Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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 When we receive the bread and wine
 ---especially on this night when our Lord first gave it
      ---especially on this night when one of us betrayed him
           ---especially on this night when we all behaved so badly
                --- especially on this night when, about to die, he gave us one last gift
 -- when we receive communion, we have arrived at the heart of our faith.  Nothing is older in the Christian church, nothing is more central.  Its Latin name, "eucharist" means "thanksgiving."  Communion is the good news of the gospel acted out.
 That night in Jerusalem, in an upper room, the twelve sat down to a sad Passover meal with their Master.  It would be their last supper together.  During and after dinner he gave them a sign -- a sign of what was to come.  And they received it, not comprehending, and they never stopped receiving it, right down to the present day.  Still doing this simple thing together, eating bread and drinking wine, after all these years!  Wherever, whoever.  The same words: "This if my body…This is my blood."  Isn't that remarkable!

      Communion, first of all, is a memorial, a remembrance.  We do it often, as he said we should, because (in this world, where everything is contrary to our faith) we often need to be reminded.  It is human nature that, if we are not reminded we soon forget.  The languages we studied in school, for example, and now can't remember a single word.  Why?  Because we didn't use the language, didn't keep reminding our brains.  Communion is a string around our finger.  It is a token from one who is away, saying, "Don't forget me."  It jogs our memories.  "…as oft as ye shall do it," do it "in remembrance of me."

      It reminds us of many things.  It reminds us of the long, discouraging history of Judaism before Jesus, of the patriarchs and the prophets and the kings, of that two-thousand year, tortured struggle of the Jewish people to repair their broken relationship with God.  The story of the Old Testament is the story of God as a jilted lover: how he sought to win his people back, and how they, woefully misguided,  refused to accept his forgiveness and his love, but instead tried to appease him with religious duties and blood sacrifices.  (At the very bottom of a rugged valley, down below Jerusalem's south wall, is the Field of Blood -- where Judas hanged himself, you remember.  It was called that because the blood from the altar of the Temple, the blood from all those sacrifices offered there, was so much that it had to be piped out of the city and down to this place, where it ran out on the ground.)  The Jews, you see, had become quite desperate to please God.  Their worship was a frenzy of blood.  But it was appeasement, not atonement, and it had gone crazy.  The Old Covenant had run its course.

      The upper room, where Jesus served communion, introducing the New Covenant, is located on Mt. Zion, directly above the tomb of David.  That is not a coincidence.  For all the long history of Israel is consummated in this sacrament.  Look back and remember.  Remember the impossibility of life under the law.  Remember Jesus and the grace we see in him.  Remember how God offered the final sacrifice -- full, perfect and sufficient -- and all the altars of blood dried up.  All those ancient sacrifices were in remembrance of sin, but communion is in remembrance of the remission of sin.

      Yet communion is more than remembrance.  Its purpose is not only to recall, not only to celebrate Christ's memory, but also to worship in the present a living Lord.  (We have holidays, of course, when we remember and pay tribute to dead people: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, whoever.  But we're not worshipping them, we're simply remembering them.)  Here we worship the one we remember, because (and here's where Christians become peculiar) we believe he is still alive.  We'll talk on Sunday about how Jesus' resurrection erased the line between life and death.  The first Christians, many of whom had seen the risen Christ, knew that he was alive, so communion for them was commemoration and adoration.

      Christ is alive and makes a claim on us.  If the story of Jesus is more than dry-as-dust history, if (instead) Christ is a force to be reckoned with today, we need to understand that force and make our response to it.  So when we eat this bread and drink this cup, we recognize a living Savior and take upon ourselves the obligations of Christian living.  Here we renew our baptisms and our vows of church membership.  Here we examine our lives, and make changes. Here we leave behind all hatred and bitterness, against others and against ourselves, and start again.  Here we are refreshed by God's Holy Spirit, and given new lives time and time again.  "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation," Paul says.  "Old things are passed away.  Behold, all things are new!

      Finally, this service of communion, in addition to being a commemoration and an adoration, is also an expectation.  In our scripture lesson Paul tells the Corinthians  "as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes."  I like the King James version: "…ye show forth the Lord's death until he come."  When we take communion we do more than proclaim Christ's death.  We show it forth in this act and in all that we say and do.  But the last phrase is the key here: "until he comes."  At this table, we raise our glasses to a King in exile in the confident expectation that he will be back and that we will be ready to receive him.  The old radio preachers, even signs along the road, used to ask, "Are you ready to meet your God?"  A tad bombastic, perhaps, but not a bad question after all.  This world will not go on forever.  We will not live forever.  Christ could return at any time.  We could be taken at any time.  Are we ready?  Pagans always believe that time is endless, that history goes around in circles, with no beginning and no end.  For them, therefore, there is never any urgency.  Not so with Christians.  For us the clock is ticking.  The bride groom is coming and our lamps must be lit.  The master of the house will return, and everything must be ship shape.  It is not that we are afraid of the end, in fact, we look forward to it and pray for Christ to come.  It just that we need to be prepared.  Communion calls us to do the work of God, and not to put it off, so that when he comes (or when death comes) we will be found ready.  We sincerely want to, and believe that we will eat this meal again with him in the kingdom of God, as he promised.