World Communion Sunday : The Trouble With Tradition

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Welcome to Making Waves! We are so glad to have you back for another week of ministry. This past Sunday was a wonderful Sunday, and I hope that any of you reading this were able to participate in this wonderful event. The first Sunday of October is the special event of World Communion Sunday. It is on this Sunday that all Christians across this world will be taking communion at the same time (give or take a few hours).

For those of you that know me, you know how much I love this particular celebration. I am a huge supporter of communion and of its importance. As many of you know, Logan and I were recently married and it was a major priority for me to make sure that we took and served communion at the wedding.

But sometimes I tell people of how much I love the act of communion and they might be prone to roll their eyes or shift uncomfortably. Some people just don’t care much for the special act. So, I’d like to talk some about communion, but before we do that, how about we dive into the Word? The text today comes from the book of 1 Corinthians, starting in chapter 11, verses 23-29. The text below comes from the NRSV, but I encourage you to find this passage in your personal Bible if you prefer a different translation for study. Read these words from Paul.

“²³ For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁵ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

²⁷ Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. ²⁸ Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. ²⁹ For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.”

1 Corinthians 11:23-29 (NRSV)

Will you pray with me? Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be acceptable in Your presence, O God. For You are our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

There was once a young girl who was helping her mother in the kitchen for a large family gathering. They were preparing a large baked ham and the young girl was beginning to get to the age where she was quite curious. She had noticed that her mother always cut the ends off of the ham before placing it in the oven. So, the little girl asked her mother, “Why do you cut the ends off of the meat before cooking it?

The mother responded casually, “I always assumed that it allowed for the spices to soak into the meat more directly, but I mostly do it because that’s how my mother did it. If you really want to know, you should go and ask grandma.”

So, the little girl went and found her grandmother and asked her the same question, “Grandma, why do you and momma cut the end of the meat off before cooking it?”

The grandmother shrugged her shoulders and replied, “I have no clue. It’s the way that my mother always did things. You should go and ask your Nana – your great-grandmother.”

Worried that the trail was beginning to grow cold, the young girl found her Nana and crawled up on her lap and asked her, “Nana, why do you, grandma and momma all cut the ends off of the meat before you cook it?”

Nana smiled and responded, “Well, I had to. The pot I cooked it in was too small and I had to cut it to make it fit.”

Such a simple and practical answer. It’s almost disappointing, right? Sometimes we want things to be as exciting as the options we make up in our own heads. Often, we have traditions that we don’t even know the root of in our lives. Sometimes, like the young girl’s mother, we make assumptions about the root of our traditions, but in truth we actually have no clue. Perhaps communion is one of these traditions. It’s become something that we just do to check it off of the list, or some churches sweep under the rug entirely.

I can tell you that at Duke Divinity School, we have three services a week, and at one of those three services they offer the opportunity to receive communion. And I can also tell you that John Wesley would say that this is still not enough. Wesley promoted this idea called the Duty of Constant Communion. Whenever Jesus says, “as often as you gather, do this in remembrance of me,” Wesley took this quite seriously. Some, like Duke, have stepped that mentality back just a step to giving communion once a week. Others, such as Pelham, has stepped back another step or two to only offering communion once a month. Many churches out there offer once a quarter. Some only offer it during special events, like Easter or Advent.

If anything can be said definitively about communion, it’s that there are nearly infinite ways to honor it, and you can see a different means in every faith and practice around us.

So, what’s the deal with communion? Well, today I’d like to take a step back and just ask ourselves, “Why?” Why do we do this thing? What makes communion so special?

Well, let’s turn to our scripture to answer that for us. Let’s read verses 23-25 once again, “²³ For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁵ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

Remembrance. We first do this to remember. We strive to remember the sacrifice that Jesus made. But does it stop there? What event were the disciples and Jesus participating in that night? Passover. The tradition of Passover was forged in the 12^th chapter of Exodus. It was to honor God and His work of freeing from the Israelites from their captivity in Egypt. So, Jesus, in this event, took something old and interpreted it with a new fresh covenant.

You see, during the tradition of Passover, the Jewish people were called to sacrifice a lamb to God in honor of their ancestors who protected their homes by spreading lamb’s blood over their doorways to show God that they were followers of Yahweh. Thus, for generations following, the Jewish people would make their sacrifice to atone for their sins and to honor the God of the Israelites.

Then Jesus comes along and He takes this age-old sacrifice and He re-writes it. This time, instead of the lamb, we have the Lamb of God. Jesus offers His own body, His own blood as the sacrifice.

So, what’s next? What do we do after we remember the history of God’s freeing us? Let’s turn once again to our scripture this morning, “²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

We rejoice in Jesus’ sacrifice. We proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Jesus’ death and resurrection were not done in vain, they were done to clear a path for us to salvation.

In his story Six Hours One Friday, Max Lucado writes of a village of people who were being visited by an anthropologist studying their lives. The people are dying out because of a sickness sweeping the village. The man living among them sees this sickness and he wants to help them. He knows that there is a state-of-the-art hospital not too far from the village on the other side of a river. He tells the villagers to cross the river and go to the hospital for healing. They refuse, claiming that the river is filled with ghosts and demons that will surely kill them. Knowing this isn’t true, the man sets out to prove to them the river is safe. He dips his hand into the water and pulls it out unscathed, but the villagers are unconvinced. The man then removes his shoes and places his feet in the water up to his ankles, but still the villagers are not convinced. Finally, the man realizes that there is only one way to convince the villagers, so he dives into the river, swimming through the current and reaching the other side of the river. The villagers then excited rush towards the river and dive in, moving on toward their future of healing and new life.

This is a symbolic way of describing what Jesus did for us. We were stubborn (and still are mostly) and wouldn’t believe Jesus by His life, so in order for us to be convinced, He had to take the plunge and show us quite literally the way to saving our lives. If this isn’t worthy of joy and rejoicing, then I can’t imagine what is.

So we remember, we rejoice. Now what? Let’s continue in the Word, “²⁷ Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. ²⁸ Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup.”

We must repent. This is a tricky one because Paul seems to imply that we are ever worthy of the sacrifice of Jesus. But thank goodness, this isn’t about our goodness. Instead of seeing communion as something you must be good enough to take, it is something that you can receive and become clean in taking it. God has done the work through Jesus. Our forgiveness is there for the taking, this is simply another opportunity to take this love and repent of our past selves. This is our chance to become clean once again, to be washed white as snow, to have our slates wiped clean.

We remember, we rejoice, we repent, and finally we reach the last aspect of communion. Let’s continue in the Word, “²⁹ For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves.”

In the end, communion is an act of reconciliation. We serve as a unit in this body of Christ. It doesn’t matter whether you are Methodist, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Athiest, Black, White, Asian, Arabian, Man, Woman, Child, Elder, Rich, Poor, Republian, Democrat, Communist, and the list goes on; the table of communion is open to you. We are all a part of the body together. It doesn’t matter if Billy Joe did something awful to you seventeen years ago and you still have that hate clenched in your heart strings, this is a time for reconciliation. It’s a time where you lay down your pride and your elite-ism and you instead pick up the cross of the body of Christ and carry it together.

What’s more, this is a time where we are all on equal playing field, no one member of the body is without need of the rest of the body.

So, we remember the promises of God, we rejoice in the sacrifice of Jesus, we repent of our own sins, and we reconcile with the rest of the body of Christ and join together in this holy mystery of communion. I pray that the next time you are able to receive communion (hopefully soon!) you will keep the meaning of it all in mind.