Yet...

I am indebted to the writings of Scott Shauf, The Rev. Dr. Delmer Chilton, and to my dear friends Terry Ramone Smith and Kirk Jeffery for guidance in writing the sermon.

The sermon doesn't really end, I'm afraid. It made the most sense to simply segue to the Words of Institution.

Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

Now God did not subject the coming world, about which we are speaking, to angels. But someone has testified somewhere, "What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, subjecting all things under their feet." Now in subjecting all things to them, God left nothing outside their control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters, saying, "I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you."

This is the Word of the Lord.

When I was young, I attended a large Presbyterian church, and one Sunday, as a way (I think) of illustrating blindness, I was blindfolded and led by a couple of youth leaders around this church.

Now, this was a long time ago, so I don’t recall much of the context or conversation, but I remember the youth leaders asking me to guess where I was at different points. I honestly had no idea; even today I have no internal compass and the world’s worst sense of direction, so the moment the blindfold was on I was completely lost, completely dependent on the hands leading me around the building – up stairs and through rooms and around corners, it seemed we walked for miles… and when at long last they took the blindfold off, I was standing on a rooftop patio, the buildings of downtown soaring above me, the sky bluer than I had ever seen it, traffic noises echoing through the air… and while the journey to the rooftop patio had seemed endless, my stroll back to the Sunday school room was short and sweet.

This is the mental image I get when I read the first couple of verses of our Lectionary today. “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.”

Here’s what I am getting at: There was nothing at all functionally wrong with the old ways. The lines of communication were open; humankind communicated with our Creator through worship and prayer and sacrifice, and God communicated with humankind through prophets. For all of humankind’s mistakes, all the fits and starts and getting off track and crashing and burning, it is important to note that the comparison that the writer of this letter to the Hebrews is making is not between bad and good.

One of the mistakes I have made in the past is to view Jesus’ life, death and resurrection as a kind of cosmic “Plan B:” God saw that the whole system of laws and sacrifices wasn’t working, and decided to send Jesus to be one big final sacrifice instead. You know: God’s team is losing, and none of the plays are working, so God calls Jesus off the bench to go in and make his play to win the game (maybe it would have been a “Hail Mary” pass?)…

No, we aren’t looking at a bad system versus a good system. The comparison here is between the merely good, and the magnificent.

When I was blindfolded and led around through the corridors of the church, the youth leaders who guided me, one on each arm, took their task very seriously, never letting me stumble or strike a doorframe, never letting me wander off on my own. The system was good, it worked. But it is also true that there was a better way for me to get around that church: removing the blindfold, that barrier that kept me from seeing, and using my own eyes to guide me!

Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, our Old Testament, the prophets who God speaks through go to great lengths to make sure that God’s message is faithfully conveyed – they take their job very seriously, often leaving their homes and livelihoods, journeying great distances, risking – and very often suffering – death at the hands of those God has called them to minister to.

There was a better way, though… and it was not a “Plan B,” it was not a desperation move on the part of the Almighty, it was the will of God from before the Earth was created in the first place.

Now, I want to be careful here and make it clear that I in no way believe that God lacked anything in God’s comprehension of, compassion for, and dealings with humankind. God didn’t really need to experience what it is like to be a human being in order to love and relate to human beings.

God did not need to experience potty training, or being weaned, or learning to walk and talk and read, or learning table manners, or learning to dress for God’s self. God did not need to feel the love of a parent, or the grief of loss, or sweat on God’s brow or hunger in God’s stomach or anything else. God did not need to endure the pain of rejection or the searing cut of the lash or the agony of the nails or the slow suffocation of the cross. God did not need to die, or to rise again.

We needed God to experience that. We needed God to feel that. We needed God to endure that. We needed God to die, and to rise again. We needed God, through Jesus Christ, to go through the kind of death that is separation from God, and to come out on the other side, having utterly conquered it on our behalf.

And let me assure you of something: with all of that accomplished, with Christ risen and seated at the right hand of God, with death conquered, the Holy Spirit fallen, and the Kingdom of God at hand, and if God has truly put all things under the subjection of Christ, as we read in this morning’s passage from the book of Hebrews, it’s OK to ask, “if all that is true, why are things still so messed up?”

