Communion: What’s It All About?
1st Sunday is the Sunday that everyone wants to make sure they attend church; and every pastor knows that the first Sunday is the day with the largest attendance. In fact, a pastor’s worst nightmare is bad weather on the first Sunday. You can just about hear their wails across the land if a snow storm hits on that Sunday. But, what is it about 1st Sunday that makes it different from all the other Sundays in the month? Yes we take communion, but what’s the big deal about eating wafers and drinking a drop of grape juice so small it can’t even wash down the dry wafer? It’s not like the wafer and juice have curative powers. They can’t heal you. They can’t make you happy. They can’t make you whole. So what’s the point? Why do so many of us flock to church on 1st Sunday; will break our necks to get there, only never to be seen again the rest of the month?
Is it merely to show we know all the religious rules? Is it simply to prove we’ve fulfilled our Christian “duty”? Is it to show off our stately church traditions. Or is it just a symbol of having met all our church requirements? Or, do we believe that the wafers and juice have some mystical power that will allow us to have all the desires of our heart, until the next month; like a good luck charm or rabbits foot. Is this what communion is about?
Unfortunately, a cursory reading of our text doesn’t help much. The very first thing Jesus says to the disciples is: I have been waiting fervently for this! Interestingly, in the original Greek text two different words for desire are used and repeated back to back. Jesus in essence says with great desire, I have desired this. What!? It’s Jesus’ last supper. He knows it’s His last supper. He knows what is going to happen next. Yet, Jesus says He has waited fervently, He has longed, He has greatly desired, He is passionate about this, His Last Supper. Why?! What was the significance of this meal? For what reason, could Jesus have possibly longed to eat His last meal? It’s not like He was eating a meal of home fried chicken, pork chops, macaroni and cheese, collard greens and peach cobbler. His last meal consisted of only bread and wine.
So why, would Jesus be passionate about this meal? The answer is actually quite simple; the meal was an act of sharing. It was an intimate fellowship. It was a spiritual union with Christ. It was a true communion; and true communion is what Jesus is passionate about. Jesus wants to be one with us; a fact He made very clear in John. In five verses, Jesus says five times that He wants to be one with us, just as He is one with the Father. The Father dwells in Him and He wants to dwell in us so that we are all one with the Father. This is why Jesus was so passionate about the Last Supper.
There was a Syrian ritual that whenever someone prepared to leave for a distant land, the beloved’s friends gathered to share one last meal before their friend departed. This last meal together served as a pledge of their abiding love for one another. It conveyed a deep bond of intimacy that would remain unbroken no matter what the distance between them may be. He would never be forgotten. It is said that Jesus and the disciples were engaged in this Syrian ritual. Through this meal, Jesus was establishing His permanent bond with the disciples, and with us. That’s why He said in John 14:16-17, that He would send His Holy Spirit to abide with us forever because It will dwell in us.
We are made to experience intimate fellowship with God. And God’s passion is to transform us into people who delight in being in His presence; who savor every moment in His midst. God wants to intimately and personally intertwine His spirit with our spirit. He really wants oneness with us. And oneness with God is the ultimate Nirvana. Yet, we waste so much time, energy and money trying to obtain what the world tells us we need. I shake my head every time I hear the MGM casino ads: “MGM Grand, live the life you were meant to live”; like hanging out at a casino, losing your money can bring meaning to your life. But this has become our mindset. Our priorities are so confused that we will trade in personal depth for material wealth. In short, we’ll sell our soul for a buck, trying to get a fast ride to a faulty ideal of paradise.
However, the reality is God’s got all the real paradise we need when we join as one with Him. But oneness with God doesn’t happen overnight. Just consuming the communion bread and juice won’t get it. Sadly this means that some of us will never get it, because we don’t want to do the work necessary to get it. And I am not talking about church work—singing in the choir, serving on the usher board, being an officer in the church, being the member with the best attendance or even the member with the biggest tithe. None of that will get you oneness with God. None of this will allow us to experience the passion of Christ.
