Communion Service

0:01 Well, as Chris said at the start, we are going to be participating in the Lord's Supper this morning. So if you have a copy of the New Testament, I'm going to be reading in a few minutes from 1 Corinthians chapter 11. The reason I want to read from that is that every so often it's helpful to remind ourselves of what it is we're actually doing on occasions like this and why it is that we do it. Heather and I had a little trip to celebrate her big birthday to Europe this past week to a couple of the beautiful cities. and as part of that we visited some very dramatic ornate churches, admiring the artwork, the artistry, the sculptures and so on. But I did find myself wondering as I moved around, if Peter or Paul had been with me, I wonder would they have detected anything remotely close to what they thought the gospel was about. It just would have been interesting to have that conversation. I can't have it now, but one day soon perhaps I'll be having it.

1:25 But the problem with the passing of years is that theology builds upon theology and tradition upon tradition. And while not all of it is bad, the danger is that human tradition overpowers what was there at the beginning and replaces it and changes it. I'm always haunted, really, by the words of Galadriel at the opening of the Lord of the Rings movie that some of you may recall. The world has changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live that remember it.

2:17 Some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. And that's the challenge. So what are the things that can easily get forgotten? So let's read what Paul has to say about it in 1 Corinthians chapter 11. I'm going to read from verse 17 down to verse 26. I don't have time this morning to go through all of it. It's just this little section. In the following directives, Paul writes, I have no praise for you.

2:51 For your meetings do more harm than good. There's a nice positive beginning, isn't it? In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent, I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God's approval. When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat. For when you're eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers. And as a result, one person remains hungry and another gets drunk. Don't you have homes to eat and drink in?

3:23 Or do you despise the church of God by humiliating those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? Certainly not in this matter. So the problem with forgetting is an ancient problem. It's happened in the early church. They've forgotten what they were there for, what they were doing, and they turned the Lord's Supper into something that it wasn't ever intended to be. So what was it intended to be?

3:51 Well, Paul reminds us, verse 23, For I received from the Lord what I also passed unto you, 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. 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 proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. So let me just mention a couple of these basic things that are so easily forgotten. And perhaps the most basic thing is what we call this. What do we call this that we are about to do together?

4:46 The New Testament is clear. It calls it the Lord's Supper. Not the church's supper. It's the Lord's Supper. Its title is telling us that it was the Lord Jesus himself who invented it, not the church. Now that's important because some downplay or even dismiss its significance. They see it as just one of these traditions. Well, it is a tradition of the church in the sense that the church has handed it down to subsequent generations, including us here today in Glen Abbey.

5:33 But it isn't a tradition in the sense that the church invented it. It is the Lord's Supper. That's the first basic thing. What do we call it? What is this thing we're doing? It is the Lord's Supper. It's also referred to in the New Testament as breaking the bread. In Acts 20 verse 7, Luke writes this, On the first day of the week, we assembled, we gathered to break bread.

6:05 Now, that could simply be a reference to have a meal together, but most people think it's more likely that he's taking one of the ingredients of what happens at the Lord's Supper, And is he using that as a kind of a shorthand to refer to the whole thing? Christians today often refer to the Lord's Supper as communion. You've probably heard that. You've maybe used that term yourself. The term communion comes from a Latin word meaning common or sharing in common or fellowship. It translates, a New Testament Greek word translated normally as fellowship or partnership. And Paul actually uses that idea when he talks about the Lord's Supper. In chapter 10, verse 16, he writes, The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in, a communion in the body of Christ?

7:04 So the word is there. And from that has developed a habit amongst many Christians, many churches, of using phrases like, we're going to take communion, which is a little strange when you think about it, because we wouldn't say we're going to take fellowship, would we? We are fellowshipping. It's taking, again, one little element of it and using that to describe the whole thing. Since Paul wrote these words, the church has, well at least in my view, managed to complicate things even further by introducing words that aren't used in the text. Paul didn't use them, Jesus didn't use them, but the church has invented them. Words such as sacrament, for example, Eucharist, and Mass. Now, no doubt we have all heard at least one or two of them, maybe all of them, maybe we've used them.

