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March 04, 2007
Who Should Take Holy Communion?
I Samuel 18: 5-11/John 13: 21-30
March 4th, 2007
When we take the Lord’s Supper we are celebrating an evening meal together even though we usually do this in the morning. It would seem odd to call it “The Lord’s Breakfast,” so an alternative term is usually used, “Communion,” or “The Eucharist,” which means, “The Giving Thanks.”
The layout of this sanctuary is for a purpose; we gather around a table. It is a drop-leaf dinner table.
It doesn’t look like an altar for a reason. We are not offering a sacrifice. We are offering a meal.
The Lord’s Supper is the central event around which a Christian community gathers—much as the evening meal is the central event in a family’s life. If the parents both work and have day-jobs—which I know not all parents do—and the children are still at home, at supper-time they come together around the table. In all your homes someone gives thanks to God for the gift of food, and then you dig in.
The most definitive scene of all that is best about the Scottish heritage is found in Robert Burns’ poem, “The Cotter’s Saturday Night.” In the lilting Highland dialect Burns describes the humble wee cottage at the end of the work-day. The father sits with “the lisping infant prattling on his knee” as “his thriftie wifie’s smile” radiates over the tiny room. In come “the elder bairns” from their plowing and herding. The jewel of the room is “their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman grown, in youthfu’ bloom, love sparkling in her e’e.” The father asks around how the day has been. And then there’s a knock on the door. “Jenny, wha kens the meaning o’ the same, tells how a neebor lad cam o’er the moor, to do some errands, and convoy her hame.” “The wily mother sees the conscious flame sparkle in Jenny’s e’e, and flush her cheek.”
“He’s a strappan youth; he taks the mother’s eye.” She sees the mix of his shyness and seriousness and is “weel pleased” with Jenny’s choice of men. The supper is modest—soup and porridge, all they can afford-- but the evening is grand because it is a cheerful supper. All are welcome around this table. It is Scotland’s tribute to Communion as it ought to be, as it might have been at Jesus’ final meal with His disciples, except for one thing.
How different was the evening of Jesus’ final supper with His disciples. Jesus took a piece of bread dipped it into the garnish and gave it to one who was about to betray Him. Judas had already planned to betray Jesus, but here he acts as though he’s more than one of the gang. Jesus specifically serves him.
Should he have been there at all? If you and I were writing the script for the Gospel, would we have eliminated the traitor-disciple and brushed up the image of Peter a bit? This is our tendency isn’t it? Would you and I have eliminated Judas from the guest list of the last supper? Jesus knew all along what Judas was up to, yet He served this traitor as though he were a special guest.
Not all human meals enjoy perfect harmony around the table, but this is our ideal for the Lord’s Table. Even if we know it is not true for all who gather around the Lord’s Table in a congregation, that all love one another and Jesus supremely, this is the fond ideal we hold. We try to ignore exceptions to this ideal; treat them as though they’re not there. Just before we actually take the bread and cup you and I pray together the prayer in which Jesus taught us to say, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” so that we could in fact as well as in ideal love each other and Jesus’ supremely when we gather at this table. How good it would be if before we ate this meal together, month by month, you and I thought of this or that person that we now forgive—and will live out that forgiveness in the days ahead.
Maybe you wonder why I chose to read the passage from I Samuel for our Old Testament lesson. Ever since David clobbered Goliath, rescuing Israel from an engagement with the Philistines destined for disaster, King Saul knew David was a special fellow. David was taken from tending sheep and welcomed into the royal household as though he was family. King Saul’s son, Prince Jonathan, became a close friend of the shepherd boy, David.
David could not only toss a stone with a sling, he also could strum a pretty mean harp. Gradually King Saul found two competing instincts growing in his heart: a love for David’s music, but hatred for David. This is the scene before us. While Saul listens to David’s music, perhaps singing psalms he has composed, Saul remembers hearing the popular songs about David, women singing in the streets as he rode by, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” So while David is playing music Saul picks up a javelin hidden beside his couch and hurls it at David. Saul is usually accurate with his spear-throws, but this time he misses. Twice he misses. David gets the idea he’s not all that welcome at King Saul’s table. Later on Saul has the gall to ask why David doesn’t show up for dinner any more?
Do you see any similarity between the Old Testament scene and the setting of Jesus’ final meal with His disciples? Jesus, born of the seed of David, faced a dangerous meal and walked right into the trap. But in both settings the meal was by definition a sacred moment of family and friendship. It was like mealtime at your home or mine when we have invited friends to share the table with family. All are welcome and safe except Jesus wasn’t safe.
When you come to this table I hope you realize you are both welcome and safe. Here you and I together are beneath the cross of Jesus, “a shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land.” Here Jesus presides. Everything I say in inviting you and in the words of Institution I quote or paraphrase from Holy Scripture. I invite you in behalf of Jesus who offered the bread and cup not only to eleven disciples who loved Him, but to one disciple who plotted His death.
