Will Fitzgerald
Kalamazoo Mennonite Fellowship
February 8, 2009
Today we celebrate the Lord’s supper together for the first time as the “Kalamazoo Mennonite Fellowship.” This morning I want to reflect a bit on the words of the section regarding The Lord’s Supper from the “Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective”.
The first paragraph reads:
We believe that the Lord’s Supper is a sign by which the church thankfully remembers the new covenant which Jesus established by his death. In this communion meal, the members of the church renew our covenant with God and with each other. As one body, we participate in the life of Jesus Christ given for the redemption of humankind. Thus we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. The Lord’s Supper points to Jesus Christ, whose body was given for us and whose shed blood established the new covenant. In sharing the bread and cup, each believer remembers the death of Jesus and God’s act of deliverance in raising Jesus from the dead. As we relive this event with a common meal, we give thanks for all God’s acts of deliverance in the past and present, for the forgiveness of sins, and for God’s continuing grace in our lives.
This gives us an overview of what we’re doing this morning. We take the Lord’s Supper together to remember together; it is sometimes called a feast of remembrance. The first thing we remember is that something incredibly important happened when Jesus died. Death is usually mostly about loss; but this death created something new: A new way for God and people to be together. No longer is our relationship with God primarily about trying to please God with our obedience. Now our relationship with God is primarily about God granting us life. Jesus’s death led to his resurrection. His resurrection led to new life for us. It wasn’t so much that Jesus died, says the apostle Paul, but Death itself dying. Like slaves freed by the selfless act of a third party buying their freedom from a slave-owner, we have been freed by the selfless act of Jesus who paid Death’s price for us; his life for ours. And so we remember Jesus’s brave death for us in this meal, and we remember Jesus’s gracious gift of life to us.
The confession goes on to say:
The supper re-presents the presence of the risen Christ in the church. As we partake of the communion of the bread and cup, the gathered body of believers shares in the body and blood of Christ and recognizes again that its life is sustained by Christ, the bread of life.
The church has argued over time as to the exact nature of what happens when we take the Lord’s Supper together. I think the confession gets at least part of this right when it calls the supper a ‘sign’ and a ‘re-presentation.’
The Lord’s Supper is a bit like a sign that points us in the direction of God and God’s love for us. It’s a bit like a sign that points us in the direction of how we should love God and love one another.
The Lord’s Supper is a bit like a ‘re-presentation’ of the reality of what happened when Jesus died and was raised for us. One way is to think of it like a map or a model of the real thing. Just as a mountain is reduced to a tiny picture on a map or a small bump on a globe, so God’s immense love for us is shown to us in a loaf of bread and a cup of wine and the sharing of the loaf and cup together, and how our life—our physical lives, our spiritual lives, our social lives—depend on the sustaining gift of God. And just as a map functions to show us the way when we are traveling, so too this supper reminds us to love God and to love one another. Like one of the modern computer maps, we can zoom in on the lovely faces taking part in the feast, or zoom out to the grand spectacle of the church everywhere and ‘everywhen’ participating in the feast together.
The confession goes on to say:
Remembering how Jesus laid down his life for his friends, we his followers recommit ourselves to the way of the cross. Confessing our sins to one another and receiving forgiveness, we are to come as one body to the table of the Lord. There we renew our baptismal covenant with God and with each other and recognize our unity with all believers everywhere in all times.
Live comes through Jesus’s death and life, and we celebrate and enjoy that life. But Jesus also calls us to a way of the cross, to “holy living and holy dying,” to a way of death as well as a way of life. We seek the death of certain things. We seek to be dead to sin, in particular, and the pride that refuses to acknowledge that we harm one another. So we seek a death to our pride, and humbly ask one another’s forgiveness when we need to. We seek to be dead to our own self-centeredness, and we seek to live for others before we live for ourselves. So, in these senses, the Lord’s Supper is as much about death as it is about life. This is very hard work, impossible work, and never done completely well. But at least we get to do it together, so perhaps we don’t fail quite so badly or quite so often. There will come a time when we hurt each other deeply. The Lord’s Supper is a reminder to us to reconcile as much as we can, so that we can take the Lord’s Supper in as much unity as we can.
The confession goes on to talk about who can take the Lord’s Supper:
All are invited to the Lord’s table who have been baptized into the community of faith, are living at peace with God and with their brothers and sisters in the faith, and are willing to be accountable in their congregation.
