O Bread of Life, we come with minds hungry for truth. O Water of Life, we come with souls that are thirsty for forgiveness. O Way of Life, we come with wills that are searching for direction. In this hour of worship, O Lord, we pray that you will feed us, refresh us, and send us on our way rejoicing! Amen.

 

 

Good morning to each and every one of you. We’re glad you’re here with us today. If you happened to be with us last Sunday, you shared in one of the two sacraments or ordinances of the Christian Church – Disciples of Christ. You got to see, witness, or experience the sacrament, the ordinance, of baptism. It’s a wonderful, wonderful experience. It’s a holy time. It’s a symbolic acting out of all the Christian life that we know of in miniature. Everything we do in that hour is, in fact, symbolic. It’s what Christians do when they get around water.

 

What I want to follow up with today is the other sacrament, the other ordinance, of the Christian Church. I want us to talk about and discover what happens when we get around the Table. Remember again, that a sacrament is an outward, visible sign of an inward, spiritual grace.

 

Now, as we start to think about that today, perhaps the place to begin would be to ask you to try to remember your earliest recollection of participating in the Lord’s Supper. Can you remember that for yourself? I can still see that cup, that huge, gleaming, gold chalice in the hands of the priest behind the railing in the Episcopal Church where I grew up as a child. I remember being told by my elders that when I was old enough and went to confirmation classes, I, too, could go up to the altar, and kneel, and have a wafer placed upon my tongue, and take a sip of the wine from the chalice. Do you remember? Do you remember your first communion? I do.

Now, I also remember that sometimes very sacred things like baptism and communion have a little humorous side to them as well. Let me give you an illustration. 

 

One Sunday, Marcie, our oldest who was going to school here, brought a friend from the university to worship with us. We’ll call his name Dave. Dave had never been in a church before. He’d never been in a Christian Church before, and Marcie, bless her heart, invited him to come, but she forgot to tell him about how we do communion. So, when the plate of bread came by, Dave thought, “Wow, cool! This church has snacks.” He took a handful of the bread, popped it into his mouth, swallowed down, and passed it on. You had to be there to see it. It was amazing!

Another one of my favorite stories is about a very prominent family in this community. Their son was being baptized. It was a big day, just like last Sunday was for so many of us. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, everyone was here. They were camped out on the first two or three rows in the sanctuary all dressed to the nines, cameras, recorders, everything.

The baptism was beautiful as it is here, we believe, every single year. And, of course, everybody comes out of the baptistry very wet. The kids and their sponsors go out the back door, and they change clothes. Then, while we were singing, they came in and found their families to take their first communion together as a family, as a baptized Christian. It’s a special, special moment. Girls were in their dresses. Guys were in their suits and ties. This was a long time ago. 

I’ll never forget. This is the honest truth. This fifth grader, bless his heart, came walking down the aisle, and he came right up to the front because his parents were right up front, and he had on this brand new suit. In front of God and everybody, he stood there, and he was soaked from the waist down to the knees because, by golly, he was not going to change that wet suit back there with all those guys in that room. He just pulled his suit pants right over his wet bathing suit. I want you to know. No one in that family will ever forget that boy’s first communion.

Those are some of the fun things that happen along the way, but really, what I want you to remember is that what happens at this Table is something inexhaustible. It’s deep. It’s powerful. 

I want you to get an idea of how this whole thing developed. The roots of what happens at this Table, folks, goes all the way back to the faith and practice of our Jewish brothers and sisters, because those folks, bless their hearts, learned after centuries of persecution that the hub of their religion was not in a sanctuary. It was not in a synagogue. It was not in a temple even. 

 

The hub of their religion was in their homes, wherever that home happened to be. The people who showed up for worship were the family members and Jewish brothers and sisters who might be in the neighborhood. The altar was not some well-sculptured or beautifully-made piece of art. It was a dining room table. What they ate, and when they ate, and who they ate with, and how they ate and drank all mattered, and it mattered for one reason. They believe it mattered to God.

