GOD’S WORD FOR US

October 4, 2009

 

THE FIRST LESSON is Exodus 16:4a, 13-16

 

 

THE RESPONSIVE LESSON is Psalm 104

 

THE GOSPEL LESSON is Luke 24:28-31a

 

 

Beyond Words

 

          This morning we celebrate World Communion Sunday.  Because of  our divided and broken world, this day is increasingly important for all of us.  The sacrament of  Communion reminds us that our church community here at Emmanuel United has family,  sisters and brothers, around the globe.

 

          As a student, I heard sacrament described as “a visible sign of an invisible reality.”  That was Augustine’s definition. 1500 years later, it stands up rather well. 

 

          The United Church’s Song of Faith, is our most recent and poetic statement of how we understand our Faith.  You can hear an echo of Augustine here:

          “sacraments point to the presence of the holy in the world, the church receives, consecrates and shares visible signs of the grace of God...

 

          In these sacraments the ordinary things of life - water, bread, wine - point beyond themselves to God and God’s love, teaching us to be alert to the sacred in the midst of life.”

 

          Another way to say this is that a sacrament is a way to mediate the sacred.  A sacrament offers a thin place between us and the mystery beyond us which we call God.

 

           Sacrament is the Latin word for the Greek word ‘mysterion.’   In a world that demands simple answers to complex questions, there is great value in holding onto the mystery of God.  God can’t be reduced to a cliché or a bumper sticker or a book of religious procedures.  God is always beyond our neat little definitions.  God is always more complicated than we can imagine:   more just, more understanding, more gracious.  God is mystery.

 

          We say there are only two sacraments because these are two community rituals in which Jesus participated.  There was a kind of baptism in Judaism and there was a holy meal called Passover.  Jesus took part in these two Jewish rituals, re- interpreting them as ways to draw near to the God of love. 

 

          That doesn’t mean these are the only ways to make God visible.  What about the sound of a flute, or the deep beat of a drum, or a Bach fugue?  What about your favourite painting?  a gripping drama, or the sheer joy of watching children at play?  

 

          The great dancer Martha Graham was once met backstage by a fan after a particularly brilliant performance.  “Miss Graham,” said the admirer, “that dance was wonderful.  Can you tell me what it means?”

 

          “Honey,” said Miss Graham, “if I could tell you what it means, I wouldn’t have danced it.”

 

          There is so much in life that cannot be described in words.  If words did the job, we wouldn’t need symbols and actions.  

 

          For some of us the fewer words the better, for others there needs to be words to make sense of the symbol, a connective story that puts words to the action.

 

          In the act of Communion, we draw upon the sacred memory of our tradition and we draw upon our own memories of meals we have shared in the past.  We are called to remember.  

 

- Remember what Christ said on that night.  Remember what he did with his friends.

- Remember what Christ meant to you when it first dawned on you that his teachings could guide you.

-  Remember your gradually deepening understanding, the new insights that came to you as you matured, what Christ means to you today. 

 

          When we remember the origins of communion we trace it back to the Jewish Passover meal, eaten in haste as they escaped from bondage in Egypt. 

 

          In time the Christian communion meal became focused almost completely on Jesus’ death.  It became associated with death and sin and the painful requirements of taking up your cross and suffering with Jesus. At times Christians began to think God wants us to suffer and that suffering somehow is good for us.  That was never jesus’ teaching but it seemed that for centuries the church was in a perpetual state of mourning about Jesus’ death and constantly confessing how bad we all are. 

 

          I remember the first Sunday I presided over communion all by myself.  It was World Communion Sunday 1980 .   I was quite anxious, concentrating on trying to get the ritual right, hoping I would say the right words at the right time and not spill the grape juice on the lovely white cloth. 

 

          I noticed some of the men passed the sacrament without taking part.  Eventually I got around to asking one of them why this was.  He said that they did not feel that they were worthy of such an important church ritual. 

 

          That began an ongoing conversation over the next several years.  I think the discussion helped us both to see the sacrament in a new way.  I realized how seriously they took this meal.  And some of them, began to see that the meal was not about our own goodness or worth.  The meal was about God’s goodness, God’s astounding grace that welcomes us to the table.

 

          In recent years, there have been new ways to understand the sacrament of Communion.  We have begun to remember more than Jesus’ death.  We are trying to remember also the meals of his life.

 

          Table fellowship in Jesus’ time had great significance.  It was not a casual act, says Marcus Borg, as it can be today.  Sharing a meal meant mutual acceptance.  There were rules about what you could eat and who you could eat with.  Refusing to share a meal was a way to exclude.  No decent person would share a meal with an outcast.

 

           When you think of  the meals Jesus shared before his death, they are feasts not of death and suffering but of new life and hope and love and abundance:

 

-the wedding feast turning water into wine and the feeding of the 5000 plus - more than enough for all,

- the feast of the return of the prodigal and the joy of reconciliation,

- the eating with the social outcasts, nobody is to be excluded,

- the meal shared with Zacchaeus which ended with Zacchaeus promising to live a new life and sealed by his promise to give away as much as he can to those in need.

`  and the meal described in today’s gospel, communion as an Easter meal, not a meal of the Christ who is about to die, but of the risen Christ, the living Christ, the hopeful Christ.

 

          When  Jesus said, “to eat this is memory of me.”  He was asking disciples to remember these other significant meals, who he ate them with and what they said about God’s open table and God’s desire for justice and mercy.

 

          When we come to the communion table, we are invited into a meal that transforms, it is a feast of God’s goodness.  As we take and bless and break and share the meal, we also share in the spirit which makes us whole.

 

          The meal we share has been taking place for some hours now.  It was taken first in Fiji, then Korea and Japan.  It was taken in China and India and Egypt.

 

           It was blessed in Lebanon, Bethlehem in the West Bank and in Old Jerusalem.  It was blessed in Poland and Sweden and in the Iona community in Scotland.

 

            It was broken in Liberia, and shared in El Salvador. 

 

          Now we at Emmanuel United Church have added ourselves to this world community.  The meal will continue to be shared across this continent as the day unfolds.  The taking the blessing, the breaking and the sharing. 

 

          We come not because we are worthy but because we are loved.  And we come today to share that memory and that hope with one another throughout God’s world.  

                                               

          Bread of Life , feed our souls, as the presence of the Spirit makes us whole....

                                               

 

 

with thanks to:

Augustine of Hippo, Marcus Borg, Patricia de Jong, David Newman, Friends from the churches in Gaspe and Rosebridge, Quebec.