Why Church? Nothing Supplant Communion:
Psalm 116: 1-4, 12-19; Luke 24: 13-35
We continue our series this week asking, “Why church?” Last week we talked about the need for us to encounter God’s holiness. This week we get more specific—that holiness in communion. If you’ve spent any time in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) at all, you know that communion and sharing the Lord’s Supper at the Lord’s Table is central to our beliefs and practice? But why—what is so powerful about this portion of worship?
A friend tells of an encounter he experienced at church one day. There was a younger woman of about 40 slowly limping down the aisle to take communion at the front. She had to use a walker to get around and moved very slowly. Her father, who appeared much stronger and healthy, accompanied her. As both finished taking communion, they returned to their seats with tears streaming down their faces.
My friend spoke to them after the service and asked about their back story. The younger woman said a year or two prior her father was having heart surgery, and while she, her mom, and her brother were driving to the hospital, a car crossed the line and hit them head on. Her mother and brother were killed, and she was left permanently disabled. But she said that she and her father came very week and took communion because of the power it held for them.
Jesus died an innocent person in his work to help and save others. In that death the father feels bonded to his wife and son, and he said he was assured of his hope to see them again one day. The daughter said that every time the priest said Jesus’s body was broken, she saw her own broken body in light of Jesus’s broken body, and she felt connected to her Creator and created in the image of God regardless of her abilities or impairments.
In our Gospel lesson for today, we read about the walk to Emmaus. Two of Jesus’s disciples meet him on the road to Emmaus, but do not recognize him. They listen to his teachings, they converse about scripture, and they tell Jesus the story of his own death, resurrection, and appearing to the disciples. Yet, they never recognize him along the way. Their hearts burned with every word of teaching and instruction he gave, but they didn’t truly recognize him. But then they come to the table together.
Jesus is prepared to continue travelling on, but they stop him and bring him home to their table. Hospitality was one of the highest virtues for Ancient Judea. There were few inns, and no Marriott or Hiltons around, so most travelers relied on the hospitality of strangers. They brought Jesus into their home, fed him, and were prepared to shelter him for the night. This seems pretty crazy to us in the ongoing age of stranger-danger. But people of Jesus’s day practiced and expected hospitality. So, then there are two parts to them seeing Jesus—the invitation to the table, and Jesus’s presence there with them.
One of the most powerful parts of Communion is the welcome or invitation extended. The invitation or welcome to the table is God’s to offer. Many denominations are very restrictive of who can come to the table based on tradition or theology. In college, I played organ for a church every single Sunday for 3.5 years, but I was never permitted to share in communion with them. It did not matter that I believed in God, worshipped with them, prayed with them, and made sure the preludes sounded good. I would never be permitted to take communion without going through a year-long catechism process.
It’s a difficult pill to swallow when you think that at the first communion where Jesus instituted the holy practice that he turned and served broken body and cup of salvation to Judas. If Jesus brought Judas to his own communion table, what right do you or I have to send folks away? I think of the testimony of Lenny Duncan, a pastor in the Lutheran tradition. He tells a story of hearing Jesus speak to him in the midst of his trauma, drug use, spiraling mental health issues, and destructive life choices. He immediately sought out church, and in a Lutheran church, they brought him forward to the front and popped communion in his mouth while he was still figuring the whole thing out. But, he writes, it was a moment that transformed him forever and set him on a path away from drugs, evil, anger, and destruction, and made him into a preacher of the Good News.
That happens because Jesus is present with us when we take communion. In the walk to Emmaus, they didn’t recognize Jesus when he taught, conversed, appeared, or even scolded their unbelief. But when he took bread, broke it, and blessed it, they immediately knew they were in the presence of Christ. I have fully accepted that I cannot preach someone to salvation. We can sing all seven verses of “Just As I Am” till the cows come home. We can pray till every disciple here is asleep like the ones in the garden before Jesus was arrested. But nothing will change a heart and soul until they experience Christ for themselves.
Why church? Because there is nothing else in all of religious practice like Communion. One hundred sermons, a thousand hymns, and all of the order and practice we do does not compare to those moments of reliving grace. Jesus said to us, “Do this in remembrance of me.” It is both a time where we remember the hope and work that Christ did for us and our grace as well as a time when God remembers us. When words fail, when life is miserable, when we are confused, lonely, or struggling, we can go back every single time and remember in bread of life and cup of salvation that story of redemption and grace.
It’s the one point of our faith where, not only does Christ invite our participation, but we also feel Christ’s presence with us. The two who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus were powerfully affected by his appearance. Instead of settling for the night, they jumped back up and walked seven full miles back to Jerusalem to meet the disciples. They heard how Jesus appeared to the disciples. Then the two shared with the disciples that they recognized Christ as he was breaking the bread. Do this in remembrance of me. They remembered and knew him as they broke bread and shared a cup together.
Communion is one of the central points that drew me to the Disciples of Christ. It’s a place where we are all together as one people, celebrating the same hope and grace, leaving behind our differences, experiences, and individual selves. As one body, we come to the table to meet Christ, who loved us, and is with us. There’s something so momentously powerful about that act shared together.
In a world of division and difference, when we do this in remembrance of Christ, we take just a moment to focus completely and only on the Savior who loves us. You can still be who you are, believe or doubt where you find yourself, hold on to your philosophies and traditions, but in that moment, we are one body seeking Christ together in unity. Why church? Because there is nothing else which can unify in the same way an extraordinarily diverse group of people and direct them towards God’s love and grace.
So when we wonder in the modern age, what is the point of still having church, we can point to this one act of remembering the most holy and powerful hope that exists in life and in death in this world. When you do this, remember me. And each time that we do this, God is present with us as well.
Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/1664321653990605