Sermons

“The Center of Our Faith”

Matthew 25:26-29; I Corinthians 10:16-17; 11:17-34a – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – October 7, 2018

World Communion Sunday

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might be fed, body and soul, and go forth to feed the world.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

We get to talk about one of our favorite things today: communion.  As Disciples of Christ, we talk about communion every week, at least a little bit, when we do it.  But (in case you hadn’t noticed by now) today is special, because we’re making the whole service about communion, even the parts that aren’t communion.  I could talk for weeks about communion and not cover everything there is to say about it, so please understand that what I will say today is not intended to be definitive or complete.  I encourage you to use these reflections as a jumping off point for more deeply developing your own understanding of communion.

To say that communion is the center of our faith is to say that Jesus is the center of our faith.  One of our favorite denominational slogans, historically, has been “no creed but Christ.”  Occasionally, we’ve gotten confused and assumed the most important part of that phrase is “no creed,” but really, the point is that Christ is at the center of why we’re here.  And communion is one of the ways we make that real, which brings us to one of the aspects of what communion is that I want to highlight today.  Communion is a shared ritual that makes real both our remembrance of and the presence of Christ.  It starts with Jesus, it’s guided by Jesus all the way through, and it ends with Jesus. The words we say are both words about Jesus and words that Jesus himself said.  We do it because he told us to.  We do it because he showed us how.  We come to the Table because Christ invites us.  As I say almost every week, this is Christ’s Table, not ours.  And that shapes everything else I’m going to say about communion today.

The second thing I’d like for us to notice about communion is that it involves food.  This is not an accident.  There are many possible religious rituals out there, involving all sorts of different kinds of objects and props.  But the one that is at the center of our faith is a meal.  What does that mean?  To me, it’s a reminder that Jesus isn’t just an idea.  Jesus was God taking on flesh and blessing our earthly existence with God’s presence.  Communion is a reminder of the incarnation.  It’s a reminder that God created us and proclaimed us Good.  It’s a reminder that we are weak and needy, and that that’s okay.  To share in communion is to remember that you also have a body that can get broken, that runs down, that needs nourishment.  It’s a call to take care of yourself, to remember that God wants your physical needs to be met, because God loves you, body and all.  God wants to feed you.  To center our worship around a meal is to join in proclaiming that we need to be fed and God wants to feed us.  So sharing in communion makes real our remembrance of and the presence of Christ, and it reminds us of our inherent worth as creations of God.

The third aspect of communion I’d like to lift up this morning may be the one many of us are most likely to think of when asked what communion means.  Communion is an invitation into the mercy of God.  We are invited to come as we are and promised that we will not be left as we are.  We are invited to confess all that has pulled us away from God and drink deeply of the cup of forgiveness.  Communion is a ritual designed to help us understand that God takes what is broken and make it whole again.  For many Disciples, this weekly time of quiet is our best and most cherished moment of the week, when we can truly focus on making right our relationship with God. “This is my blood of the covenant,” Jesus said in Matthew, “which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  Christ himself tells us that this meal is about recognizing our need for God’s mercy and drinking deeply of it.

Closely related to this, and more accessible for some, is the idea that this is a feast of love and thanksgiving.  Pulling together the three previous aspects – the centrality of Jesus, the idea that God feeds us because God loves us as the puny mortals we are, and the invitation into forgiveness – we settle into a deep sense that the point of this meal is to ponder for a few moments just how much God loves us and to give thanks.  We remember Jesus and how he laid down his life out of love.  “Eucharist,” a word used more often in some other Christian traditions for communion, literally means “thanksgiving.”  These sorts of ideas are what many of us contemplate while we’re waiting to be served or receiving communion:  the forgiveness we’re offered, the sacrificial love of Jesus, the many, many things we have to be grateful for.  We could talk for weeks just about these aspects of our faith. But we’ve only covered half of what is happening here, so let’s broaden our gaze.