No, the work I’m talking about is the work on self, the work of rising higher to our spiritual calling in Christ Jesus. Yeah, we may have all the right Bible verses, Christian clichés and all the Church rituals by heart. But it’s what’s IN our heart that counts. What is at our core that makes us who we really are? I’m not talking about that image we try to project to the world? I’m talking about that person we become when all the stage lights are off and we are all alone. Who are we then?
Many of us don’t want to look that hard at ourselves. Because when we strip down to our core, we realize how lost and empty our lives are. But we feel like this because we have not asked God to manifest His presence in our lives. And for most of us, God can’t manifest His presence, because we are hardly ever in His presence. Think about it, how much time have you spent in the past four weeks reading God’s Word? How much time have you spent meditating on God’s Word? How much time have you spent in prayer, listening to God, rather than talking to God? Some of us have so much noise in our life that we couldn’t hear God if He had a bullhorn. That’s why it is so important that we make time to set aside the noise of the world so we can hear God’s voice, even if it’s a whisper or a still small voice in the storm. We must learn to sit in receptive silence to discern and hear God’s voice.
And when we look at Jesus life journey, we see this is exactly what He did, time and time again. Throughout the Gospels we repeatedly read that Jesus left the crowd to go into the mountain, or He left the crowd to sit by the sea. And interestingly, many significant events occurred right after Jesus spent dedicated time in God’s presence. After Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, He spent time in God’s presence and was ministered to by angels. Immediately following this time in God’s presence, Jesus’ ministry began. It was when Jesus, with just three disciples, went away into a high mountain that God appeared with Moses and Elijah and transfigured Jesus. The very next day, Jesus healed a boy of his demons. After feeding 5,000, Jesus went into a mountain alone to pray. It was after this time in God’s presence that Jesus walked on water; and explains why Peter couldn’t. Peter hadn’t spent time in God’s presence.
Time spent in the presence of God is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. And if we open ourselves to this intimacy with God, and are consistent and regular in setting aside time to experience him, we will feel a deep awareness of ourselves and a connectedness with God that will give us greater knowledge of ourselves and leave us with a profound sense of awe. The great beauty of our journey to oneness with God, is that we will not only gain greater knowledge of who we are; we will gain greater understanding of our true purpose. That purpose which brings meaning to life.
Jesus had a “unitive experience” with God. God was in Jesus, and Jesus was in God. He was one with the Father. And not only did Jesus know His purpose, He accepted His purpose. This is why, even though Jesus knew the meal He shared with the disciples would be His last, He was able to rejoice because he understood He was fulfilling His God given purpose.
As Jesus’ journey shows us, sometimes accepting our purpose is not easy. While it is highly unlikely we will have to make the sacrifice Jesus made, we will find ourselves in situations where our will goes against God’s Will. We see the work God has for us. We know what He wants us to do, but the task seems too difficult; the burden too heavy; the reward to little and the sacrifice too large. And so we try to do things our way; fulfill our will. What makes matters even worse, while we were trying to make sure we fulfill our will, we miss the opportunity to receive the blessing God had for us in His will. I am here to tell you, not what I’ve read or what I’ve heard, I’m telling you what I know: God’s Will is always the better way.
And Jesus’ desire is to commune with us so we can find and follow that better way. He has cleared the path. It’s up to us to open our hearts and prepare our spirits to join with God, to commune with Christ. Communion is the highway to God’s Presence. But like any road, whether we get to our desired destination is largely up to us. The road is there, whether we take it and how we take it, is our choice. God is a God of freewill, but He gives us exactly what we need to get us to the place He has prepared for us. What we do with it is the key. Just like you can drive halfway down a road, make a U turn to come back on the same path you went; you can come to God’s table and simply eat the bread and drink the cup, and leave exactly the same way you came.
Or, you can come to the Table committed to seek God’s presence; dedicated to set aside time to commune with Him; determined to listen for His voice; devoted to allow His spirit to fill you with His love and peace. God’s passion is to take up residence in every atom of our being. He wants us to experience the transforming power that time spent with Him will bring. If you come to this Table with the passion of Christ, with a sincere heart, willing and open to unite with Him, then you will eat this bread and drink this cup as a sign of your sincere commitment to seek and experience the presence of God. Communion: What’s it all about? It’s about joining as one with God.