A couple of these are easy requirements to understand and enforce. We require that those taking the Lord’s Supper have been baptized in a Christian church. For us Anabaptists, that means you have to be old enough to choose to be a follower of Jesus. Ideally, perhaps, this means choosing to be baptized, too. But we are not living in the 16th century, and so we can (as a local church) choose to discern with people whether their particular baptism, if any, was a true baptism.
So baptized (1) and believers (2). Sorry, Ezekiel, you’re too young! But if you’re a baptized follower of Jesus, we welcome you to the table.
We also ask that you be “living at peace with God and with [your] brothers and sisters in the faith and [be] willing to be accountable in [your] congregation.” I’ve just talked about the impossibility of getting this exactly right, so the invitation doesn’t go out to those who are perfectly at peace with God and one another. So, you should think hard about these things, but remember also:
Let not conscience make you linger,
Nor of fitness fondly dream: All the fitness he requireth
Is to feel youe need of him;
This he gives you, this he gives you, this he gives you;
‘Tis the Spirit’s rising beam.Come, ye weary, heavy laden,
Bruis’d and mangled by the fall;
If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all,
Not the righteous, not the righteous, not the righteous;
Sinners Jesus came to call.
If you feel that you cannot take the Lord’s Supper with us, simply pass the bread on to the next person, and refrain from drinking the cup. But, again … the Lord’s Supper is meant as part of our healing, not part of our bruising.
Finally, the confession says:
Celebrating the Lord’s Supper in this manner, the church looks forward in joy and hope to the feast of the redeemed with Christ in the age to come.
This reminds us again, that this celebration is also a celebration of hope; it is not only a sign pointing to what God has done for us, but what God will do for us and all God’s beloved ones. Hallelujah!
Let me describe how we will participate in the Lord’s Supper together. It’s likely that we won’t get everything right the first time, so let’s keep that in mind. But here’s what we’ll do. Like the early Christians, we will enjoy the Lord’s supper as part of our meal together. We will move from here to the dining room, and do the usual work of getting the soup ready. We’ll sit down together. We will have a prayer, then take the first element—the bread—together. Then, we’ll eat! Then, we’ll finish by taking the second element—the wine (or, in our case, grape juice).
For the bread, I’ll start and say the words of institution. I’ll offer the loaf of bread to the person next to me, and say “This is the body of Christ, broken for you.” If you are participating, take a piece out of the loaf, and keep it—don’t eat it right way. In any case, take the loaf and hand it to the next person, and say “This is the body of Christ broken for you.” When the loaf gets all the way around, we’ll eat together, and have a prayer of thanksgiving for the bread and the meal. Then, we’ll eat! Let’s remember to make sure we have empty cups at the end of the meal!
After we’re done eating, we’ll do the same with the “wine.” This time, we’ll pass the juice around, saying “This is the new covenant in the blood of Christ” and if you’re participating, pour some into your cup. Again, we’ll wait and drink the cup together.
We’ll finish with a blessing, and sing our usual closing song, and I’d like us to “pass the peace,” too..we’ll get up and bless one another with the peace of Christ. Hugs are acceptable.
1 Corinthians 11: 23-26. For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
Joseph Hart
From Hymns Composed on Various Subjects, with the Author’s Experience (first edition, 1759; this version from 1769)
Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
Jesus ready stands to save you,
Full of pity join’d with pow’r.
He is able, he is able, he is able;
He is willing; doubt no more.
Ho! ye needy, come, and welcome;
God’s free bounty glorify,
True belief, and true repentance,
Ev’ry grace that brings us nigh,
Without money, without money, without
money,
Come to Jesus Christ and buy.
Let not conscience make you linger,
Nor of fitness fondly dream:
All the fitness he requireth
Is to feel youe need of him;
This he gives you, this he gives you, this he gives you;
‘Tis the Spirit’s rising beam.
Come, ye weary, heavy laden, ;
Bruis’d and mangled by the fall;
If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all,
Not the righteous, not the righteous, not the righteous ;
Sinners Jesus came to call.
View him grov’ling in the garden;
Lo! your Maker prostrate lies.
On the bloody tree behold him :
Hear him cry before he dies,
It is finish’ d— it is finish’d — it finish’d!
Sinner, will not this suffice?
Lo! th’ incarnate God ascended,
Pleads the merits of his blood.
Venture on him, venture wholly ;
Let no other trust intrude.
None but Jesus, none but Jesus, none but Jesus,
Can do helpless sinners good.
Saints and angels, join’d in concert,
Sing the praises of the Lamb;
While the blissful seats of heav’n
Sweetly echo with his name.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah ! Hallelujah!
Sinners here may sing the same