On the table in front of us there is bread and there is wine. Why? It is a matter of obedience. Jesus himself told us to this so that we never forget what it cost him to bring us together and win us for himself.
For most meals the essential thing is what the food tastes like. But what is important here is not what it tastes like but what it means. We come to this table, as equals, hungry for God.
Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” So I want to take you with me on a journey in time. We’re going to think again about what happened around the meal when Jesus broke bread the night before he died.
1) Past
It’s the night of the Passover festival and Jesus’ twelve followers are with him in Jerusalem. They’re all there; Peter, James and John of course, the inner circle… but unknowns too like Thaddeus and Bartholomew.
Jesus instructs his disciples to prepare the traditional feast in an upstairs room. They don’t know that it’s their fateful last night with Jesus and that by this time tomorrow he will be dead and buried. For them it’s a festive celebration, it’s a gathering of friends in the company of their master.
It’s Jesus’ last ever meal, and he alone knows it. He washes his disciples’ feet, talks with them and takes charge of the meal. He tells them just how much he had been looking forward to it. “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22.15). He says clearly, without parables, that he is going to go through agony and die. “My blood will be poured out for you,” he says. He knows exactly what’s going to happen to him. Arrest, torture, the cross, desertion, loneliness, dereliction, death…
Peter is there, unaware of what he is about to do. In just a few hours he will have categorically denied ever having known Jesus only to bitterly repent afterwards. Jesus knows. But Peter is welcomed at the table anyway. Every week there are Peters at this table; coming with a good heart, earnest, innocent, enthusiastic… but fickle, impulsive, and easily led. The Lord knows that you and I can deny him just as easily. What matters is can Jesus count on us to come back to him broken and sorry afterwards?
Judas is there too. Yes, even him; the Judas who will hand Jesus over to death, the Judas who will show regret and remorse - but not repentance. But Jesus accepts even him as well to this table. On the cross tomorrow Jesus will cry out, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t understand what they are doing.” Was he thinking of Judas as well as the soldiers who crucified him, and the crowd who jeered at him?
Peter, because he allowed himself to be broken, was restored and given a new commission. Tragically, Judas never repented. Listen! Never think you have done something so bad, so shameful, that God would never forgive you. Never think that God is good, but not good enough to forgive you the worst you have ever done. Even Judas wasn’t beyond the pale. “Father, forgive…” He loves you, and nothing can separate you from his love – only your unwillingness to receive his mercy.
After the meal, events move very quickly. Jesus heads towards his favourite public garden just outside the city, called Gethsemane, which means ‘olive press.’ He invites his closest disciples, the ones he can really trust, to accompany him and watch with him through the night. They fall asleep. He suffers anguish and sorrow and mental torment. God presses the cup of his fierce anger against sin to his son’s lips, a cup that no one else can drink or even taste. Jesus drinks the cup dry.
Moments later, Jesus is face to face with Judas, who has come to hand him over. Three years of travelling together, of ministry together, of sleeping under the stars and eating at table together ends in a disorderly confrontation, and an awkward greeting… Face to face.
A bit later still, Jesus, chained up, his hands behind his back, steals a glance at his great friend Peter. Their eyes meet briefly across the crowded square. Peter has just called down curses on his head, swearing he has never met Jesus, adamant that doesn’t even know who he is. Face to face. All that awaits him now is a violent judicial murder. Relentless beatings, blood, humiliations, more blood, insults, more blood.
This meal, for us too, is a face to face encounter with Christ. Look Jesus in the eye with me this morning. Us in all our guilt. Him in all his blamelessness.
2) Present
Those are the events we recall this morning in breaking bread and pouring out wine. It’s an evocative reminder. It’s not like anything else on earth. But it’s not just about thinking back to the past.
Every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, says v26 you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes again. By sharing this meal together we publicly identify with the power of the cross and resurrection for us. Taking bread, sharing a cup is saying openly, “I believe today with all my heart that Jesus really died on a cross, that he carried my sin there in his body and because of him I can know God and be healed.” It’s a perfect opportunity to testify freely to those truths. Jesus didn’t say, “Watch this”, he said, “Do this in memory of me”.
We share this simple meal remembering the past, recalling to mind the agony of Christ on the cross. We also share it to express some profound things in the present; that we belong to a Christian family, that we are in Christ, and that his presence fills our life.
We belong to one another, we are members of one another as the Bible puts it. We, who are many, are one body, because we all share one bread. Meeting together at the same table is about belonging, not just to Christ, but to one another as well. This is a communion table.
That is why it is really important to be right with one another before we come to communion. Jesus said, “If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you… go to this friend and make things right first.” This is why we share the peace.
But of course, we need to make sure we are right with God as well as right with each other. It is a holy communion.
