Communion Service

0:00 Okay, I'm going to begin, let folks filter in as we go through, but there's quite a lot to get through this morning. As you know, we're going to be celebrating the Lord's Supper together, and I don't want to take time away from that. So let's begin with two readings from the New Testament, and for many of us, these will be very, very familiar. The first is from Matthew chapter 26. Matthew chapter 26. And it is describing an incident that took place on the last evening that Jesus spent with his disciples. They were meeting together to celebrate the Passover. And after that meal, this incident happened.

0:52 While they were eating, Jesus took bread. and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples saying, take and eat, this is my body. Then he took a cup and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, drink from it all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Now let's go over to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, where now Paul is writing about that event. He, of course, was not there. But listen to how he begins. I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.

1:49 The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And in the same way, after supper, he took the cup saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you are proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes again. I wonder if you've ever thought how you would like to be remembered. What is it about your life that you see as central, as the most important thing, the thing you would like people to remember you by?

2:50 It seems that that question was weighing on the mind of the late actor Matthew Perry. He was concerned that people would remember him only for his part in the sitcom Friends that many of us have watched over the years. But for him, the more significant thing was the help he gave many people to overcome their addictions. And yet I suspect that over the passage of time, what he wanted people to remember him by and what people actually remember him by will be rather different. As Jesus gathered with his disciples in a borrowed room in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, he knew what they did not, that this would be his last Passover with them. This indeed was going to be his last meal with them before he died. He was about to be betrayed, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. And so when the Passover part of the meal was over, he did this deliberate action of taking bread, breaking it, passing it around the group at around the dinner, and then doing the same with a cup of wine.

4:19 A clear, deliberate, tangible, physical action. What for? Well, both Luke and Paul tell us how Jesus explained the purpose very simply. This do in remembrance of me. Jesus was instituting the way in which he wanted his followers to remember him when he was no longer physically present with them. Now as what we might call a religious rite, a tangible action that we are commanded to do as Christians, it is remarkable because there are so few such ordinances in Christianity. In fact, historically, there are only two, baptism and this simple remembrance meal, which very quickly came to be known in the early church as the Lord's Supper. Now, as you know, rituals and rites are common across religions.

5:35 Judaism had many. And of course, since Jesus' day, the Christian church has for various reasons, in its various forms, invented many more rituals. But Jesus himself instituted only two. Their rarity, I think, underlines their importance. Now, over the course of history, other terms have been given to the Lord's Supper, such as the sacraments, Holy Communion, Eucharist, the Mass, terms which apart from communion in a rather different sense, aren't used in the New Testament. And I have no time to wade into this confusion, simply to say, as you would expect me to say, that I think it's wiser and safer to stick with what it was called originally, the Lord's Supper. But why this? Why this sharing bread and a cup of wine in deliberate remembrance of Christ?

6:48 Does it really matter anymore? Why should we bother? And of course, the first reason, the bottom line for me as a Christian is this, is that Jesus commanded it. That's enough. Should be enough. If I say that Jesus is Lord, if I claim to believe that, then I want to do what he says. It's very simple. We do it because he said so.

7:13 But please notice, it wasn't invented by the church. It wasn't the church's idea to do this in remembrance of Jesus. It was Jesus's idea. And as his followers, because he is Lord, we owe him the unquestioning obedience, whether or not we understand all the reasons behind it and the wisdom of it, trusting that he knows best. But we don't have to leave it there. God treats us as adults so that we can grow in our understanding and grasp the wisdom of his ways. And I want to present three different aspects of his wisdom. Now, I know this is a bit unusual for me to give you three points, but I'm giving you three main points today.

8:04 So if you sleep and then you hear point two, you'll know where I am. The first is this, that the Lord's Supper provides a tangible reminder of what is historically central to the Christian message. There are many things by which Jesus could have asked us to remember him. We could have been reading out in public one of his great sermons highlighting his superb moral teaching. We could have been rehearsing together some of his magnificent miracles demonstrating his compassion and kindness for people. But what he asks us to do doesn't point to his ethical teaching or to his miracles, wonderful as they were. Instead, he chose something that would be a constant reminder of his self-giving as a sacrifice for our sin. Bread and wine, body and blood given for us, as he said, poured out for the forgiveness of sins.

