must have
been my first experience of communion; because I remember seeing the
people go around with little trays of juice and all the things that went
with that. Given my family history, we have voices that carry and we
tend to talk to loud; I remember saying rather loudly to my parents’
embarrassment, everybody could hear, “Oh boy! Koolaid!” True story. I
remember doing it. I don’t remember how old I was. My parents, of
course, were going like this…. But out of the mouth of babes, you
know. Communion is often misunderstood in the church. Part of the
reason is because there are different understandings of it in the Church
family, capital C, not just in the small c of the local church. There
is just a misunderstanding because of it. Today we are going to talk
about the Lord’s Supper. We are going to talk about communion. In a
series of sermons I started last week, I talked about baptism last week,
they’re kind of housekeeping sermons. Every now and then we just need
to talk about some things that we believe, so we talked about baptism;
we are talking about the Lord’s Supper today, and next week about
marriage, and the next week about funerals, as kind of a summer series.
The first question is: where does the
Lord’s Supper come from? Well, like baptism, the Lord’s Supper comes
right out of the Old Testament. It finds its roots in the Old
Testament, particularly in the Passover event of Exodus. You remember,
everybody has seen The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston, and it is
a fairly accurate portrayal of it; but we all know the story. The
Israelites were enslaved by the Egyptians. Moses is chosen to go tell
the Pharaoh to “let the people go;” of course, he refuses and God sends
judgments against Egypt, plagues that come and the very last plague is a
plague against the first born of Egypt. That night, as the angel of
judgment, or death, is about to come, the Israelites are instructed to
have a meal, a hasty meal in which they sacrificed a lamb. They cooked
it and had other things and unleavened bread because they symbolically
had no time to put leaven in the bread. It was a meal of haste. They
were getting ready to go. But as they sacrificed the lamb to get ready
to eat it, they took the blood and they put it on the doorpost of their
houses so that when the angel of death came and saw the blood, they
passed over the house. When Jesus has his last meal with his disciples,
it is a Passover Seder meal, Seder meaning service, because the
instructions to the Israelites were “You are to have this meal every
year. You are to do this and when your children ask you why you do it,
tell them why; that the angel of death passed over.” When Jesus is
having the meal with his disciples, this is the meal. This is the
meal. It comes right out of that; it has its roots in that.
So the scripture I have chosen for
you is a portion of Exodus, Chapter 12, just the portion of it that
talks about remembering; because that’s very important when we talk
about the Lord’s Supper, the idea of remembering. Then, of course, I am
going to read from 1 Corinthians Chapter 11 where Paul talks about the
Lord’s Supper. So the scripture starts with Exodus 12. I realize that
some of you may or may not be able to read this, but if you can read
this with me, please do this. Let’s read together. (Exodus 12:24-28)
“Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your
descendants. When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he
promised, observe this ceremony. And when your children ask you, ‘What
does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover
sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in
Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’” Then
the people bowed down and worshiped. The Israelites did just what the
Lord commanded Moses and Aaron.
Flash forward to the ceremony the
Church does, it has its roots in that and Paul talks to the Corinthians
about this, and we will talk more about that incident in a minute; but
he recounts the institution of the Lord’s Supper, communion, that Jesus
gave. Let’s read that together.
(1 Corinthians 11:23-26)
For I received from the
Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was
betrayed, took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said,
“This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In
the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new
covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of
me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim
the Lord’s death until he comes.
Let us pray together.
Lord, we ask for a greater
understanding of this wonderful meal that we eat. We also ask that you
be with us now as we hear the words, may we not only understand but know
more and know you more. We give you this time Lord, in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
First I would like to make a little
disclaimer. I believe that understanding happens through the clarifying
of differences and it is not my purpose this morning to bash other
people, other Christians who believe different things about the
communion. There are huge differences and we have to understand them,
and I am going to try to be fair to other folks. But I want you to
understand so that you can also understand what, as Presbyterians, what
we believe. So I want to start with, what exactly is the Lord’s Supper
to Christians? What happens? Part of the answer to that question is
where is Jesus in the elements? What does it mean to us? Well I want
you to imagine for a minute, I toyed with the idea of actually having
four stands with four bread and cups, but imagine a timeline, or a line
of different points of view. This is one and there are actually four
different views, broadly speaking, of the Lord’s Supper among
Christians, four broad views.
The first, of course, would be the
Roman Catholic view. Now the Roman Catholic view wants to say that when
Jesus said “This is my body and this is my blood” it’s very literal.
