I want to start by telling you a story,the year is 1987. I am 24 years old and a student at Candler School of Theology. I have just taken a new job as the Children and Youth Pastor at Trinity United Methodist Church located right in the heart of downtown Atlanta. It’s Sunday. I have just finished leading the youth Sunday School class.
It’s all high school boys. Some of them are white kids who ride in from the suburbs with their parents who come to the church. And some of them are African American kids who get to the church somehow, on their own, because since they were little, one of the women in the church started bringing them there. This is their home. They come from poor families. They come alone.
We are in worship and I am sitting alone that day. When it comes time for communion in this church they don’t have ushers that guide you up, you just go up when you are ready and kneel at this long curved altar rail at the front of this huge old sanctuary. There are only about 90 of us in a sanctuary that could probably seat 800.
When it’s time for Communion at Trinity, The preacher makes the invitation: “These are the gifts of God for the people of God.” And I make my way up to receive. I kneel. And then I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to see Tony, age 15, smiling at me anxiously. He says, “Is there room for me here?” “Of course,” I say, and he joins me; and we are served that sacred meal together. It’s a sacred moment.
That day, I understood what it means to come to the table, and commune with God. You see, I felt alone that day, in that big old church, with no family there, and I wonder if Tony felt alone too. But he trusted me and together, we did not have to feel alone. At God’s table, we came together.
Everyone was welcome at that table. That church, Trinity in Atlanta, is a wonderfully diverse church, like this one. In fact, it became my vision of church through seminary. There were times I was not so sure, really, that I could conform enough to be a United Methodist pastor. But Trinity was a church on the edge and I decided that if Trinity could be a United Methodist Church, then I could be a United Methodist pastor. It was kind of an unusual church.
Trinity UMC is a church where EVERYONE is welcome. Trinity had a homeless shelter in the basement and a soup kitchen where about 400 members of Atlanta’s homeless population were fed every Sunday afternoon. I learned about an open table where everyone is welcome at Trinity United Methodist Church. I shared many sacred meals both in that sanctuary and in the basement at the shelter. There were really no lines between the two ministries; the lines were blurred, as they should be.
The lines were blurred a bit like we blur the lines when we welcome anyone who comes into our doors here, and we share some food before and after worship, and we share a sacred communion meal during our service on many Sundays. There is a reason why the words communion and community come from the same root. They are both about connecting: connecting us to God and to one another.
We know that there is something special about food, right? When we want to celebrate and connect with friends and family, do we ever do it without food? We share a meal. When we are trying to help ease tensions between two people or groups of people who are in conflict, we know that getting them to sit down for a meal together can begin to ease the tension and create space for reconciliation.
The sacred meal we know as Holy Communion takes all of this a few steps deeper. That’s why Jesus gave us this meal.
In the church, we have actually raised this meal to a level we call a Sacrament – a sacred event. In the protestant church, that is in our branch of Christianity, where The Village stands with the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church, there are only two sacraments: baptism and holy communion. There are other rituals and practices that are important to us, like confirmation, marriage and ordination of clergy. But there are only two that we call them sacraments. We separate these two out is because of what a powerful place they play in Jesus’ life.
The common definition of a sacrament is an experience when we have an outward sign that points to an inward grace. That means we have some tangible, physical sign of to remind us that we are being touched by God’s grace. In baptism the physical sign is the water. We will talk about baptism another day.
In Holy Communion the physical sign is the bread and the wine (or grape juice which is what we use). When we eat the bread and drink from the cup we believe that we are changed by God’s grace in a sacred and mysterious way. It’s a powerful experience. Some days it may feel more powerful than others. But we participate in this sacred meal week after week, because we want to open ourselves up to God’s power to come into our lives, our whole lives, body, mind and spirit, and change us.
So today we walked through a few of the traditions of the service of Holy Communion as we do it, as a teaching moment. The first thing we want to remind everyone that everyone is welcome to the table at the Village.
· The service includes confession. Every Sunday when we gather we want to acknowledge that we are not perfect and we need God. But we take it further and it’s in our Village Statement we read each week.
· From the United Methodist Book of Worship: “All who intend to lead a Christian life, together with their children, are invited to receive the bread and cup. We have no tradition of refusing any who present themselves desiring to receive.”
· Some churches have a formal passing of the peace during the service. We tend to do this informally in the way we provide a place of welcome and reconciliation. Sometimes we do it at the end of the service too.
· The bread because it is one loaf, and the wine, because we share from one cup, symbolize that we are all part of one body, the body of Christ, the church. We are Jesus’ hands and his heart living in the world. And while the formal ceremony talks about wine but we know we have people in recovery in our midst so to honor them we use grape juice. We then dip our bread into the cup, in a process called intinction. We also remember that by breaking the bread that Jesus gave all for us, not taking an easy way out, but sacrificing all to show us a way to live and to give us eternal life.
· The invitation is given to come to the table. We include a prayer of thanksgiving. The pastor gives thanks appropriate to the occasion, remembering God’s acts of salvation and the institution of the Lord’s supper, where Jesus gave us this meal, and invokes the present work of the Holy Spirit and concludes with praise to the Trinity.
Today, we used a quote from our scripture (I Corinthians 11: 23-26 from the Message translation for those following along from afar):
“The Master, Jesus, on the night of his betrayal, took bread. Having given thanks, he broke it and said,
This is my body, broken for you.
Do this to remember me.
After supper, he did the same thing with the cup:
This cup is my blood, my new covenant with you.
Each time you drink this cup, remember me.What you must solemnly realize is that every time you eat this bread and every time you drink this cup, you reenact in your words and actions the death of the Master. You will be drawn back to this meal again and again”
Do you have a community where you can share a meal like this? Where can share who you are and let others share with you? If not consider The Village Church, we are at the Maumee Indoor Theater, at the corner of Conant Street & The Anthony Wayne Trail in Maumee Sundays at 10:30 AM and out in the world sharing what we have the rest of the week.
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