9:18 So this wasn't an accident, because this is the heart of Christianity. This is the purpose for which Jesus came, to give his life as the Lamb of God for the sin of the world. And Jesus chose this simple, practical way for us to keep it central. Now, there is huge wisdom in this. Because with the passing of time, it is so easy to forget. And history demonstrates that on occasions, the church has lost sight of what lies at its true center. For example, there have been times in history when the church's main message to the world has centered on its moral and ethical teaching, often handing out stern morality lessons that what matters most is keeping the rules, keeping the thou shalt nots, living according to the golden rule.

10:33 The basic pitch, if you sum it up, is Jesus died so that we might be nice to each other. Or there have been other times when the church's message has focused more on social reform and political change. The basic pitch, Jesus died as a victim of this corrupt world system, championing the cause of social change. And today it seems increasingly that the message of the church to the world is that Jesus is cool. He wants to be your friend. He believes in you. You can be anything you want to be and Jesus will endorse it. The basic pitch, Jesus died for your self-esteem and for whatever identity you want to create for yourself.

11:31 Now, Christians are enjoined to do good to all, to devote ourselves to good works, the works of compassion, especially towards the disadvantaged poor. Those are the entailments of authentic Christianity, but the message of Christianity is much more than that. Not less than that, but more than that. The uniqueness of Christianity amongst all the other religions is this, as the angels announced it, to you is born this day a savior. Jesus Christ came into the world to give himself as a sacrifice for the sin of the world so that we could be brought into right relationship with God. And this simple meal that we will be sharing in a moment reminds us of this. This is my body. This is my blood given for you.

12:37 What for? For the forgiveness of sins. Now, this isn't popular, either in our culture or increasingly in the professing Christian church. The idea that we need saving is offensive to many people. We want to believe that with some new technological discovery, some new social program, we can solve the various crises we are in. The crisis that the world is going through is not fundamentally spiritual. We don't need saving. And the church is under enormous pressure to abandon this core message, the spiritual message of spiritual salvation through Christ, and to get on with things that the world will applaud, and which are in themselves good things.

13:42 It is very tempting, isn't it? We don't want to cause unnecessary offense. We want to fit in. We want to be accepted. And we know that few, if any, will criticize us or oppose us or persecute us for acts of kindness and compassion as long as we leave the name of Jesus out of it. Well, no one ever cared for people more than Jesus did. And yet it was Jesus who pointed out that the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart. It's not just moral.

14:21 It's spiritual rebellion against the creator. And so out of his love for us, his primary purpose in coming into the world was not to resolve poverty, injustice, suffering. Not yet. He will one day. His primary purpose in coming was to give himself as a sacrifice for our sin and bring us into right eternal relationship with God. That then leads to my second major point. You still with me? The second point is this.

15:00 The Lord's Supper provides a tangible reminder of what is theologically central to the Christian message. I say this because I have lived long enough to observe significant changes in what professing Christians say about the death of Christ. There is these days in our country a strong current of what is often referred to or was in the past as liberal theology. Perhaps today it's more referred to as progressive because we love the idea of progress, don't we? So everything progressive must be good by definition. And this teaches that the idea of Christ's death as a sacrifice for sin was invented by the church. That Jesus never claimed to have come to die for the sin of the world, but the church, especially under the influence of Paul, came up with this idea based on misunderstanding of the Old Testament sacrifices. Back in the 90s, some of you are old enough to remember it.

16:12 When we used to meet down in Bally Earl, we were delighted to have as our guest speaker one Sunday morning a certain Steve Chalk. Some of you will remember back to that. We weren't so delighted when a few years later, in a book entitled The Lost Message of Jesus, always be wary when you come across anything with that title. The lost, what everybody else has missed, I have suddenly discovered. He and his co-author wrote this, the cross isn't a form of cosmic child abuse, a vengeful father punishing his son for an offense he has not even committed. And of course, that kind of emotive language, as well as the interpretation behind it, sparked an enormous debate in the church, which continues right to this day, because Steve Chalk was an evangelical. So right into the heart of the evangelical church came this view, that this traditional view of Christ giving himself as a sacrifice for our sin amounted to cosmic child abuse. We've even felt that in our own family.

