Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 13, 2006

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Tonight we commemorate the Last Supper, when Jesus met with his Disciples in an upper room for the Passover meal where he instituted the Christian Sacrament we call the Eucharist or Holy Communion. For most Christians throughout most of Christian history the Eucharist, Holy Communion, has been the central act of the Christian life. The earliest Christian communities, like the one in Corinth that Paul addressed in our Epistle lesson this evening, gathered, every time they gathered, for a common meal at the Lord’s table. Communion is still central for most Christians today. In the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran traditions, Communion remains the central act of worship and the central act of faith. In a very real way it is what holds them together as churches despite the vast cultural and theological diversity within them. When those traditions are working at their best, people may disagree about a great many things and still find unity a Christ’s table.

That’s not true for us in the Reformed or Calvinist side of Protestantism. Over time most Calvinist traditions, including those that grew out of the Anglican Church like the Congregationalists, moved away from weekly Communion. Calvin himself didn’t. The great Geneva Reformer sought out a church every Sunday that was celebrating the Eucharist that day and went to worship at that church. Nonetheless, by the nineteenth century at the latest, many Protestant churches, including most Congregational churches, were celebrating Communion at most once a quarter and sometimes only once a year. I know that at some point in its life this church did not celebrate Communion monthly as we do now.

In recent decades there has been in the Protestant churches a liturgical renewal movement. I was heavily influenced by this movement at Seattle University and by my Presbyterian pastor friend Dennis, who is quite active in it. One of the things that this movement pushes for is a return to weekly Communion. Weekly Communion, indeed Communion every time the community of faith gathers, is the ancient tradition of Christianity. You may think of it as Catholic, but it far predates any division between Catholics and Protestants or even the much older split between Catholics and the Orthodox. It is therefore our tradition too.

The Eucharist is central to all Christian traditions, yet in traditions like ours there is considerable resistance to it. I’ve been told by people in this church that once a month is too often to do Communion. Indeed, our attendance is usually down on Communion Sunday. I find that frustrating, and I often want to exclaim: What are you afraid of? Too much grace? But that’s just an emotional response on my part. Of course I respect everyone’s right to hold their own opinions and to make their own decisions. Still, I must admit to you that I find the resistance to Communion among some of our number puzzling. Indeed: What are you afraid of? Too much grace? Because you see, grace is what Communion is all about.

That may not be immediately apparent, so let’s take a closer look at the matter as it appears in our passage this evening from 1 Corinthians. That passage is the oldest statement of the institution of the Sacrament of Communion that we have. In it Paul makes a remarkable claim. He says: "For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed...." He claims to have received word of the institution of the Sacrament directly from Jesus. Now, Paul didn’t know Jesus during Jesus’ life on earth. He wasn’t at the Last Supper. His direct personal encounter with Jesus was with the risen Christ, in the famous story of his conversion on the road to Damascus. So if as he says Paul received word of the Sacrament directly from the Lord Jesus it probably came during that encounter. Or maybe Paul had other direct encounters with Christ that we don’t know about. Either way, Paul’s statement that he received word of the Lord’s Supper directly from the Lord highlights its importance. Paul means to tell us precisely that the Eucharist isn’t something peripheral to the life of Christian faith. It is something central to it.

Why? Why would Paul, or Jesus for that matter, make Communion so central to the Christian life? Why would the Christian tradition? The New Testament passages about the Last Supper don’t make the answer to that question particularly clear, but I think Paul’s statement at least gives us enough information so that we can figure it out. Paul, you see, connects the Eucharist directly to Christ’s death. He does this in a couple of ways. First, he says that Jesus instituted the Sacrament "on the night when he was betrayed." Jesus’ betrayal, of course, began the chain of events that led directly to his death on the cross the next day. Then Paul ends his statement by saying: "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes." For Paul, the Sacrament is all about remembering and proclaiming Christ’s death. And Christ’s death, of course, is central to the Christian faith.

Oh sure, we’d rather talk about his Resurrection. It’s a lot happier. It’s a lot more fun, and we will celebrate it with joy on Sunday; but his brutal death is just as central to the Christian faith as is his glorious Resurrection; and it is at least in part the connection to his death that makes Holy Communion be about grace. That’s because it is in Christ on the cross that we mainly see God’s grace at work. In Christ on the cross we see God entering fully into the human condition of pain and death. And that’s what grace is, after all. Grace is God’s presence and solidarity with us in all aspects of our humanity. It is God holding us in love, compassion, and forgiveness. God demonstrates that grace to us most of all in Christ, God Incarnate, on the cross. So Holy Communion is about grace first of all because it reminds us of Christ’s death on the cross. The Sacrament is first of all a memorial of Christ’s death for us, as the repeated words "do this in remembrance of me" indicate.

But in the Christian tradition the Sacrament is more than a memorial. We don’t need to get caught up in a lot of philosophical nonsense about transubstantiation vs. consubstantiation vs. symbolic presence to appreciate that fact. We just need to remember the classic definition of what a sacrament is, namely, that it is "an outward sign of an inward grace." Through the outward signs of the bread and the wine we don’t just remember the grace of God in Christ on the cross. We participate in it. We enter into it from the human side. Christ enters into it from the divine side. We meet Christ in the Sacrament. In the Sacrament we enter God’s grace in Christ Jesus, and God’s grace in Christ Jesus enters us. God’s grace fills us. God’s grace transforms us. God’s grace saves us.

So this evening, here in a few minutes, as we once again partake of the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, remember Jesus Christ. Remember him on the cross, dying for you. But do more than remember. Open your minds, and more importantly open your hearts, to the presence and the grace of Jesus Christ. Feel it filling your heart. Feel it filling your whole body. Feel it warming you. Feel it loving you. That’s what Communion is all about. Tonight, as we eat the bread and drink the cup, may Christ truly be present with us. May we truly enter into God’s grace at Christ’s table. Amen.