Thoughts on Communion and the Church Part I

Imagine, you’re at a dinner party and your mate – not just any mate, but a guy that over the past three years has become the closest friend you’ve ever had – grabs the bread from the middle of the table, tears it into chucks and dishes it out... and he says ‘this is my body. It’s broken for you’

Do this and remember me.

And then imagine that after dinner he grabs the bottle of wine and begins pouring it into his glass – you move your glass towards him cos you want a top up yourself but instead he puts the bottle down again and passes his glass around saying ‘this is my blood. And my blood is going to seal a new covenant between God and human beings.’

Do this and remember me.

It is an odd ritual. Some might class it socially unacceptable behaviour these days. But it’s a ritual that has continued for about 2000 years.

What is communion all about?

Because this meal has been at the heart of Christian worship since day one and within this meal are the roots of the church.

At Church.co.uk, we have five key values that underpin everything that happens within the life of the church: Intimacy, Inclusivity, Interdependence, Involvement and Influence.

These values are at the heart of the church. In communion, we see Jesus establishing and demonstrating those values;

Communion is Intimate

This is a meal between friends. When Jesus initiated this ritual, he did so with 12 guys (and probably some of the others that toured with him) that had become his family over the past three years. They’d lived and worked together [imagine, 13 lads, touring around Palestine... it must’ve been a riot!]. And now they were sharing in his last supper with them before he went to the cross. John, who was one of the disciples who was closest to Jesus and who wrote one of the gospels, described how on that same night Jesus told them to ‘love one another... In the same way I have loved you, love one another.’

He told them that you know when someone really cares for you because they’re willing to die for you. And Jesus would follow through with that willingness to die for them the very next morning. And this meal was an intimate reminder of that love that Jesus had for his followers... and he includes us in the intimacy. Communion is intimate. It reminds us how much Jesus loves us. Not an airy-fairy ‘i love you’, not even a drunken ‘i love you’, but a real ‘I love you so much that I’m willing to die for you!’ Communion is intimate.

Communion is Interdependent

That last supper, or the first communion, was part of a Jewish festival - the Passover festival. It was when the whole community would remember the way God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt. Everyone gathered together to hear and remember the story of the Exodus: Moses and Pharaoh, the plagues, the Red Sea, the Ten Commandments and all that. It was a community event; a coming together to celebrate their heritage.

The celebration of Israel’s rescue was good.

Jesus was about to rescue the whole world.

Through communion we have a way of coming together to celebrate not only our individual response to Jesus’ love for us personally, but to celebrate our collective rescue. Communion is interdependent, it’s relational, it’s meant to be shared – you cannot share a meal on your own! Whether it’s in a small group setting or as the whole congregation what we see in and through communion is God bringing people together through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Communion is interdependent. It is relational, it builds friendship and reminds us we are all part of the one church; we’ve all got different roles to play within that church but we are all on the same team! Which leads us onto our next value... inclusivity

Coming Soon: Thoughts on Communion and the Church

I'm preaching at Church.co.uk tomorrow morning (Sunday, May 2nd).

The theme is Communion.

"...Communion has been at the heart of Christian worship since day one, and within this meal are the roots of the Church."

Notes coming soon...

Consequence?

Just a quick thought.

There have been four earthquakes and two volcanic eruptions in approximately a 3 month time span. That's quite a lot of violent seismic activity in a relatively short space of time.

It's often said that if a butterfly flaps its wings, it can affect the weather in a totally different part of the world; it's called the butterfly effect, part of chaos theory. Now, i don't claim to know a lot about chaos theory but, if a little butterfly can have that much influence on a global scale, what kind of effect do these have...?


They're man made islands just off the beaches of Dubai.

With my limited knowledge of chaos theory and global seismic activity, I've been pondering: Arrogantly placing a substantial amount of land in a place where there wasn't any, so you can have you're own little piece of paradise, just cos you can... That is going to have some effect on the rest of the planet surely?!

Like I said, just a thought.

Any minute now...

There was Evening and there was morning...

Ever since the beginning of time, God has operated on a different timescale to the civilised western world. We calculate days from Midnight til Midnight. 00:00 to 23:59.

The Jewish day begins at sunset and ends at the following sunset. Which means technically any minute now... Jesus is Raised from the Dead!

Any time between now and when the sun comes up is that mysterious and wondrous resurrection moment! How gloriously paradoxical that at the darkest point of the day the Light of the World is reignited and raised to shine brighter than ever...

Any minute now...

Saturday Grief.

A heavy depression lingered in the house that morning.

The chaos and tragic activity of Friday were now merely shadows in their memories. His words spoken through heartbreak and torture on the cross still resonated in their ears. Everytime they closed their eyes a mental image of him hanging there -covered in his own blood, scratched up by the flogging, nails through his hands and feet, dead- that image was burned into their minds.
They hardly spoke to each other. Numbed by this deep sense of loss. An occasional teary glance caught the eye of another and that one look said everything; He's gone. He's really gone. They couldn't stop thinking about it. Replaying the events of yesertday over and over again. And it wasn't as if they could do anything to take their minds off of what had happened.

It was now the Sabbath, the day of rest. It was prohibited by Jewish law to do any work. They weren't allowed to go away to get away from it all because the law stipulated that you couldn't travel on the Sabbath. They were stuck in the house they were staying in with nothing to do but ponder yesterday and what it meant.
Often at Easter we tend to skip over Saturday. We remember Thursday and the meal. We briefly pause to remember what happened on Friday but we're all too quick to say '...but Sunday's coming!' Friday is too depressing, too violent, too heavy, too hopeless for us to want to hang around Friday. Jesus Died. He was actually physically, medically dead; not just out of shot or taking a breather, deceased, passed away. Friday hurts.
We certainly don't want to mope around in the heartbreak and grieving turmoil of Saturday. We don't want to be forced to contemplate and focus on Friday because the law permits us to do nothing else. We want Sunday! And in our haste to get to Sunday we forget Saturday, with all it's emptiness and regret; with all its why's and what-if's.