17:36 We often sing that famous modern hymn that my son-in-law Keith Coe authored, In Christ Alone. And we sing the words on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied for every sin in him was led. No, says some churches, and change the words to, the heart of God was satisfied. Because they don't want any notion of God's judgment, God's wrath, of the sacrifice of Jesus being a sacrifice, his death as a sacrifice, and atonement for the sin of the world. For many people, Christ's death was to show God's solidarity with us in our suffering, and to teach us how we should deny self and lay down our lies us for others. It wasn't for our sin. Well, happily, the historical facts deny this, although many don't let the facts get in the way of a new theology. The Lord's Supper stands as a witness to the authentic meaning of the death of Christ, a witness that stretches back to before the Christian leaders even wrote anything down.

18:55 in fact, to before the cross itself, as the late Professor David Gooding from Queen's University explains, it stands as the earliest record we have of what our Lord claimed and taught about himself and his work. And as we read this morning, Paul would later explain that he was only passing on what he had himself received from the Lord, this memorial that the church was celebrating long before Paul himself was converted. Right from the very beginning, the church regularly enacted what the Lord before his death had asked them to enact, taking bread and wine, clear, obvious symbols of his body given, his blood poured out for them, the blood of the new covenant, as Jesus said, poured out for the forgiveness of sin. It wasn't the church invented the idea. It wasn't Paul invented the idea. It wasn't Matthew invented the idea or Luke or John. In fact, Matthew goes to great pains to underline that the idea of Jesus giving himself as a sacrifice for sins didn't originate with him or any of the other apostles, but with Jesus himself. He tells us that just before this Passover meal, there was another meal at which a woman anointed Jesus's head and feet with expensive ointment and his disciples to a man criticized the woman saying she could have sold the perfume and given the money raised to the poor.

20:38 Such a waste, they said. But Jesus intervened and said this, in pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to me to prepare me for burial. Wow. They weren't expecting that. Burial? Death? They weren't expecting that. And even after Jesus had instituted the supper, they didn't see it.

21:03 The disciples went out into the night and just fell asleep. And when the soldiers came to arrest Jesus, Peter draws a sword courageously to try to defend him. But to his consternation, Jesus did absolutely nothing to defend himself, told him to put a sword away. And Peter just completely mind blown ran with the others. He recovered slightly to see what was going on. Would Jesus change his mind? And then when he was publicly challenged, you were with him three times in public. He denied that he had anything to do with this Jesus who would so tamely let himself be taken.

21:49 The idea of Christ coming to die for the sin of the world was not invented by the apostles. It's simply factually wrong to say that the church invented the idea. And so for us, the Lord's Supper stands as a reminder of what lies at the theological center of our faith, that Jesus gave his life for the sin of the world. Brilliantly simple, brilliantly wise. And we need to hold on to this witness keep it central, this constant reminder that Christ's death is a sacrifice for our sin. You may be thinking by this point, well, that's good to know. You've talked for 23 minutes now, and it's all very theoretical. What on earth has that got to do with me and my everyday reality?

22:58 Well, that brings me to my third point. I haven't forgotten you. The Lord's Supper provides a tangible reminder of what is personally central to life as a Christian. Why did Jesus choose this particular way of remembering him? And you say, well, that's easy. Bread represents Christ's body, wine his blood. Yes, but there is so much more to it than that. Because the Lord's Supper is something we participate in.

23:42 It is something we share in. When we take the bread and the wine, we are doing something. It is not designed to be a spectacle that we watch on. It isn't designed to be passive. It involves active participation on our part. And when we do participate, we are doing something hugely significant because this Lord's Supper, according to Jesus himself, is a symbol of what he called the new covenant, the new covenant. So by sharing in this, by taking the bread and the wine, we are indicating positively our agreement with and our loyalty to this new covenant. Now I haven't time to go into all the details, but I encourage you to look that up for yourself.

24:54 A covenant is a legal agreement. Ancient kings used to make covenants with the people they ruled. This one is called new to distinguish it from the old covenant, which is made according to the famous Ten Commandments. God drew up a covenant with his people, a binding agreement that expressed the principles upon which God proposed to govern the nation. There is now a new covenant, a new agreement, signed and sealed by the Lord Jesus himself. A new set of terms under which we now enter into relationship with God through Christ. And they're wonderful. God's saying, I'm going to write my laws in your heart, not on external tablets of stone, but in your heart, I'm going to be your God and you're going to be my people.