But there is another aspect to this meal. These elements do not just show up here on a Sunday morning. There are folk in the congregation who carefully prepare this sacred meal. Sometimes the bread is specially baked by someone in the congregation. One family with a Jewish heritage used to prepare the beautiful braided loaf, the chala, eaten at the Passover Seder. Wine and grape juice are poured into tiny cups. The very care with which this table is prepared reflects the care of the Lord Jesus who offered Himself so fully to us. He was born specially of a virgin. He led a faultless life. His good deeds rearranged nature in the doing—healing lepers, feeding multitudes with little—expecting nothing in return.
When we have folks to dinner at our home I have in mind the movie “Babbett’s Feast.” Bonnie and I work together to make the dinner as good as we can. In the movie that I customarily have in mind when we do this, Babbett, a French gourmet cook, now a servant, an alien in a foreign land, comes on to some money and spends it ALL on the most sumptuous meal her talent could contrive with no expectations of the RECIPIENTS returning the favor.
Why? Apparently simply to bring some happiness to this highly religious but dreary little community. It was stymied with weary tradition with no lubricating sense of joy. Babbett won their hearts by her lavish meal, freely offered to people who were neither her family nor her chosen friends. She worked for them as a servant. Slowly as the meal progresses they notice something beautiful has happened. They start to notice how delicious is the food and wine, how beautiful the linen cloth and serviettes or napkins, the china and crystal. The elegance gratuitously offered to them dawns on them and reaches into them. One after another they make small comments about the remarkable meal.
I wish we could see if there were any long-range effects of this meal, any healing of their souls, any planting of the seed of gratitude and generosity and joy, any future re-celebrations of this event.
We do know of the long-range effects of Jesus’ final meal. It has become rightfully the focal point of Christian worship. Even on Sundays when we don’t take the Lord’s Supper, the plate and the cup and the pitcher are on the table as a reminder. But it is possible to celebrate the event and still to forget its intent.
The passage from I Corinthians that I will always quote as “The words of institution” are part of a reordering of this sacred meal in the days of earliest Church. In Corinth “Communion” had become anything but a time of communing. The rich brought their gourmet meals and the poor brought their porridge and each watched the other. They didn’t share as we will this morning after worship at our MAOPI dinner . You have prepared, pulling out the stops and brought your portable “Babbett’s Feast” to share with each other. What is the best food I can make, the most delicious, to share with everyone here as well as with people you may invite to come with you. It’s like the Great Banquet to which all are invited.
This week I saw some of our “church ladies” spending hours preparing Fellowship Hall so that it was beautiful for this lunch. Look around Fellowship Hall as people come in. There is a look of expectancy. People think as they come in, “This is my best; I hope they love it.” And you’ll sneak peaks as people go by the long table with their empty plates. Will my dish get all consumed? Do folk like it as much as I do? This is an agape, a love feast. It is both like and unlike Communion. It is communion for sure, because we are together sharing our best with each other. But it’s not Communion, capital C, with the token amounts of bread and wine. Both these meals are very important to us as Christians. And I hope you will stay because you are welcome.
The Apostle Paul cautioned those who come to the Lord’s Table to come worthily. They should come discerning that it is no ordinary meal, but partaking of the body of the Lord. When he said this I don’t think he meant that only the “deserving” are welcome. That is, you don’t have to be perfect, sinless. But remember when you come to this meal you are coming to eat with the Lord Jesus. You and I may be reaching our hand into the dish with Jesus. Peter reached his hand with Jesus, as did John and Andrew and Thaddeus and the others. As for the betrayer Judas, Jesus specially fed him.
Viewed from Judas’ perspective how foul he must have felt at that moment. But viewed from Jesus’ side, Judas was as welcome as Peter and John. Because Jesus would soon die on the cross for those who would betray Him as well as for those who loved Him.
A great difference between Jesus and most of us is that whereas we love those who love us, who please us, who share our views, who may return our favors, Jesus loved those who hated Him, who did not please Him, who did not share His views, and who would never return His favors to them.
Who is welcome at the Lord’s Table? I would be as welcoming as Jesus. But I ask us all to consider how we will come to His welcome. “How can it be that I should gain an interest in my Savior’s blood?” Charles Wesley asked in the hymn we will soon sing. In Jesus’ name I will welcome you all here. But how good it is to remember what we are doing—coming to eat with the Holy Child of God who for our sakes gave us a Babbett’s Feast in a setting more tender than the scene in Burns’ “Cotter’s Saturday Night.” Take your place at this table. Enjoy your welcome. Share in its sacred mystery and love, not just for Jesus, but for all who reach into the plate with you for a piece of bread.
Thus we will fulfill Jesus’ intent when He said, “As often as eat this bread and drink this cup you show forth my death until I come.” Jesus’ death gave promise of our life. The finest way you and I can say thank you to Jesus is to deliberately, even against our inclinations, love one another as He loved even Judas Iscariot.
Let us pray. O Lord God, for the gift of your Son Jesus, for the gift of His life and death we thank you. And for the gift of this table in which we are welcome with Him. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 479064
Posted by faithpres at March 4, 2007 10:21 AM