Psalm 100, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
I invite us to
joyfully and inter-generationally open our hearts to receive the following words
from a 1975 hymn titled, “We Come As Guests Invited” –
“We come as guests
invited, when Jesus bids us dine; His friends on earth united, to share the
bread and wine. We eat and drink
receiving, from Christ the grace we need; and in our hearts believing, on him
by faith we feed; with wonder and thanksgiving, for love that knows no end, we
find in Jesus living, our ever-present friend; renewed, sustained and given, by
token, sign and word, the pledge and seal of heaven, the love of Christ our
Lord.”
Well, faithful friends,
we have bread and we have juice from a vine … though it’s not wine. In a
few minutes, we will be “dining” on these.
We do so because we have been gathered here this day as honored guests
of Jesus. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, our Lord
had gathered us to feed us. And while
we will taste but a tiny bit of bread and take only a tiny sip of grape juice,
what He has to feed us is far greater than these fine gifts from the
earth. What He offers renews us and
sustains us and fills us completely. We
have been gathered here today so we can be gifted with our holy host’s love.
This is the purifying
love that scrubs clean the sin polluting our souls. This is the embracing love that accepts us
unconditionally. This is the empowering,
equipping love that sends us to care for all God’s good Creation and to follow
in the Way of divine justice, peace, and unity.
So, the bread and the
juice are not a snack. They are beautifully
symbolic of our Lord’s gift of redeeming love.
By them we remember that Jesus shed his body and blood for the
forgiveness of our sin. We remember that to know Jesus as our
ever-present friend is to do more than profess our belief in Him. It is to fully experience His living presence
in our mind, our hearts, and our very bodies.
It is to feel and to really be one with Him. The Holy Spirit helps us experience this
through the words and actions of this sacrament.
This is both a very
personal and a vital communal experience.
For example, every time I hold the communion cup I touch the juice with
my fingertip as I pray words about how His blood (that is, his sacrifice for
the forgiveness of sin) is flowing through me and is my only true
strength. This helps me actually
experience the sacrament, to be reminded that Jesus is not “out there” but is
as close and vitally important to my life as my pulse. And it reminds me that I don’t live just for
and by myself, I live in and for the Lord through family and greater
community. The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper,
then, reminds me and reminds us all of our truest identity as those who have
been baptized into the one community – the one body -- of the universal Church.
I hope you can tell
that I am really enthusiastic about celebrating this sacrament! And I am especially so once a year – today!
-- when many denominations all across the globe focus on our unity in the
Lord. Not our human born, culture-bound
differences, prejudices and wars. Not
our debatable biblical and theological issues.
Just our divinely inspired and gifted unity as the friends of Jesus
united on earth.
I’m always glad to
report that this global celebration of peace and unity in Christ began with the
Presbyterian Church. More specifically
-- by Rev. Dr. Hugh Thompson Kerr and church leaders at Shadyside Presbyterian
Church in Pittsburg, in the autumn of 1933.
This was an anxious year across the globe. Hitler had risen to power in Germany. It was the Great Depression. Hoover was out and FPR was in, responding to
the national economic anxieties and global fears with his fireside chats and
New Deal. With all of this in the
mix, the leadership at Shadyside wondered how on earth to counteract all the
broad pessimism and division among people, and especially among Christians.
When Dr. Hugh Kerr’s
son was asked many years ago how the idea of a World Wide Communion common date
grew beyond that initial wondering and into the global celebration it has
become, he replied, “The concept spread very slowly at the start. It was during
the Second World War that the Spirit caught hold, because we were trying to
hold the world together. World Wide Communion symbolized the effort to hold
things together, in a spiritual sense. It emphasized that we are one in the
Spirit and the Gospel of Jesus Christ."[i]
This spiritual
communion glue is still so very greatly needed in our anxious country and conflicted
world today. So today we take a
particular pause to join the Spirit in continuing to catch hold of the whole
world. World Wide Communion connects the
vast network of faithful folks who live to help sow seeds of reconciliation and
to harvest hope.
Speaking of a people
being connected in community, there is one overwhelmingly popular way this is
happening in the world today. While
World Wide Communion didn’t get any noticeable press in the news this past
week, the announcement that the online social networking site Facebook now has
over one billion people using it in
the world sure did. This is a really amazing milestone. Those of us who are part of the one billion
know why it’s valuable to us. I know I
rely on it to share photos and updates with family in Florida and with many
different circles of acquaintances I enjoy keeping in touch with. Facebook’s
founder, who happens to have been born in the Orwellion sounding year of 1984,
wrote these words of appreciation – “Thank you for giving me and my little team
the honor of serving you. Helping a
billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I most proud of
in my life.”
There’s no question Facebook
is helping meet the needs of multitudes trying to manage both life celebrations
and deep worldly woes. It’s a very
relevant social and support network. How’s
the universal Church doing on the same front?
For it’s estimated 2 billion plus
members?[ii]
We can answer this in
quite a few ways, some of which I find deeply frustrating, but let’s answer first
by absolutely affirming what we celebrate today. World Wide Communion reminds us is that the
universal Church is God’s great network.
Today, we login in together! The
common password is Jesus Christ!
And, importantly, we
are reminded this network is not ours. It is not, as a Presbyterian colleague has
written, “the property of any denomination or the possession of any movement
whether it be tagged liberal or conservative, moderate or centrist, left-wing
or right-wing. The church, wonder of
wonders, is God’s possession, despite
every wart and blemish that we humans bring to it. It is nothing less than the redemptive body
of Jesus Christ poured out in divine love for al creation.”[iii]
After we receive elements
of our Lord’s gracious love this morning, the formal sacrament will come to an
end, but our sacramental living will carry on.
Our words and actions will represent Christ, FPC and the universal
Church. Filled with the Spirit, we go forth to
companion one another and all our neighbors as God’s social, support and sacramental network. “Breaking bread with others is central to our
life as the Church. The ripples of
companionship move out even farther when we recognize that we are bound to
those we do not know, because we break bread with One who breaks bread with
them.”[iv]
Yes, let’s go forth from
this time of worship having been strengthened through the gifts of grain and
vine, and also with all the others spiritual gifts we’ve been given as
individual members of the Body of Christ.
Let’s go forth with thanksgiving, making a joyful noise to all the
earth! Amen.
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