The problem of course, is that the bread still looks like bread and the
wine still looks like wine; but they want to say that Jesus is the bread
and the wine is the blood. So when the priest stands over the elements
and pronounces the institution, the words they use, it is transformed;
or for you theologians, it is called transubstantiation. In other
words, the substance of the bread and wine, even though the appearance
remains the same, the substance is changed so that what you have here is
the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ. The view is that as you
take the supper, it has power in and of itself, like maybe a flashlight
or some kind of instrument that has power in and of itself, to change
lives. That’s why for Catholics the supper is so important. This is a
time when you come before the Lord and you receive God’s grace in a
literal sense by eating and drinking. It is very holy to them. I was
at an Army event this past week and a priest was talking about this a
little bit and he was going to give his service; then he had to go to
something at another event. He said “But I can’t leave the elements
because it is very important. I can’t leave them where they are. I
have to go back and get them and take care of them because what was left
after the service was still the body and blood of Jesus” and they have
to take care of that. They have to do something with that.
Now the next view came about after
what was called The Reformation. You had the view of Lutherans, or
Martin Luther. Now, Martin Luther wanted to say that the Roman Church
was absolutely wrong in thinking of the bread and the wine as literal
pieces of the body and blood of Christ. However, Martin Luther didn’t
want to get rid of the idea of the presence of Jesus in the elements; he
was after all a priest and a monk. He wanted to have that, and yet also
say this part is wrong. So he wanted to say that the presence of Jesus
was over and under and around the elements; and for you theologians, you
aren’t going to remember this, but I will tell you anyway, it’s called
consubstantiation. O.K. I said it. We’ll move on. It is kind of like
the air that we breathe. The air is not a part of us and yet it is all
around us; it’s under us and, in some sense, it’s in us because we
breathe it. That’s the concept of Martin Luther.
Now I am going to move past what we
would call the Presbyterian view to another view which basically says
that the Lord’s Supper is only a memorial, or a remembrance; and in the
act of partaking, we just remember what Jesus has done. Now before I go
any further, I want to say that this is a very biblical view because it
really does tie into the Passover. Remember what we talked abut the
Passover, “Whenever your children ask you why you do this, you say to
them, ‘it is because we are remembering that God delivered, rescued, the
people from the hands of the Egyptians.’” In the same way when we
partake of the supper, Jesus says “Do this in remembrance of me.
Remember what I have done.” We’ll talk a little bit more about that in
a minute. It is very biblical, nothing wrong about it at all.
But Presbyterians, reformed people,
we call it, Reformation, have a slightly middle view between, say
Martin Luther, and those folks who only say it is a remembrance. Well,
what is the Presbyterian view? And I will say it is mine, because I
like it very much. I think it doesn’t answer all the questions, it
doesn’t nail down everything, but Presbyterians want to say that the
bread is still the bread and the wine or grape juice is still grape
juice; there’s nothing magical here, in other words the elements
themselves don’t have power in themselves. In other words they are not
transformed into grace; when you eat it you are not eating power; you
are not being transformed in yourself; you are not being touched in that
way. But Presbyterians want to say, that as we eat the meal, God has
promised to be present with us as we eat. We want to hold on to the
presence of God in some special way in eating the meal. We certainly
talk about it being a remembrance but it is a little bit more than that
for us, a little bit more than that. There is nothing transforming in
that in the sense of eating it; but it is in the process of eating
together and having God with us that’s transforming, if that makes some
sense. Now that’s the line I want to do down. I want to talk about
that a little more. Of course, we could spend hours talking about all
the views and all the things like that. As I promised you last week, it
is not my intention to have a seminary class here or to lecture you, but
to simply help you understand what we confess as a Presbyterian Church.
For Presbyterians I have divided this
up into three things. There is an invitation to remember and hear the
word of God. For Presbyterians, and particularly for Protestants, the
transformational power is not in the communion service itself, or the
bread and the wine; rather transformation comes from the hearing of the
gospel, the word of God, the action of God Himself through the Holy
Spirit as we hear that word. It is in that; that’s were the power lies.
So Presbyterians particularly, and for Protestants in general, there is
an almost absolute thing; that is, when you have a communion service you
must always have a least a reading of the word of God through the
scriptures, or sermon, or a meditation or a devotion to explain what it
means; to explain the gospel again, to hear it once more. Because, in
the bible, we believe that faith comes from the hearing of the message;
and the message is heard through the word of Christ. That’s what we
believe. So there’s this invitation to hear the word, preached from the
bible, but also preached in the table. There is a sermon in the table.
Remember what Paul said, “As long as you eat and drink of this, you
proclaim, what? The Lord’s death, until he comes again.” Now we have
heard the gospel many times, but I will say this to you again, our
message to the world is rather strange. It was strange in Paul’s day;
it is strange for our day. We proclaim the death of our God. We are
going to sing one of the great hymns of the Church at the end, “When I
Survey the Wondrous Cross.” For me it is the perfect communion hymn.