8:02 So let's just think about them for a moment. The term sacrament, you're getting a little lesson in language. This is very exciting. I know you loved your Latin if you ever did it. It does come from Latin. And it was used for an oath or pledge of allegiance to the emperor that a Roman soldier would make. And it found its way into Latin translations of the New Testament. It came to express the idea of mystery for some reason.

8:29 Anyway, by the 13th century, the church was teaching that there are seven sacraments, including the Lord's Supper. And when it came to the Lord's Supper, the mystery was that the bread and wine literally became the body and blood of the Lord Jesus. That was the mystery that they taught. They also taught that participation in one of the seven sacraments, in this case the Lord's Supper, in itself conferred grace on the participant. Just by doing it, you received grace. Well, the Reformed Church reacted against that. They reduced the number of sacraments to two, baptism in the Lord's Supper. And because it also rejected the idea of participation, conferring grace upon the participant, some branches of the church rejected the term sacrament completely and opted for ordinances instead.

9:31 So now you know. Another term that actually is not in the New Testament, but which has been used. Then there's the term Eucharist. It comes from the Greek, not the Latin. It comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving, and it is traditionally applied by branches of the Christian church to the Lord's Supper, because they see the Lord's Supper as the central act of worship of the church, thanksgiving, worship, and so on. So they talk about the Eucharist. The interesting thing to me is that there is no reference to worship in either Paul's explanation or in Christ's instruction. now that can come as a surprise to many people and of course I'm not saying that doesn't mean that this is part of our worship as a church of course I'm not but the focus of the New Testament actually when it comes to the Lord's Supper is not on worship it is not on thanksgiving it is according to the Lord Jesus himself on remembering him

10:40 that's the key thing And so Paul, in verses that we haven't had time to read this morning, adds how we make that remembrance individual, personal, meaningful, so that it doesn't become just a ritual, something we do because the church has always done it, is by ensuring that when we come to the Lord's Supper, we examine ourselves. And you can read on and find out what he says about that. So it's not just a ritual. It is something that's deeply involved, deeply engaged, deeply intentional, deeply personal on our part. And then finally, there is the word mass, which comes from a Latin verb meaning to send. According to Thomas Aquinas, the focus of that is on the victim that was sent to us. That is Jesus. But once again, my simple point is that the term mass is not a New Testament word.

11:47 It doesn't use that word to describe this thing. So, you know, as with cornflakes, I think it is best to go back to the original and the best, as they say in the ad. Let's use the title for which we have authority. Biblical authority, it is the Lord's Supper. That's the first thing. Very simple, but obvious. Secondly, Jesus not only invented the supper, he commanded it. And the very title of it, if you think about it, it's not just the supper, it's the Lord's supper.

12:23 And in fact, in these verses, the term Lord is used seven or eight times by Paul. It's emphasizing the unique authority that Jesus holds in the universe and in the church. It's the Lord's Supper. We, therefore, participate this morning in the Lord's Supper simply because he asks us to. This do in remembrance of me. And that's one of the things that does make it deeply personal. Because it is very possible for us to come and we're having communion this morning. or we're having the Lord's Supper or whatever time you go to use.

13:11 We're doing that today and okay, that's the bread, that's the wine. Okay, that's over. Now what? And we just, you know, it's like a ritual. It's a funny thing that these people in Glen Abbey do. Wish they didn't. It's a wee bit awkward and embarrassing. But anyway, we'll do it.

13:30 Now, we're doing it not because of some tradition or some elders in Glen Abbey got together and thought this would be a good thing to do. It's because Jesus asked us to do it. And we may not understand all the reasons for it. We simply do it because we trust him. And we know that he would never ask us to do something that is a waste of time. Something that is futile. Something that is unwise or worthless or unimportant. But having said that, it is encouraging to discover that God doesn't treat us as children or even slaves and simply issue commands.

