“The Table of Christ”
A Communion Meditation for
World Communion Sunday, October 2, 2011
First Congregational Church of Stoughton, United Church of Christ
Text: Matthew 26:26-30; 1 Corinthians 11:17-26
Next month, I will start planning our annual family Thanksgiving dinner. Every year, more than a dozen members of the Lenk/Sangster/Niven family – plus a few guests -- descend upon our house to celebrate the holiday.
But not everyone likes the same thing, so we have to make accommodations on the menu. Take the stuffing, for example. I prefer onions in my stuffing, and so does my Dad. But half of my family doesn’t like onions. So we have to make two kinds of stuffing: one with onions, and one without.
Then there’s the main dish, which on Thanksgiving is of course turkey. Except that there are some people who aren’t crazy about turkey. So in addition to the turkey, we also make a ham.
Then there’s dessert. It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie, would it? But we have an apple pie contingent in the family, too. And my personal favorite is pecan pie – thanks, Uretha, for making me my pecan pies! And then there’s a whole side of the family who prefers ice cream pies.
But here’s the important thing: even though everyone has different likes and tastes and preferences, those differences are transcended when we all sit down at the Thanksgiving table to eat together as one family.
And I think that’s an appropriate metaphor for this World Communion Sunday, because despite all the divisions within the Christian faith, and all the differences in the way we worship or the way we interpret the bible or even the way we celebrate the sacrament, today we gather in unity around this table. This too is a thanksgiving table, and some Christian traditions call communion the Eucharist, from the Greek word for Thanksgiving. Others call it The Lord’s Supper, or The Table of the Lord. And as varied as the titles are for what we do today, so are the ways we celebrate the sacrament.
Some will come forward to receive into their hands unleavened bread in the form of a wafer. Others will tear a piece of bread from a broken loaf and the dip it into a common cup. Still others, like us today, will be served in their seats. Some traditions will welcome to the table only those people who have made a public profession of their faith, while others will open the table to everyone.
But those differences are transcended when we come to this thanksgiving table to share communion together as one family united in Christ who, on the last night of his earthly life, took the unleavened bread and said “Take, eat; this is my body.” And then he took the cup and said, “This is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Jesus then asked his followers to eat the bread and drink of the cup “in remembrance of me.” And he gave us a new commandment -- “Love one another as I have loved you” -- calling us into unity with all the members of our Christian family.
And that family stretches beyond this church, beyond Immaculate Conception and First Baptist and Trinity Episcopal and First United Methodist, beyond Stoughton, beyond all the boundaries of time and place, beyond all that separates us. It is at the communion table where young and old; male and female; married and single; gay and straight; black, white, Hispanic, Asian – it is at the communion table where we all come together into a Christian family – a family of many differences, for sure, but a family none the less.
That is one of the reasons the Lord’s Supper was so important to the Apostle Paul; it is precisely at the table of Christ that human distinctions of class, race, gender, ideology, and nationality are obliterated, reflecting what he wrote in his letter to the Galatians: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
In today’s Epistle lesson, Paul is angry with the Corinthians because they have forgotten this essential aspect of communion. From the beginning of the church at Pentecost, it was customary for the believers to reflect the oneness they shared in Christ by eating together at a meal to which each member – rich and poor alike – brought what he or she could share. Like our modern day potluck suppers, it was a way of promoting Christian fellowship. And these meals culminated in the sharing of communion.
But, somewhere along the way in Corinth, the sense of oneness in Christ got lost. Instead of reflecting unity, the Corinthian church struggled with problems of divisiveness, selfishness, and hypocrisy. Instead of being one spiritual family when they gathered, they separated into groups along the social divisions between rich and poor, eating with their own crowd instead of fellowshipping with the entire family of faith.
What Paul tells the Corinthians is that when we come to this table, we come united not only by the love of Christ, but also by the call of Christ to love one another. Rich, poor, saint, sinner, gifted or not, we are all one at the table of Christ.
| And so, whether we use wafers or pita bread or plain old white bread… Whether we use wine or grape juice… Whether it is served by a pastor, a priest, a Eucharistic minister, a deacon, or layperson… Whether it is served in the pew, or received at a railing, or passed around in a circle…Whether it is celebrated in a sanctuary, a home, a hut in the jungle, a clearing in the forest, or on a patch of desert... when we come to the table of Christ, all our differences are transcended, and we are united by the One who loves us and who calls us to love one another. Amen. |
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