So, when Jesus has dinner with publicans and sinners and outcasts, he’s making a huge, scandalous statement about the coming kingdom of God, and about who really matters to God in the future.

Now, you may or may not know of something called Passover. It’s not that critical for those of us who are part of the Christian community, except as it relates to this particular story relating to our development of communion. It is, however, the most important meal for our Hebrew brothers and sisters. It’s a feast that’s been around for nearly 3,000 years, and essentially, it’s a meal that celebrates God’s deliverance of Israel when they were slaves all the way when they slaves of Egypt. 

You may remember that story. It’s found in the book of Exodus. Moses, who happens to be God’s man, has tried everything absolutely imaginable to get the Egyptians to let his people go. But as you know, tyrants and oppressors are not known or prone to voluntarily give up control over those who serve their interests. So, the God of Israel, who will not ultimately be defeated under any circumstances, according to Exodus, sends the angel of death as a last resort to destroy all of the first-born of the land. All of the slave families of Israel were instructed to do several things. They were to take a lamb and sacrifice it, roast it, and eat its meat, and then place some of its blood over the door post of their homes, so when the angel of death came, it would pass over the people of God.

According to the Scriptures in Exodus 12, the angel did come. Egypt was devastated. They were brought to their knees, and Israel was delivered from its slavery. Israel was delivered from its slavery by a God with outstretched and mighty arms, who took this people from a slave place and placed them in a place of freedom – a freedom that no Jew has ever forgotten and never will.

Exodus 12:17 says that God said, “Celebrate the Passover, because it was on this very day that I brought you out of Egypt.”

Now, a thousand years later, by the time of Jesus, this very important meal called Passover was linked to something called the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and that feast was essentially designed so that people would remember how the people of Israel, when they had to leave Egypt, had to do so in great haste. They had this small window of time God had provided for them, and they had to leave the land quickly. They had to leave so quickly they didn’t have time to prepare food adequately. 

 

You begin to see, do you not; these are some of the roots of something we today call the Lord’s Supper. When Jesus meets with his disciples in an upper room to celebrate this Passover meal, it was something that had been ordered, ordained, commanded for a thousand years. The night before he was betrayed, the day before his crucifixion, he shares that very meal with his friends, with his disciples. Now you can begin to see how things take shape.

What I want you to see is that there was no mistake. There was no coincidence that Jesus took bread from his table at a Passover meal and created something absolutely new and inexhaustibly spiritual. It was sort of like what John the Baptist saw when he saw Jesus coming toward him. He said, “Behold, look, see. Behold the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world.”

Now again, keep in mind this is a family-like affair. Every Friday night, at sunset, in the orthodox, faithful Jewish family, wherever they happened to be, they gather at a home and sit down at a table for worship. The mother of the table will often light candles. The father will take a loaf of bread in his hands, say a blessing, and break it, and give it to all the people who are there. This most likely is what Jesus did in the upper room with his disciples, adding something when he broke that bread that wasn’t there before. Remember what he said when he broke the bread? “This is my body.” 

 

At the close of a Jewish Sabbath meal, wherever it happened to be and whoever’s home, the father would take a cup, hold it in both hands, lift it up and offer a prayer to God of thanksgiving and make requests for himself or friends or family. Then all the people at the table would be given the opportunity to take a drink. Table, family of faith, loaf of bread, cup of wine: these are the roots of the Lord’s Supper that you and I today call Holy Communion.

The Scriptures speak for themselves. Mark 14 says, “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples, saying, ‘Take it. This is my body.’”

In Verse 23 it says, “Then Jesus took a cup and gave thanks and offered it to them, and they all drank from it. ‘This is my blood of the covenant,’ he said, ‘which is poured out for the many.’”

Folks, this experience was seen by the early Church as the way they, too, and the way we, to this day, could experience the risen Christ, gathering the family – what we call the family of believers – around a table where participants celebrate our version of the Passover. For we believe, as John said, that this Jesus, who came as the blood of the Lamb of God, frees us from the slavery of sin and the slavery of death. 

 

Do you start to get the picture? Do you see how this thing happened?

