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Matthew 26:17 On the first day of
Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Where do you want
us to make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?" 18 He
said, "Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, 'The Teacher
says, My time is near; I will keep the Passover at your house with my
disciples.'" 19 So the disciples did as Jesus had directed
them, and they prepared the Passover meal. 20 When it was evening,
he took his place with the twelve; 21 and while they were eating, he
said, "Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me." 22
And they became greatly distressed and began to say to him one after another,
"Surely not I, Lord?" 23 He answered, "The one who
has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. 24 The Son
of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man
is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been
born." 25 Judas, who betrayed him, said, "Surely not I,
Rabbi?" He replied, "You have said so." 26 While they
were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it,
gave it to the disciples, and said, "Take, eat; this is my body." 27
Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying,
"Drink from it, all of you; 28 for this is my blood of the
covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
29 I tell you, I will never again
drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in
my Father's kingdom." 30 When they had sung the hymn, they went
out to the Mount of Olives.
In the
mid to late 1800’s the Temperance movement began. Alcohol became an issue for
churches because they served wine during communion. How could they find a way
to have communion without serving alcohol. Some churches began to use water
instead and then there all sorts of concoctions that took raisins or eggs.
Needless to say, the dilemma grew over time. At issue was the ability to serve
communion to recovering alcoholics and those who abstained from alcohol. A
physician/ dentist who was also a retired Methodist minister began to study
this dilemma. In 1869, he found a way to crush the grapes and make a drink that
did not ferment. Soon his product became the staple for communion in churches
that choose to honor those who could not or would not drink alcohol. His name
was Thomas Bramwell Welch and his product carries his name today, Welch’s Grape
Juice.
I want to
share with you the story of communion, what it means and what we believe. However,
in order to do that I have start at the beginning. In Genesis, we have several
accounts of special times when people sat down to share a meal together to seal
a covenant between them. Abraham upon seeing the messengers of God immediately
has a meal prepared for them. Moses and Aaron eat in the presence of the Lord
just before Moses receives the Ten Commandments. Meals in the first century
were important occurrences. Receiving an invitation to a meal at a person’s
house was equivalent to being invited to become lifelong friends.
But the
real basis for the communion supper begins in the Old Testament times of Moses.
The people having moved from their homes in Israel during the time of Joseph
because of famine found themselves slaves of the Egyptians. Four hundred years
had passed and now they cried out to God to be set free. God called Moses, one
of their own, who had been raised in the court, out of exile. He was in exile
because he had killed a fellow Egyptian. God called Moses to go back into the
land of Egypt and to lead the people of Israel back into their promised lands.
Moses went and the Pharaoh said no to his request. God sent plague and
pestilence into the world of the Egyptians and yet Pharaoh still said no. Moses
when he was born was supposed to have been killed by the same Egyptians that
ended up raising him. God remembered that brutal killing of the innocents. So
God decreed through Moses, take the perfect lamb, sacrifice it and take the
blood, placing it on your doorways and lentils. That night God sent the Angel
of Death throughout the land and all the first born of Egypt perished. Except
of course for the faithful. They received life in place of death. We know this
story as the Passover story or Pesach (Pay sock). It is a high celebration that
has been witnessed over the last two to three thousand years.
In the 25th
chapter of Isaiah, we learn of a great feast on the mountain that awaits all of
the believers in the world when it is our time to pass from this physical
existence into God’s very presence. A woman once shared this story with me
about an event in her life as she was seeking understanding of it. She had died
on the operating table and at that moment before she was to be pronounced, she
woke up. But during the time she was dead, she found herself in a place of many
people, people she did not know. She told me she was looking for anyone she
might know and noticed that in front of her the people surrounded a great table.
But she was not allowed to come to the table. As she struggled to get closer,
she was turned around and woke up in the operating room. I believe to this day
that she was at the table Isaiah is telling us about. The table represents all
that is God, the hope, the grace, the mercy and the love. Our table today is
simply a foretaste of that table.
Jesus sat
in the Upper Room on the eve of Passover. We believe He shared a Passover meal
with His disciples. He knew what they did not, that He was about to be taken,
beaten close to death and then hung on the cross. We believe as United
Methodist that He instituted this new thing in the midst of the tradition of
Passover to make the connection for us between life with God and death without
God. When Jesus met with those in the Upper Room, He and the disciples were
there for that celebration of Passover. Little did the disciples know that God
was about to do a great thing. He took the bread, broke it and said to them
this is my body given for you. Jesus took the cup and poured it, lifted it and
blessed it, and then said to them this is a new covenant from God. Each time
you take of it, remember that God’s perfect lamb, was slaughtered and hung on a
cross, to shed his blood for the atonement of the world.
We observe
this meal because God told us to. Jesus said to his disciples, “DO THIS…” which
means as disciples that we have been commanded by him to share in this meal. In
this meal, we are remembering Jesus. However, it is more than a memory. One of
my professors at seminary said that so often we think of the word as a
remembrance, but in fact in that moment we are re-membering Jesus body and his
death and resurrection that we might become participants in it. We as United
Methodist do not believe that the bread is actually his body nor do we believe
that the juice is actually his blood. Through the great mystery of God, we do
believe that Jesus is present with us in the meal. That Jesus is communing with
us through the taking of the bread and the juice. Communion is a time for us to
reflect. It is a time to examine our lives and our obedience to God. That is
why there is a part of our service that is a confession of sin. Have you ever
really listened to the words and felt their sting. We have not heard the cries
of the needy or the needs of our brothers and sisters in pain. Communion is a
time to turn away from our worldly ways and return to following Christ in the
manner in which he expects of us.
We take
this meal in community. We do it in community because Jesus gave it to us in
community as God had given it to the Hebrew people. When the people cried out
in pain from slavery, God heard their cry. Passover is remembering God’s mighty
acts and is done in community, just as we celebrate in community.
In the
taking of the bread and juice, we acknowledge the gift that God has given us.
While we are eating the bread and tasting the juice, we can sense the very
presence of Christ upon the cross. Think of it! God demanded sacrifice, blood
sacrifice for the atonement of sin. Yet, we are all born with this inherent
desire to be in control, to push God out, to live, as we want to live without
guidance or rules from God. Original sin is not the litany of symptoms we call
sin. When we act on that desire to be disobedient to God and to go against
God’s wishes that we sin. Moreover, since it is inherent to our very natures,
God is the only one who can atone for it. So how does God do that? By sending
God to the world as a human being, who ultimately gives his life, his blood in
atonement for our sin! I once had a professor who said that Hell is not a place
but an existence. When we die, either we share in eternity with God or we spend
eternity existing, knowing that we exist and there is nothing else but the
darkness. Think of it! When Jesus hangs on that cross, at the moment of his
death, as he takes on the sins of the world, your sin, my sin, he is looking
into darkness and God is not there. Jesus was looking into a vast darkness, an
emptiness void of love, grace, mercy and God. Is there any wonder that he cries
out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” But in that moment, God is
there, to pull him from that place into the resurrection just as God will be
there for every believer to pull them from that darkness into eternal light.
And this meal allows us to be forgiven again and again, as we share it with one
another.
Henri
Nouwen says, “… when we gather around the table and eat from the same loaf and
drink from the same cup, we are most vulnerable to one another. We cannot have
a meal together in peace with guns hanging over our shoulders and pistols
attached to our belts. When we break bread together we leave our arms – whether
they are physical or mental – at the door and enter into place of mutual
vulnerability and trust.” Would you join me in a place of vulnerability where
we put our trust in God alone?
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