There’s an important parallel between what it says about the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 8-11 and what it says there about food offered to idols. It says that meat sold in the market, having first been offered up to idols is O.K. It’s just meat. You can eat hallal, or in those Chinese restaurants with an idol statue by the front door, with a good conscience, even though the food may have been part of a non-Christian religious ritual.
It’s only food and anyway there is only one God. But it also talks about a spiritual dimension and that pagan sacrifices are offered to demons. Paul seems at first glance to contradict himself. But he is making two different and simple points; firstly, that food is just food; it’s not magic. But secondly, when we eat food in the context of worship, whether of God or of idols, we find ourselves in fellowship with hidden spiritual realities behind.
So when we break and eat this bread, it’s just bread. No more. It’s not magic. But by the power of the Holy Spirit, when we engage spiritually by faith, to us it’s more than just bread. It’s, as Paul describes it in 10.16, “a participation in the body of Christ.” The wine is real wine. If you drink it all, even ‘consecrated’ you won’t drive home legally! The physical ingredients do not change. But when we drink from that cup, in faith, submitted anew under Christ’s lordship and authority, it is the cup of salvation. In this bread there is healing and grace. In this cup, there’s forgiveness and abundant life. In this moment, by the Spirit, Jesus Christ is present.
It’s a bit like a window. You can look at the window; the frame, the handle, the size, the shape… Or you can look through the window and see much more. You can see just bread and wine if you want. But you can also, by faith, look through that and taste and see that the Lord is good.
Physically, we take bread into our bodies and we are nourished, given new energy and strength. Bread is good for you. Spiritually, what’s happening is that, by faith, as we give Christ our hearts, as we meet him, in our minds, face to face at the cross, we tap in to all the blessings that flow from his costly death. It’s the bread of life, the cup of salvation.
By eating this bread and drinking this cup I am saying to the world that Jesus is real and working in my life. He is alive in me. I am letting him work in me. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live is for the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up to die for me” (Galatians 2.20). I am saying, just as Jesus did in the garden, “Not my will, but yours be done.” I am trusting him to guide my life.
3) Future
So we share this meal looking back to what Jesus did. We come to this table too looking in to the present reality of our relationship with God, and looking around at of our unity with one another. But we also eat together looking forward to all that God has promised us. The Bible is extremely clear about this. Holy Communion will one day be obsolete. In eternal terms it has a very limited shelf life. God will one day abolish it. Soon, in fact. If Jesus comes back tomorrow the Communion we share in this morning will be our last. For in taking bread and wine we proclaim his death until he comes again, and only until then.
When one of your loved ones is away you might look at their photo to remind you of them, but not the moment they return. Why treasure a photo souvenir when you have the real thing? When Christ comes back, we shall see him face to face, and we won’t need shadows and symbols any more.
So this is why we eat and drink with one another at the Lord’s Table. But what about verses 27-31? I remind you that Paul says, without any ambiguity, the following words: “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. We ought to examine ourselves before we eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For those who eat and drink without recognizing the body of the Lord eat and drink judgment on themselves. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment.”
Who is not puzzled or troubled by these words? What do these verses really say? What does it mean to examine yourself before eating and drinking?
Clearly, it means that taking communion is a serious business between you and God. You don’t do it lightly. It is a time to remember Jesus’ death and what it cost him to free you from sin. It’s a time to remember his resurrection, his presence in your life, his return. And the prayer we say at communion is designed to focus on those things.
But what if you don’t “recognise (or discern) the body of the Lord?” Does the Bible really say here that if you take Communion insincerely or absent-mindedly you can fall ill and die? It seems a bit extreme doesn’t it? Paul’s words in v30-31 are plain. “Those who eat and drink without recognizing the body of the Lord eat and drink judgment on themselves. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have died.”
And there’s an example of this you are all familiar with. Someone who ate bread and drank from the cup, who shared communion with Jesus and his followers, without having examined his heart? Someone who died very soon afterwards? Judas Iscariot; the one disciple who fell away. Peter, that same night betrayed Jesus too, but he turned back to Christ in tears of repentance, went on to bear much fruit.
Ending
So let’s come face to face with Jesus this morning. Let’s humbly accept Jesus’ forgiveness like Peter did, and not despair in self-pity like Judas.
Let’s eat and drink as an expression of faith; that we might go on to bear much fruit as well.
Let’s eat and drink with gladness - not because we must, but because we may.
Let’s eat and drink not because we love him a lot, but because, like Peter, we so easily discover that we love him only a little. Let’s share this meal to say we want to love him more.
And finally, let’s eat and drink with one another proclaiming the cross with our brothers and sisters on the same journey. Until he comes again.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 27th June 2010
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