Rediscovering the Community in Communion

Well, hello McLean Church family!

We are recording this talk for the third week of August 2023. It's hard to believe we're at the end of the summer already, and we have a lot to look forward to in the fall. The fall is such a wonderful time in Northwestern Pennsylvania. But a quick reminder to squeeze in those last opportunities for summer as you can. It really is a wonderful time of the year.

I want to start today with a huge thank you to the many of you who gave so very generously this past Tuesday on Erie Gives Day. Not just to our church, but to so many non-profits in our community. The region gave, as you saw on the news, almost eight million dollars, which is an incredible statement about the place where we live and the rich generosity of the people in this community. And your generosity toward McLean Church was incredible.

We set a pretty lofty goal of trying to raise thirty thousand dollars on Tuesday to complete some really needed capital repairs around our church. You gave over thirty-eight thousand dollars, and I'll tell you what that does for us, both practically and emotionally, is really significant. It was a real shot in the arm as we go into this new ministry year. And again, can't thank you enough for your consistent, faithful, generous support of our church. You are really making a difference. So, thank you.

We're in the final week of our Tradition series, talking about four traditions you can't or shouldn't live without. This week, we come to what might be considered the second universal tradition of the Christian Church. The first, we talked about last week, being baptism. This week, we want to talk about communion or the Lord's Supper or the Eucharist – this remembrance of Jesus stemming from a meal He had with His disciples shortly before His death.

Communion is a centerpiece of Christian tradition. Some churches observe communion every time they gather, every single week. Other churches, like ours, participate in it monthly. The reality is every Christian Church, to my knowledge, has a regular practice of this tradition.

And yet, I must confess, having been a Christian essentially all of my life, having been a professional Christian as a minister for the last three decades, I really have never understood communion. I don't mean that to be a shock to you. I certainly understand it theologically. I could pass examination questions on the practice. But I never really internally got it. I knew this was supposed to be some big, significant celebration. I knew in my head that it was supposed to be deeply moving and deeply meaningful to me. But throughout the majority of my Christian experience, it has really not been that.

And again, I understand all the significance, the symbolism, the tradition, the theology. But it was never internalized for me at the level I felt it should be or maybe at the level that I saw in other people.

So, for many years, I've been on a quest to try to better understand this ancient tradition and this ancient practice, and to try to understand why it's so central to Christian experience and why, particularly, it was so central to the early church. And of course, to begin that journey, it makes sense that I would go back to the beginning or to the first accounts we have of people participating in this meal.

And of course, our earliest accounts go back to the gospel records and Jesus celebrating this meal with His disciples.

I want to read to you from the gospel of Luke's account of that first communion, that first Lord's Supper, that last supper that we often talk about in church history. And I want to share with you some observations and some conclusions that going back to that account has helped me reach and realize. And I hope some of these observations will help make the practice of communion more meaningful to you because my guess is I'm not the only one who hasn't quite fully understood or got it.

So, listen to what Luke writes. This is in the 22nd chapter of his gospel. He says, "When the hour came, He (that's Jesus) took His place at the table, and the apostles with Him. He said to them, 'I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.' Then He took the cup, and after giving thanks, He said, 'Take this and divide it among yourselves, for I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.' Then He took a loaf of bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, 'This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' And He did the same with the cup after supper, saying, 'This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.'"

At the risk of trying to make something that is richly complex overly simple, I want to suggest that perhaps the core for understanding the power of this meal that we celebrate called communion or the Lord's Supper or the Eucharist is in returning to what it originally was.

And what it originally was, as is clear from the text I just read, was a meal. What this event that we call communion, the Holy Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, what this event was in its original context was a meal – a full meal shared by Jesus and His disciples.

If you noted in Luke's account, it mentions two cups that are passed, and the significance of that is that it's a reminder that this was a complete, full meal experience. This wasn't just a particular moment in a meal; this was the meal itself. And this is how we believe the early church, for at least decades, if not centuries, after Jesus's death and resurrection, celebrated and observed communion. They came together, and they ate a meal.

A meal shared together, time spent together around the table, talking about who knows what else besides Jesus's coming suffering and death. They discussed; this shared community was the original experience of communion or Eucharist or the Lord's table. It was just a meal.

Now, something changed somewhere in the course of church history. Some scholars put the change around the time of Constantine when Christianity begins to move towards the official religion of the Roman Empire. Something happened as the church community moved from gathering in people's homes to gathering in basilicas or cathedrals. There was no place to eat a meal together.

