February 7, 2021 Communion
Sunday Rev. Peter Hofstra
I
remember the days when I would say, “I saw something in a book I was reading…”
whereas nowadays, it seems more likely I would say, “I saw something
online…” It is not that I spend so much
more time online than in a book, but that there is a constant stream of ongoing
and evolving information spraying like a firehose. Most of it just passes on by, but this one
stuck.
Basically,
the wisdom went, “A day can seem to stretch on forever while the years seem to
fly by.” That connects to the
gospels. We date Jesus’ active ministry
to about 3 years. Those three years fly
past in the first two thirds of each gospel while the time filled with the
story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, those few days, spread out to take up
the rest of the gospels.
And
that stretch begins with the Lord’s Supper.
Our passage this morning was written about the Lord’s Supper before the
gospels were fully realized. Paul’s
letters are the first documents written in the New Testament. In fact, I believe they were an impetus for
the gathering of the gospels. Paul was
writing so much to the churches he founded in Jesus’ name that the story of
Jesus needed to be set down for those churches, and our churches, to truly
understand how great is Jesus’ love for us.
By
God’s grace, this will be the first uninterrupted celebration of communion of
the year. As we come to celebrate, to
commemorate, this beginning of Jesus’ journey to the cross and to new life, let
us consider, what story is being told here?
Paul
says that what he has received from the Lord, he is now passing along to the
church in Corinth. They are not asking
for a ‘how-to’ manual of communion, but rather, they need a corrective. It seems like the ‘celebration’ of communion
is more like a Fourth of July party than remembering what Jesus did. Leading into these verses, Paul lays out the
issue. Do not come to church to eat
excessively and get drunk in the name of Jesus.
Do that at home.
Given
our rather minimalist approach to the Lord’s Supper, small bread, small cup, I
have trouble imagining a wild party. But
it might help to remember that was how the people of the Roman Empire did
things. We have a calendar based on the
Jewish system, seven days, six days to labor and one as Sabbath, day of
rest. We have taken our sabbath as the
Lord’s Day, Sunday, in memory of his rising from the grave. The Roman calendar did not work that
way. Instead, people worked continually,
no regular breaks, but a huge number of irregular breaks. There were festivals and celebrations to the
multiplicity of deities throughout the year which provided the breaks.
The
key is in the festivals and celebrations.
Some god or goddess did a great thing, so we celebrate. Bacchus, the god of wine, was the logical
extreme of this worship structure.
Essentially, “Zeus did great things!
Party on!” “Artemis and her wisdom! Fantastic!
Party on!” Into this, “Jesus
saves!” and the reaction seems to have been “Party on!” And what is not to celebrate? Yes, Jesus gave his life for us, but he
arose, and now we all live forever!
But
Paul is called upon to intervene, because the stories he has received are that
this celebration of what Jesus has done for us are just an excuse for excess. Not to far off the mark from celebrations in
this age. Instead of a party, there is a
liturgy, Paul gives a structure for the celebration of communion, in two steps,
that of the body and that the blood, the bread and the wine. Both are very visceral.
Jesus
takes a loaf of bread and breaks it, a visual foreshadowing of what is going to
happen to him on the cross. ‘This is my
body that is for you. Do this in
remembrance of me.’ It is the spoken
word and demonstrated word. “My body” is
broken, for us. We are called upon to
remember that scene. I wonder how those
words seared into the consciousness of Jesus’ followers when they saw his
broken body on the cross. We remember
because his body was broken instead of ours.
He was sacrificed so that we would not die in punishment for our
sins.
It is
a somber, reverential moment. Returning
to our celebration of the Fourth of July, it celebrates the independence of a
nation, not our war dead from the Revolutionary War. Communion is more like the commemoration of
9/11, when we tell one another, ‘never forget’.
Never forget what Jesus did for us.
So
we, in the course of our worship service, will take the elements one after the
other. That does not seem to be the way
of things in Paul’s time. He tells us-and
the gospels affirm-that the bread was shared during the meal but the cup was
shared after the meal. Which is typical
of the first century Christian gathering, to share a meal. They did not have a formal sanctuary, like we
do. They were in process of getting
booted from the synagogue. They met in
each other’s homes. Worship and
fellowship were inextricably linked together.