Isaac Watts says “Forbid it Lord that I should boast, save in the death
of Christ my God. All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice
them to you.” But why are we proclaiming the Lord’s death? The
apostles got up and went all over the world proclaiming the death of
Jesus, their God. Who else would do that kind of thing? Even today if
you ask a Muslim, “Did Jesus die on the cross?” they would say “No, of
course not, that’s heresy.” They don’t believe that God would ever let
a prophet die. Jesus died on the cross for us, why? Because that’s the
path to forgiveness. That’s the path to reconciliation with God. It’s
the path of the blood of Jesus covering us, just like on the doorposts,
because there is the message that all of us have sinned, all of us in
word and thought and deed and things that are left undone. We have
broken God’s law and deserve His condemnation. God will judge sin, will
judge us. It is a scary thing to fall in the hands of God when you
don’t have help, but God has given us help. That is the message of the
gospel; that Jesus has come and died for us. So there is wonder and
glory in the death, the broken body and shed blood. There’s a sermon in
the table. The word is preached and that is where the power lies, not
in the bread and the wine, but in the message. And He also says, not
only do we proclaim Christ’s death; we proclaim it until he comes
again. He’s not dead; he died but he’s not dead. He has risen and we
will rise. So there is forgiveness, reconciliation, new life now, and
eternal life to come, all in this little table here.
We are also invited into communion
with each other. It is called communion for a good reason. If you go
back and read 1 Corinthians 11, now Paul’s letter to the Corinthians,
unlike Philippians, is not terribly joyful. Matter of fact he talks to
the Corinthians like a Dutch uncle. He gets after them. Every other
page, he says “You’re doing this wrong, this wrong, this wrong; get your
act together; do this.” Well, including the communion. Now you can
imagine the church of Corinth, coming to a house or meeting place, they
are going to have communion; and maybe there is a pile of bread on the
table and there is some wine. What they were literally doing is they
were coming in before anyone got started. People were coming in and
eating it all up. He says, “This is not communion. If you were hungry,
you should have eaten at home. You’re eating and drinking condemnation
under yourself because you are not eating, what? Together! You are not
taking into account the body of Christ and everybody else.” There’s
communion with each other. It’s a family affair, just like baptism.
This sacrament is a family thing. It is not that you can’t have
communion in a small group; but it is done in a certain way so that it
is identified as that, and it is not just eating. It’s why when I go to
visit someone and take communion to houses or to a shut-in, I usually
take a deacon or an elder with me, and why is that? It is because they
represent the congregation. They represent the family. It is a family
thing. It is communion with one another. It’s not just to ourselves.
It’s not about us, anyway. There is also communion with God, but we are
looked at as the body of Christ. That’s another sermon. We are saved
as individuals, but we are saved together. The individualism that is
out there today is just flat wrong. You can be a Christian and not go
to church, it’s true; but you will never be a mature or strong
Christian. That’s why I’ve call it “Dinner With God.” Because when we
come here and we have this, God invites us to dinner with Him, to
remember, to celebrate, to be renewed, to repent, to come together as a
family and to come with Him; because in the bible, that relationship
with God is paramount and His presence and His incredible blessing. We
say as we eat the communion, the presence doesn’t reside in the bread,
but it is here. Of course, God is everywhere; but as we hear the word,
as we are renewed by that, somehow we are aware of God’s presence in a
way that we are not otherwise.
And last but not least, we are
invited into trusting faith. Faith in the bible is not just believing
facts. If someone comes from the outside and they are an atheist or they
don’t really know about God or that sort of thing, and they eat and
drink from the table, nothing bad is going to happen to them. It’s just
that nothing good is going to happen to them, because there is not power
in the bread. They may change by hearing the word; they may come to
faith that way. But if we come, we come with faith. Well you may say,
“Well I don’t have much faith today. I am having a lot of doubts.” But
with faith as a grain a mustard seed, you come and you find blessing by
having faith. That was the issue that they wrestled with a lot in the
Middle Ages. What if someone takes the supper without believing, or
whatever? Well nothing really. It’s a family affair. It’s meant for
believers. It’s meant for all of us to have an opportunity to come and
say to the Lord, “You know, I need you to nourish my faith yet again. I
need you to strengthen me. I need your presence in my life. I need my
friends and my family around me.” It is a time of renewal because again
the gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who
believes.
This is a time of renewal. It is a
time to come before the Lord and say to Him, “Wherever you are, this is
my life” because it is real life. That’s what I love about this. You
know, Jesus could have chosen anything to commemorate, to remember, his
death; but he chose a meal. This is real life. He chose to connect
with the biblical Passover; but it is a meal and it is done together.
It is a time, as the hymn says at the last, “Where the whole realm of
nature mine, that were present far too small, Love so amazing, so
divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”
Would you pray with me?
Father we thank you for this meal.
We know that it is misunderstood. We have misunderstood it but we ask
for greater understanding. We ask that we might know the meaning of it
more as we come we would not take it for granted; but that we would
prepare our hearts and minds; that we would look forward to it; that we
would see you and your presence, and hear your word once again --
reminded of what you have done for us through the cross and through
Jesus and through his resurrection. And now Lord, we give you this time
and ask that you would guide us and keep us and show us your love once
again. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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