Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
March 20, 2008

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.

Has it ever struck you as odd that the sacrament we celebrate tonight has so many different names? It has me. We call it “the Lord’s Supper,” presumably because it commemorates Jesus’ last meal on earth. We call it “the Eucharist,” which comes from Greek roots and means basically thanksgiving. In our own tradition, the most common name for it is “Communion,” and that may be the oddest and vaguest term of all. Communion? What in heaven’s name is that supposed to mean? The dictionary says the word means sharing, or possessing in common, or participation, among other things. Those definitions may help some, but not much. Those definitions don’t speak specifically to the religious meaning we’re looking for. So we need to look elsewhere to understand why we call the sacrament of bread and wine Communion, and I think we get a better idea of what we mean when we call the sacrament Communion from our reading this evening from Paul. So let’s take a closer look at that text and see what we can learn from it.

In that passage Paul is addressing a Christian congregation that he had founded some years earlier. He has heard from members of that congregation that things aren’t going well. People aren’t following his teachings, which he is sure represent the only true gospel of Jesus Christ. Of special importance for us this evening, he has heard that they are abusing the holy sacrament of bread and wine, and he wants to instruct them both in the proper observance of the sacrament and in its vital importance for the Christian community. First he says that when they come together as church “each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk.” 1 Cor. 11:21 NRSV As a result, Paul says, they “show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing.” 1 Cor. 11:21 NRSV He concludes with an admonition: “So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.” 1 Cor. 11:23 NRSV

To help us understand what this sacrament is about and why we call it Communion, I think it will help to ask: Just what is the abuse of the sacrament that Paul is attacking here? It is, I believe, that the people of the church are gathering only as a collection of individuals, each concerned only with his or her own needs. They do not share what they have. Those with much do not share with those who have little or nothing. In other words, they are not gathering as community, and Paul calls their failure to gather as community an abuse of the sacrament. We call the sacrament Communion because it is the sacrament of the community. It is the sacrament in which the people of God come together as one, come together to put aside their selfish concerns and to be together with, to be “in communion” with, their brothers and sisters in Christ. Paul’s problem with the Corinthians was that they forgot that that’s what the sacrament is about, if they ever knew it in the first place. Communion is the sacrament of community, or it is no true sacrament at all.

Communion and community go together, and this combination of facts tells us something really important about what a Christian church is. It is a community. It is a group of people who have joined together not just into a group that gathers once a week on Sunday but into a community of Christian folk who identify with one another and who care for one another. Most of us, I believe, has seen what the church as community is capable of doing, especially for its members. The church as community comes out especially, perhaps, when one of its members is in crisis. One of the truly amazing things about the church as community is how it comes together to care for its members during those difficult times. I have been the recipient, as I know some of you have, of the care of the Christian community in my times of need. I have been blessed with the opportunity to be part of a community for others in their times of need. I have often said that if everybody knew just what it can mean to be a part of a church community in times of grief or illness, everyone would rush out and join one even if they didn’t share any of the religious beliefs of the church. That’s how powerful the church as community is.

The sacrament of Communion is the central, defining act of Christian practice. It is something that all Christians share, despite their different theologies about just how it works. It is the communal act that held the church together in times of persecution both in the ancient world and in the modern one. It might be possible to be Christian without it, but I doubt it. It was what the earliest Christians came together to do. It is what Christians around the world, in a great variety of different Christian traditions and different cultures, still come together to do today. One of the ways that you recognize a Christian church is that it practices the sacrament of Communion.

And that means that one of the ways that you recognize an authentic Christian church is that it functions as community. Of course it is possible to go through the motions of the sacrament of Communion without being community. That’s what Paul was complaining about in his letter to the Corinthians nearly two thousand years ago. But if Communion is not done as community it is no authentic sacrament at all. We come from different churches tonight, but Christ calls each of our churches truly to be community for its members. And we can be community for each other across the lines that divide us, between congregations, because we all gather at Christ’s table; and we all celebrate the sacrament of community that we call Holy Communion. The kings and emperors of old Europe used to have their private chapels where a priest would come and celebrate the Eucharist only for them. It is not so with us. When we celebrate the sacrament we do it together, as community. So tonight, as we partake of the bread and wine, may the sacrament be for us the tie that binds us into community, that strengths our love for one another, and that renews our commitment to be a true Christian community for each other. Jesus had his last meal with his friends. We too have this meal with our friends, with our Christian community, and for that blessing we can truly give God our thanks and praise. Amen.