But if we allow ourselves to stop on Saturday; if we give ourselves a chance to grieve with a group of Disciples who didn't know Sunday was coming; if we pause just long enough to feel the heartbreak that Jesus is Dead on Saturday, we let ourselves sink to the lowest point. And from that lowest point what happens tomorrow is even more of a mysterious wonder!

Jesus is Dead.

They had been intriuged by his teaching.
They had dared to come close to him.
When he told to quit their jobs and go touring with him, the dared to do it.

They had seen him heal people from diseases. He had made blind people see and cripples danced after an encounter with him. They'd seen him do unbelieveable things. He'd multiplied some bread rolls and a couple of fish to feed thousands of people. They'd seen him walk on water!

But he was so normal. He was one of the lads.
He knew how to have a laugh. But when he was serious, wow, he could cut right to the heart.
He taught about loving the unlovable and he practiced what he preached.
He had time for everybody. When he looked at you, you know you had his undivided attention.

Last Sunday they had been with him. He rode into town like he owned the place. They treated him as if he was the king. People were going as far as saying he was the Messiah.

They were daring to believe in him.
Last night they were eating and drinking with him. He was quieter than usual, but he was still the best friend they'd ever had. But when the stuff hit the fan, they all ran. They just left him...

Now Jesus was dead.

Were the last three years a complete waste of time?
What about everything he'd said about the Kingdom of God? Was it all made up?
What about everything they'd dared to believe about him? What were they meant to do now, eh?

Everyone recognised them. Everyone knew they used to hang out with Jesus. Now he's dead. What are people gonna think? What a bunch of losers.

Jesus is dead. The disciples are gutted, absolutely gutted. Friday night is a dark, dark place to be... and Saturday doesn't look much brighter from here. Come to think of it... from a disciple's point of view... Sunday looks pretty bleak too.

It is finished.

It’s dark.
It’s about three in the afternoon. It’s not meant to be dark.

Instantly we know that there is something mysterious going on. Something other-worldly is occurring on this rugged landscape outside Jerusalem. And out of the darkness Jesus speaks

“My God”

My God? This is Jesus, the Son crying out to his father and yet he switches to a cry of desperation to his God.

Do you ever have those times when you’re feeling so hurt, so low, so depressed even, that you don’t ‘feel’ like praying but at the same time you know you need to get something off your chest and direct it at God? Sometimes it’s useful to use somebody else’s prayer, someone else’s words to express the pain you’re going through.

He’s quoting Psalm 22 at this point so, maybe, the agony he is enduring as part of this divine plan is too much to bear for his human emotions and he relies on the liturgy, the church songs, of the day. In his humanity he uses someone else’s prayer of pain and desolation to cry out to God.

“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” - “My God, Why have You abandoned me?”

Even in that simple cry, those around him still missed the point – they thought he was calling Elijah the prophet to come and bail him out. For three years they had followed him around and it never quite clicked for them in their minds or hearts what he was saying, and even at his death they didn’t get it.

Then, ‘with a loud cry', Jesus breathed his last… On the surface this just seems like a tragic end of a great life. But there is something a little more puzzling than just Jesus dying. Death by crucifixion usually came in the form of exhaustion and suffocation, the victim unable to raise his body enough for the lungs to draw in air. The breaking of the victim’s legs was a way of quickening the process. Ordinarily, the victim would pass out, unconscious due to lack of oxygen, before death occurred. And all this would take place often over an extended period of time. It was known for some to endure days on a cross before dying.

So how was it that Jesus cried out in a loud voice and died after just six hours? Again, perhaps the answer lies within the mystery surrounding this episode.Those around not seeing the wood for the trees. There was more going on at Calvary than just the death of an innocent Jewish carpenter turned rabbi.

Christ on the cross was the substitute for mankind in a salvation plan brilliantly conceived within the Godhead.

Jesus Christ - God the Son - in his 100% humanity would take the place of mankind, acting humbly and totally obediently in the Holy Spirit who would enable him to complete such a difficult task, to stay focused and pure to the end.

The Father, Loving and Compassionate – the personal God who longs for a relationship with his people - Holy and Just, would execute the penalty for sin upon his Son. If death is the wages or reward of sin then Jesus here is paid in full. ‘Heaven’s peace and perfect Justice’ and demonstrated here. God’s loving-justice is perfectly calculated and direct and Jesus bares it all in our place.

Grace and Mercy towards His people. Grace; getting that which we don’t deserve, has to be mixed with Mercy; notgetting what we do deserve. We’ve sinned and fallen short, we deserve to die. The Merciful God sent his Son to die in our place.

In short, the Spiritual, physical and emotional agony of being separated from God, being beaten to within an inch of his life and nailed to a cross and left to hang and die, to be abandoned by his closest friends and family and humiliated in front of those who opposed him, I think it is fair to say, without getting too wishy-washy, that Jesus died of a Broken Heart. The awesome weight of sin crushing him, the abandonment of his Father isolating him – it would be enough to make anyone lose the will to live. And so, in total human agony the Son of God cries out... and dies.

That is the mystery of the Cross – we may never know the exact terms of the transaction, we may never endure anything close to the pain Jesus endured on that Friday, but the mystery surrounding the perfect sacrifice that God accepted on our behalf has opened a way so that “all who believe in Him shall not die, but have eternal life.”