14:10 He treats us as grown-ups by giving us reasons so that we come to see the loving practical wisdom behind doing this thing of the Lord's Supper. So what is this wisdom? Why did Jesus ask his followers, even before he died, to remember him in this way with a cup of wine and a loaf of bread? And the simple answer to it is because these two things capture and therefore remind us as well as reminding the watching world what is at the heart of the gospel? What is at the heart of Christianity? See, there are many things that you and I love about Jesus that he might have chosen by which we should remember him. For example, his wonderful ethical teaching, the brilliant parables, any of the incredible miracles he did. But out of all the things that he said or the things that he did, He chose something that would recall to our memories his willing offering of himself as a sacrifice for our sin.

15:35 Bread and wine, symbols of his body and blood given for us. He clearly wanted to impress in the minds of his followers is that this is the heart of the gospel. This is the central thing about Christianity. This is the dearest thing to God's heart. And it isn't hard, is it, to see the practical wisdom in this. Let me mention three aspects of that. First, when it comes to considering the history of the Christian church, which these visits we made this past week to beautiful churches in Europe has really emphasized again for me, the church has not always seen what its central emphasis should be. And sometimes the Christian church has acted as if its main task is social reform or political influence or ethical instruction, telling society that we should love our neighbors and keep the golden rule.

16:48 And of course it is true that we are to love our neighbors and do good to all. But that's not the central thing about Christianity. The central and unique thing about Christianity is that Christ offers what no one else can offer. Real forgiveness. Real reconciliation with God. Based on his historic self-giving in death, on the cross, as a sacrifice for the sin of the world. So, it's little wonder, therefore, that in a way of keeping it central, he would say to his disciples, listen, you'd be doing all kinds of things. You'd be involved in helping the poor and all the rest of it.

17:37 But please do not forget the central thing is this message of forgiveness based on my sacrifice. Secondly, Jesus' wisdom in instituting this simple Lord's Supper is clear when it comes to some of the theories, the theological theories that have developed over the years with regard to the meaning of Jesus' death. For example, I suppose particularly in the last 50 years or so, it's become quite common for theologians to claim that the real meaning of the cross lies in Jesus' denial of self and in his identification with the evil and pain of a broken world. And they argue further that this original meaning was distorted by Christian teachers, such as the Apostle Paul, who came along later and ruined everything by interpreting the death of Christ in the light of Jewish sacrifices as being an atonement for sin, as if God required blood before he would forgive anyone. That's not how Jesus saw things, they say. It is what the church came later to believe and teach. So how wise then of Jesus that years before Paul, years before any of the New Testament was written down, even before his own death he instituted the Lord's Supper and told us what it meant. The Lord's Supper is the earliest record of what Jesus himself actually claimed and taught that his was a death for sin a provision for forgiveness and it was celebrated as such from the very beginning.

19:55 We listen to his actual language. My body given, my blood poured out for the remission of sins. It wasn't there for the disciples who came up with the idea that the Son of God would come into the world specifically to lay down his life as a sacrifice for the sin of the world. They didn't understand it. They didn't want anything to do with it. They ran away, in fact. It was an idea that came from the heart of God. Thirdly, we can also see the Lord's wisdom at the level of our own individual lives.

20:38 The bread and wine are simple graphic symbols of the death of Christ. But it's more than that. The Lord's Supper is not some spectator event. It's not a ritual that we perform, in that sense, outside of ourselves. It is something that we participate in. And we are saying something by participating. In other words, it's not meant to be passive. it is active and this I think is crucially important at this practical level because so often I've been chatting to people over the years and they don't know what to do you know this period of silence is so embarrassing it's great when they play a wee bit of piano because it covers the silence but I don't know what to do take the bread and wine and you wait for what happens next it's passive We're observing.