Acts 20:7 says, “On the first day of the week, we get together and we break bread.” 

 

Acts 2:42 says, “And the believers devoted themselves to the teachings of the apostles and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”

As time went on, this incredible meal that happened at a table with all of its power and all of its meaning went through tremendous numbers of changes and, quite frankly, abuses and, indeed, misuses, if you can imagine. 

Let’s pick up the story in the early 1800s on the American frontier. There was a young man in those days, and his name was Alexander Campbell. Anybody ever heard that name before? Alexander Campbell finds himself standing in the back of his own home church. He’s been there all day. His congregation is holding the annual service of Holy Communion. Get the key word here: annual. Once a year the people of faith in that community were invited to the Table. 

Alexander is there in the back of the church. He’s fidgeting with a wooden token in his hand. All day long he’s been watching his fellow brothers and sisters in Christ – church members – come to the sanctuary and being publically questioned as to their worthiness to come to the communion table. He, himself, had been through that, and he had been found worthy by the elders of the church. The token they had placed in his hand was his ticket to the Table, but others had been unworthy, and they were denied a place at the Table of the Lord.

Quite frankly, this was absolutely more than Alexander could take. So, he came from the back of his church to the communion table where the elders were. He placed his wooden token down on that table, but without taking bread and cup. He left that table and proclaimed these powerful words that resonate in our ears to this today: “This,” he said, “is the Lord’s Table. All are welcomed who are called by Christ.”

Now, folks, that may not sound like a big deal to you, but let me tell you that pronouncement, that position, that stand by Alexander Campbell, who happens to be one of the founders of the movement that became the Christian Church – Disciples of Christ, was and still is a major, major, huge step towards the unity of all Christians everywhere in this world. Let me say it again: “This is the Lord’s Table. All are welcomed who are called by Christ.” 

 

If there is going to be unity of Christians in all times and places anywhere in this world, it is going to happen, somehow, you can bet, around a Table.

In 1978, the Design of the Christian Church said, “At the Table of the Lord, we who get together celebrate with thanksgiving the saving acts and the presence of Christ.”

With the Commission on Theology in 1991, we took five key strands of meaning, and we wove them into worship – a worship that you and I get to experience at this Table or any other Table where Christians meet every single Sunday.

Let me name those five things for you.

 

Number 1: Remembrance.

St. Paul received, he said, from the first Christians this message about the Lord’s Supper. How “…the Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took a cup, he said, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this whenever you drink in remembrance of me’” (1 Corinthians 11:25).

Folks, this is not just a recollection. This is a representation, and, by that, we mean it is in our remembering, when we come together and we gather around a Table of the Lord, the line that divides that past and the present is somehow amazingly, mysteriously erased. Somehow in the mystery of this moment, the Spirit of the Living Christ, we believe, is right here, right with us, just exactly like it was, and he was with those very first disciples in that upper room. But more than that, we believe when we get around the Table, we are joined, literally, with everyone who has ever been a follower of Jesus Christ. Isn’t that amazing? Did you know that? The line between the past and the present at this Table is somehow erased. Oh, my gosh! Somehow in the eating of bread and the drinking of wine together at this place, the covenant of God’s love is renewed. Remembrance: that’s number one.

Number 2: Communion of the faithful. 

Somehow at this table, communion, communication happens. That’s because we believe that this is Christ’s Table. This Table does not belong to Broadway Christian Church. This table belongs to Christ.  He is the host, and we, every single one of us, are guests at his Table. All we do is set it on his behalf. We’re invited to dine, to commune, to communicate with him at this Table.

So, we have Remembrance. We have Communion…

 

Number 3: Sacrifice.

 

This is another major strand that happens at this Table. Christians believe the life and death of Christ was a sacrifice that was offered up for the forgiveness of our sins. 

That belief is based on basically three insights.

 

Insight 1:  A great price, folks, has been paid for the remission of our very, very real sins and for our very, very real salvation or healing. 

I Corinthians says this, “You are not your own. You were bought with a price, therefore, honor God,” says Paul.