Paul seems to be following that pattern.
The bread is to be shared during the meal, the wine after, in the
pattern of Jesus.
We
also have to acknowledge that alcohol is being served at the event. Wine is being passed around, not grape
juice. It was wine because, at that
time, this was only way to safely get at the fruit of the wine for
consumption. Fermenting killed the
bacteria where today we can pasteurize.
Wine was often drunk instead of water if the water sources were
questionable.
If
the body broken is a visceral reminder of Jesus on the cross, of his taking our
punishment, the cup develops that theme.
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in
remembrance of me.” It is not simply
that Jesus’ blood is shed on the cross as his body would be broken. This is the symbol of a new covenant.
That
word, covenant, is the anchor on which the entire act of communion is grounded
for us. This is language that Paul
understood, that the early church would have understood. Because they followed the covenant God gave
through Moses on Mt. Sinai. This
included blood sacrifices of animals to atone, to pay, for their sins. Blood for blood. That hearkens back to an even earlier legal
principle than animal sacrifice, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, a
life for a life and blood for blood.”
Jesus is the life for every one of our lives.
That
word, covenant, is the organizing term for our theological understanding of
God’s plan. Ours is ‘covenant theology’,
all about the loving relationship that Jesus has renewed with us in his
blood. He passes from death to life so
that we will get a pass on eternal death to receive eternal life. The commonality of phrase is that we do each
‘in remembrance of him’. This is the
organizing principle of our faith in Jesus that Paul is talking to us about,
Jesus’ death and resurrection.
As he
concludes, “as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim his
death until he comes.” So this we do
until the Second Coming. We call the
Lord’s Supper a sacrament because Jesus commanded us to do it. And it was not something he simply commanded
his disciples to do in the gospel accounts, because here we have Paul going
over the rules of this celebration commended to the church in Corinth. We’ve gone over it because this celebration
has been commended to the churches in Perth Amboy.
If
the pandemic has done anything for the service of communion, it has sped the
process. Everyone is ‘issued’ with the
elements when you come in the door. When
we have a roomful of people, especially with kids, and we take the time to pass
out the elements, one at a time, row by row, the feeling that a moment can
stretch out in time can be a powerful one.
And yet, now, the importance of our covenant with Christ, in this world
of COVID, is more important than ever.
No
matter how slow or quickly it seems to happen, this sharing of the Lord’s
Supper is more important than ever.
Because it tells the story of how Jesus gave us salvation. His body was broken so ours will not be. His blood was shed that a new covenant would
be established. That covenant has not
changed from the one given through Moses, “I will be your God and you will be
my people.” What has changed in the
covenant is the assurance of our salvation, that it is by faith and not by
works that we become believers.
This
is the free gift of salvation that has been given to us. We don’t have to prove ourselves to God,
God’s love is of everyone. It means that
receiving Jesus, and believing in Him, is how we are granted the power to
become Children of God. It means
recognizing the reality of the ‘end game’ of sin. Sin can provide all the trappings of
‘success’ in this life, but all it provides in the life to come is a dead
end. And, from my experience, all the
‘trappings’ of success do not amount to much when it comes to finding meaning
in life.
Jesus
commanded his disciples to carry on this remembrance, to carry on this
reminder, to carry on what the church recognizes as a means of grace in this
sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. It means
that even if the years of life seem to speed by us far too quickly, it means
that if the days of life-especially those of pain (for joy seems so
fleeting)-seem to drag on forever, communion gives meaning in the death and
resurrection of Jesus. It means that
when we come to this table and we remember, we are remembering all the Jesus
has done for us, that in the breaking of his body and the shedding of his
blood, a new covenant, one of mercy, one that has the free gift of salvation,
one where the years will never pass too quickly, for they will never end, where
the moments of life will last, for they will be moments of loving perfection;
this is what we will remember until Jesus returns to us again.
Amen.
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