And so, what was once a fully experienced meal together became symbolized and privatized. The full meal was reduced to a token wafer and a swallow from a common cup in some cases. And the experience of the meal together became the individual experience of the worshiper as he or she partook of the symbolic elements.

And that pattern marks much of our experience of communion to this day – a symbolic meal, a small piece of bread, a small cup of grape juice or wine, or a sip from a common cup. And the experience became focused on my individual remembrance of, reflection on, recollection of Christ and His suffering and death for me.

Now please understand, this has been very meaningful to many for centuries. And I don't mean to take anything away from the symbolic or privatized expression of communion that we have made it into. But I think we're missing something more. I think we're missing something far bigger and far greater.

For it seems to me as we reflect on what Jesus did with His disciples and what He asked them to continue to do and what the early church continued to do, we have to conclude that communion was intended to be a meal. And it was intended to be a meal with a purpose – a meal with a purpose, the purpose of which was found in forming relationships among other people who bore in their bodies the image of Christ.

Follow me on this one – Jesus asked His followers to remember Him in this meal. For us, that's become a cognitive reflection on who Jesus was and what Jesus did, altogether important and appropriate. But there's something more to remembering; to remember is to remember to reconstitute a reality.

And what was the reality of Christ? The reality of Christ was the community that He created. The community that would bear witness to His reality from that moment in time forward – the community that would become His body, the community that today is the church.

To remember Christ was to reconstitute that reality, to reform and recreate that community that His life, death, and resurrection created. And He asked that community to be remembered or recreated regularly, how? Through the celebration of this common meal.

It seems Jesus' understanding of what the community His followers were to create and embody was, in many ways, pretty different from the church that exists today.

In truth be told, churches like ours have become more like theaters or event centers or venues for performances that we come to hear an inspiring talk, to listen to engaging music, and then to go away with no connection relationally to anybody else who is part of the experience. And it would seem that Jesus had a far different vision for His followers.

It wasn't about gathering for a show; it was about gathering together to form, live out, and live into relationships made possible by this new reality that Jesus introduced to the world – that in Him and through Him, there was no difference; all humanity was one.

That here, in this new community, everybody could have a place, everybody could fit, everybody could belong. The church that would become this community that Jesus envisioned was the place where everybody had a spot at the table, where everybody could come to the meal and share a part in it.

I wonder if the reason that people like me, and maybe like many of you, have long been searching for the hidden power of the celebration of communion or the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper is because what we've made communion into is not what it originally was or what it, at its core, was intended to be.

There's something when I gather with other people around a table and I recognize that those people are around the table together with me because of Christ. That makes me aware of Him, remembers Him in my presence, that brings to reality in that moment of time Christ Himself.

These are clearly the understandings and ideas that were behind the 19th-century poet/priest Gerard Manley Hopkins' famous poem "As Kingfishers Catch Fire."

I was only going to read the last section of the poem, which really brings the point home that we're making. But the poem is so good that I'm primarily going to read it all, just to give 60 extra seconds to read it all. Hopkins writes:

"As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying what I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is—
Christ—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces."

Hopkins understood what Jesus had in mind when He called His followers to "do this in remembrance of Him." Jesus understood that He, the Christ, would continually show up in the faces of others, and I would encounter Christ when I looked into the eyes, into the face, of those I shared this sacred meal with.

I realized today, as we prepare to celebrate communion – and particularly, if you're part of our online congregation that perhaps, for a number of good reasons, you're not able to be present with a group as you celebrate this sacred meal, this communion, this Eucharist, this Lord's Supper with us today – please know your celebration of this meal, even if it's by yourself and alone, still has great importance, impact, and value.

But I want to suggest that today, if you're partaking of this meal alone, that you take a step further to really embody its power. Take the initiative today to, at some level, be it ever so small, engage with the community that is around you. Reach out in a text or a phone call or a Facebook message to an old friend, maybe that you haven't connected with in a while. Better yet, maybe there's someone near, a family member, a friend, an acquaintance, that you can call up and meet later in the day for lunch or dinner or coffee or a walk.

If there's no one that you can reach out to and connect with today, go for a walk and say hi to the person that you pass on the sidewalk or the trail. Recognize that Christ shows up in the presence of others and that there's something about engaging in relationships that forms and remembers Christ in us.

And as you celebrate this meal going forward, I encourage you, I challenge you, to do what I'm very much going to try to do – to remember and live into its original purpose and practice. And see the relationships that I engage with form and foster in the context of this new community called The Church as the primary way by which Jesus is remembered until He returns.