25:51 You don't have to say to one another, know the Lord, all shall know me from the least of the greatest for their sins. I will remember no more forever. Those are the terms of this new agreement. That's what you're signing up to. That's what you are saying. I agree with this. God, I want you to write your laws in my heart. I thank you that I know you.

26:13 I thank you that my sin has been dealt with once for all and will never be brought up against me. You are my king. Picture the context in that early setting. City had rejected Jesus as king, as Jesus himself had foretold in his famous parable of the vineyard. Jerusalem was no longer safe, humanly speaking, for him. The gospel writers tell us that during the day, he would go to the temple and he would teach the crowds. But at night, he got out of the city because it was a hostile environment. But this night was different.

26:58 And in secret, Jesus arranged, and you can read the story, because there was a man in Jerusalem who owned a home that had a good sized room in it. And that man was prepared to defy the hostility of the authorities, to declare his allegiance to Jesus and let him have his room in which the first Lord's Supper was celebrated. I love that story. 'Cause it seems to me it is a picture of the human heart in the end. This is what is involved in this. In the midst of a hostile world,

27:56 to say that in my life, In my heart, I have room for Jesus. And right from the beginning of church history, the tiny group of believers, and then scattered across the world, and we picture them and we join them in a few moments. We're part of a long line of little groups, sometimes big groups, but often little groups, under persecution, meeting in sheds, meeting in caves, meeting in clearances in the woods, hiding for fear of the authority, meeting together to do what? To celebrate the Lord's Supper. In a hostile world to declare their allegiance to Jesus as king. We're doing something. And it also finally is to have an effect on us.

29:01 We didn't read the story in Luke, but Luke adds the little detail that after they had done this, there was an argument amongst the disciples as to who was to be the greatest. Now, can you imagine it? Jesus has just been given them the symbols of him giving of himself, and they start arguing who of them was to be the greatest. The self-interest is staggering until I read my own heart. And then I realize, this cross exposes me too. It's meant to. Coming and taking bread and wine, says Paul, we come, we examine ourselves. We don't do it lightly, We don't do it carelessly.

29:56 It's not a spectator's sport. It's not meant to be some great theatrical production. It is a participation in a declaration that Jesus is king and I have to come and examine myself because it was my sin that put him on the cross. And if I find that I am playing around with sin in my own life, what am I saying? taking bread and wine, symbols of Christ giving himself for my sin and yet at the same time saying, but I'm not going to give it up. I'm going to keep playing with it. No, says Paul, writing to a church, we saw it in Corinth, full of all kinds of trouble.

30:48 You might say, why didn't he talk about something more practical and talk about the Lord's Supper? Well, he did talk about other things, but he talked about this because Paul knew that it is here that we face the cross, we examine ourselves, we realize how unworthy we are, and then you say, "Oh, it was all going so well "until you talked about that, "and now I just wanna get out of here." But you haven't permission to do that. Examine yourself, says Paul, and eat. Amazing. You know permission to walk away thinking that I'm unworthy of all of this. You don't have permission to do that. The Lord knew all about you when he died for you.

31:39 It's you who didn't know. He knew everything about you. The very worst, the cross of Christ, gives me a platform that is big enough on which I can stand and face up to the very worst about myself and know that there is forgiveness and love in the Father's heart that never ends. That in Christ there is no condemnation. We examine ourselves and so we eat. Taking bread and wine, therefore, is not some mechanical action, not some tradition that we observe. Funny we people at Glen Abbey, they do this thing like, you know, weird. This is something Jesus asks us to do.

32:28 It is central historically to our Christian faith. It is central theologically to our Christian faith because it shows us that Christ's death as the sacrifice for sin is central. And it is central to me as a believer in recalibrating my life and bringing me back to the cross and the magnificent Savior who died for me to say thank you, to give me the strength to repent, to confess, and to get up and live and follow him knowing that next time I come, I'll have to do the same thing because he knows what we're like. But his love, his forgiveness covers the whole of life. Let's pray together. And shall we again if we're able to stand together as we pray. Father, I pray that by your spirit, through your word, you would help each of us to see for ourselves the importance of what we're about to do, the significance of it.

33:51 And we humbly and happily stand alongside the countless millions that have gone this way before. And the millions all across this world today who are declaring their allegiance to Jesus and are saying to the world, He's my Lord, He's my Savior, because we all need saving. Christ died for my sin. Speak to us through this time, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.