One of the most important things about communion is that we do it together.  As we share in the body of Christ, Paul reminds us, we become the Body of Christ. This is something we draw attention to particularly on this WorldCommunion Sunday, as brother and sisters all over the planet are sharing in this meal and remembering one another. All that stuff about inherent worth and forgiveness and love that we’re giving thanks for individually applies not just to each of us, but to all of us, us and everyone else too.  If you ask Paul, he would say it’s impossible to celebrate communion on your own, unless you were specifically and intentionally drawing to mind the rest of the Body of Christ while you’re doing it.  Do you look people in the eye when you’re serving or receiving communion?  Or are you too focused on looking for God to notice your neighbor?  It’s okay to be looking at God sometimes, but it’s important to look around us just as often, to see the Body of Christ gathered all around us.  To share in communion is to celebrate our community of faith – locally and globally – a community that is centered and unified in Christ, but beautifully diverse in its expressions of the image of God.  To reflect on this community draws our attention back to Christ, as we marvel at how such diversity can be united, and also inspires us to thanksgiving again, this time for less personal, more global blessings.

Once we’ve broadened our gaze to the Body of Christ beyond ourselves, Paul invites us to engage more deeply with the implications of that.  This is when we discover that communion is not just an invitation to mercy and thanksgiving, but also a call to justice.  The desire to celebrate the Lord’s Supper requires certain things about how we treat one another.  Paul was addressing a specific situation in Corinth, but the general principles are applicable wherever two or three are gathered:  Do not go ahead and stuff yourself before other have gotten off work. Don’t pretend that you can eat a holy meal while a sister or brother is going hungry.  Discern the body – notice its needs and attend to them as Christ would tend to them – so that you can truly call the feast you’re sharing the Lord’s Supper.  We do our best here to make sure everyone is served, with the deacons primarily responsible for ensuring we get to everybody.  But this WorldCommunion Sunday reminds us that this question of “discerning the body” is not just about offering the bread and the cup to everyone in this room.  What are we doing to make sure our brothers and sisters all around the world are being fed? What are we doing to ensure everyone has clean water?  What are we doing to address the pain or shame or alienation that might be keeping others from Christ’s Table?  When we look up to see the Body of Christ with whom we share this meal, it’s just as important to notice who isn’t here and pray about how we can address those absences.

This call to justice is not a separate or divergent way of thinking about communion.  It is integrally connected with everything else happening here. Christ is at the center of this meal. To share in Christ’s body, to receive Christ’s love in the bread and the cup, is to commit to share that same love with others.  To love Jesus is to love what and whom Jesus loves, and justice, as they say, is what love looks like in public.  Calling for repentance from those who have harmed others, walking alongside those who are vulnerable and hurting, demanding that the Powers That Be listen to the voices of those who have been ignored – these are all ways that we re-member, that is, put back together, the broken Body of Christ.  This call to justice relies on the reminder communion gives us that each and every one of us puny mortals is a beloved creation of God. Following the call to justice requires that we come back to this Table to be fed, again and again, for we will need replenishment in our bodies and our souls as we follow the way of Christ.

Communion is our most tangible way of centering our worship, our faith and our lives in Christ.  It is a reminder that we are precious creations of God, who loves us and wants to feed us.  It is an invitation to recognize our need for mercy and to drink deeply of the cup of forgiveness.  It is an opportunity to give thanks for the incredible depths of God’s love.  Communion invites us to recognize the intimacy and the breadth of the community of the Body of Christ.  It calls us to follow Jesus along the challenging paths of justice. And finally, communion is a sign and a call to hope.  We do not live in optimistic times.  In this regard, our faith is becoming more and more counter-cultural.  We are a people of hope.  Sometimes we can see visible signs of that hope, but sometimes it is merely a dim flicker in our hearts or the hearts of another.  This meal we share offers us hope, hope for a time when all shall be fed, when every tear shall be wiped dry, when death and pain and crying shall be no more.  It is a “not yet” and an “already” moment when we break the bread and pour out the cup. We know we live in a very broken world, but we also know that the God who makes all things new, who brings wholeness out of brokenness is present and alive in our midst and around the world. Let us give thanks and rejoice, for the gift of this Table, the Table of Christ our Lord!  Alleluia and Amen!