21:53 What we're meant to be doing is engaging. Take one aspect of it. Jesus said of the cup of wine, this is the new covenant in my blood. A new covenant, that is a legal agreement that he has signed and sealed in his own blood. An agreement with you and me. He's made a covenant with us. And every time we take the cup, we are remembering that covenant. In fact, more than that, we are pledging our allegiance to that covenant and to the terms of it.

22:31 Do you know what they are? Or is it just something you do? And Christians have always done this. The terms of the new covenant aren't difficult. It isn't like the old covenant, written in tablets of stone with ten short commandments and then hundreds of others, including thou shalt not see the calf in its mother's milk. You don't have to remember all of that. It's just a couple of simple clauses. But when we come and take the cup, we are actually affirming.

23:06 That's what I'm involved in. That's what I have agreed to. And what is the first of them? God says, I will write my laws in your heart and in your mind also I'll write them. instead of writing laws and tablets of stone, which are cold, external, which tell us what to do, but we can't do it and they just condemn us because we don't have the power to do it. God comes and writes his holy character in our hearts, gives us the power of his spirit to transform us from within. This is God's commitment to us. And this is what we're affirming.

23:43 We're basically saying, yes, God, do it. Do it in my life. Please, keep doing it. I'm 73, but I'm still learning about myself. I still need your transforming work in my heart. Do it. So the time is not passive observance, but it is engaged. It's intentional.

24:06 We are doing something. We are saying something. And that is why Paul is asking us to, as he goes on, to examine ourselves and then participate. Now, none of us likes examining ourselves. And I'm not talking about a biological examination or a medical examination, but how do we look inside here? And we don't particularly like it. But the thing that prevents this from becoming devastating and some kind of unhealthy, morbid introspection is the covenant that says at the very end these fantastic words, your sins and iniquities I will remember no more forever. Wow.

24:59 In other words, it doesn't matter what I find in myself that I haven't got rid of my pride and I'm still not fully trusting the Lord in different areas of my life and there's all sorts of stuff. You'd think by this age I would have grown up and learned it but I'm still learning it. But the covenant gives a basis for that, where I can look at the very worst about myself and know that he will never bring it up against me in a court of law. That's what remembering means. That here I come, and the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, cleanses me from all sin. Can you see the practical impact of that? Instead of hiding from God, instead of being devastated by our own failures and so on, Of coming as a discipline. To remember Jesus.

25:48 Not ourselves. Remember Jesus. Examine ourselves. But remember him. And then it goes further. And with this I finish. Paul says at the very end. We.

26:02 By taking bread and wine. We proclaim the Lord's death. Until. He comes. And one of the things that struck me. in the churches was the smell of death, as I would call it, surrounded by it everywhere. Images of Christians being martyred, crucifixes everywhere, images even of dead priests, all sorts of stuff. And I started to wonder, what's the psychological impact of that?

26:41 When I could go right through this building and see the magnificent artistry and appreciate all of that, but realize there is no resurrection here. It's scarcely if ever acknowledged. You see, Paul does not, in Corinthians, go into details about the extent of the sufferings of Christ in order to produce shock and awe. or to evoke feelings of pity and fear. When the woman who saw Jesus going out to the cross were weeping and pitying, and he said, don't pity me. Don't worry about me. It's all in control. Worry about yourselves and your kids

27:35 because of what this is saying. It's not here to make us weep and wail over the sufferings of Christ, to keep us, in that sense, psychologically down and focused on the sufferings. We do it. We proclaim his death as a victory until he comes. Remembering Christ is not simply about remembering the past. It's about remembering the future because there is one. because of the death of Jesus. He then was raised from the dead to prove and demonstrate that his sacrifice was acceptable to God for the sin of the world.

28:21 He went to be at the right hand of God and one day he will return. And we take bread and wine with that forward-looking eye to that future, to the return, and celebrate not just his death, but his resurrection, his return, and the reality of the hope that is living and powerful within us. May God use his works so that this time will not be passively looking on, but rather actively engaged in remembering Jesus.