Folks, nothing that we can ever do… There’s nothing we can ever add… There is nothing we can detract from what Christ has already done for us on the cross. We’re going to celebrate that in just a couple of weeks.  That’s what grace is all about. It’s a free, undeserved gift that’s offered, literally, not just to us, but to all who are willing to receive it.

Insight 2: It is the whole people of God, not just the presiding officers, not just the people you’ve elected, and not even the people you’ve called to be your clergy. It is the whole people of God who offer up our sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving.  We don’t need a mediator. We, a people of faith, are all ministers. We are not all pastors, but we are all ministers.

I Peter 2:9 says, “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a people belonging to God that you may declare your own praises.”

Insight 3: By the sacrificial life and death of Christ, our own lives are given new direction, and every single one of us are called to give sacrificial service for the sake of the Church, not only here but around the world and to the world. 

Romans 12:1 says this: “Therefore, I urge you… in view of God’s mercy, offer yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.”

We have Remembrance at the Table. We have Communion when we get around the Table. We have Sacrifice… 

 

Number 4: Unity.

 

Folks, there is nothing that is more destruction, disabling, or crippling to the ministry of this congregation, or this community, or this country, or, indeed, this world than a divided, severed, separated, torn apart body of believers. I can tell you that in 23 years, I’ve never experienced that here, and that’s a grace of God, but if you’ve ever experienced it anywhere, you know exactly what I’m talking about. When we come to this Table, that is unacceptable. 

When we come to this Table, we do just as it says in Ephesians 4:3, “Make every effort to keep the unity, to be united …for these is one body, and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of us all.” 

 

If you’re going to be part of this community of faith, that’s exactly the attitude you need to bring to this Table every single Sunday.

Remembrance, Communion, Sacrifice, Unity: all those things happen here at the table. 

 

Number 5: The Feast of the Reign. 

 

Not r-a-i-n, but r-e-i-g-n. The reign, the kingdom of God.

First Corinthians 11:26 says, “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”

When we come to the Table, it’s not just about remembering yesterday, and it’s not just about what’s going on today. What happens at this Table also points us to the future. That means this meal that happens at this Table is just a taste of something that is yet to come. It’s just a taste of a time when God’s will for God’s whole creation right here on this earth is going to happen just as it is in heaven. Do you know that? Do you believe that?  

 

There is coming an age, an era, when the whole human family – all of us – will live together on this earth in peace, and justice, and harmony, and joy, and when all of the people of this world will live as fully human and fully alive as God intended. Do you know that? That’s what happens when you come to the Table. That’s the vision that’s given to us about the future, and it makes the people who come to this Table painfully aware that, at present, we are far, far, far from where God intends God’s creation to be.

So, when you come here, this is not just a comfort to you, but a challenge. When you and I gather around the Table, it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge that prepares us, those of us who eat and those of us who drink here, to go to a place and leave this place and get after what God has us to get after. 

Folks, I’ve been saying this for a long time, and I want to say it again. We’ve been thinking and acting way, way, way too small. The people of this congregation have a unique opportunity. We have a huge job to do. We have a ton of work that needs to be done. There is a significant price tag connected to it. There are fantastic opportunities where we can make a real difference that’s out there waiting for us. There is more service, and witness, and ministry to do than we can shake a stick at, and it’s going to take longer than any person in this room is going to be here on this earth. 

So, when we get together around this Table, what gets us up and what gets us going is what we celebrate every single Sunday at this Table. I’ve said it once; let me say it again. What we celebrate is, “There is one body and one Spirit. There is one Lord, and one faith, and one baptism, and there is one God and Father of us all who is able to do immeasurable more than we have even thought of asking for or imagined yet. To him be the glory in the Church, in Christ Jesus throughout all the generations, forever and ever.”

 

And all the people say… “Amen.”

 

Bread of Life, today bread is broken and the wine is poured. Thank you for this beautiful way to remember your life and sacrifice. Help us to heal the brokenness of this world by pouring out your love. Thank you for uniting us around your Table as the Body of Christ. Amen.