“As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them,” we read… the plural is misleading there, since most English translations of this Scripture see the quotation from Psalm 8, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, subjecting all things under their feet…” as referring not to humans as a whole, but to Christ specifically – singular rather than plural.

And it’s true, we don’t see everything in subjection to Christ, do we? Because if God is in control, why do children starve? If God is in control, why do storms come and wipe out entire cities? If God is in control, why do people get sick and die? Recession, war, drugs, mental illness, crime, corporate greed, political corruption, the list is almost endless…

As we look around the world for God, God is often difficult to see, difficult to pin down. And sometimes, just when we think we have the holy in our hands, it slips away as we realize we were mistaken. All too often it feels like we are groping around, still blindfolded, not sure of where we are or which direction to take.

I said last week, in looking at the absence of God’s name in the book of Esther, that God is in fact never absent. God was present long ago, speaking through the prophets, and though God may not always be easy to see in the here-and-now, God is never absent today, either.

“….we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus . . .” This is the promise that in Jesus all we hope for and all we need is present, in the here and now, and all the time.

In the community of faith we see Jesus in the midst of a world where God is often heard to find.  We hear Christ’s voice in the readings and hymns and songs and liturgies and sermons. We see our Lord’s face in the faces around us; we see and feel and receive Christ in the meal, in the bread and wine, the body and blood of Jesus; we feel the divine touch in the touch of another’s hand at the passing of the bread and the cup. “We do not yet see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus . . .”

And through the community of faith, and in the holy act of taking the bread and the cup, we are given the support and sustenance we need to go out into the world, and to help those around us, near and far, to see and hear and feel and receive Jesus as well.

We are not alone, you and I. This is World Communion Sunday. This Sunday is always a particular joy for me, because World Communion Sunday was my first time sharing the Lord’s Supper with all of you, and I always feel like I am celebrating an anniversary of sorts. More than that, though, this day serves to remind all of us that we, as the Body of Christ in the world, are connected to one another. Though our ancillary doctrines may differ, though we approach the elements from differing theological standpoints, in breaking the bread and in taking the cup we affirm that, whether in lofty cathedrals or in storefront, inner city churches, whether in modern megachurches or mud huts, as this bread is one loaf and this juice is one cup, we are one body, the Body of Christ.

And on the night he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus took bread…

World Communion Sunday

1 Corinthians 11:17-34

In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good. In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God's approval. When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper you eat, for as you eat, each of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else. One remains hungry, another gets drunk. Don't you have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you for this? Certainly not!

For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.

So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for each other. If anyone is hungry, he should eat at home, so that when you meet together it may not result in judgment.
And when I come I will give further directions.

This is the Word of the Lord.


It all started with some motzah and a glass of wine, at a dinner of bitter herbs and sacrificed lamb.

The room was stuffy now with the smoke of lamps and soft, worried conversations murmured around the table.

Jesus reached for a piece of the motzah – this shocked some of the disciples, who knew the blessing of the wine was supposed to come first in the seder meal – and blessed it: “Baruch attah Adonai, eloheynu melech ha-olam, ha-motzi lechen min ha-aretz:

“Blessed are You, our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the ground.”

Breaking the motzah, he gave it to his disciples, and his words shocked, frightened, confused and revolted them: “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

Then he reached for the cup of wine, and blessed it: “Baruch attah Adonai, eloheynu melech ha-olam, boray p'ri ha-gafen:

“Blessed are You, our God, King of the Universe, Who creates the fruit of the vine.”

He gave the cup to his disciples, and after they had drunk from it, he said, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many…”

None of his disciples understood yet, but not very many hours would pass until the meaning became all too clear. Little could they know in those dark hours following the crucifixion that the ritual of sharing the bread and the cup would become an act of celebration, a joyous event in the life of the church.

And little could they know that a simple piece of bread and a cup of wine would be the focal point of so much separation between groups of Christians. We have never been able to agree on what, exactly, this act of sharing bread and cup means.

Painting in broad strokes, there are four basic ways that different groups of Christians view this act of sharing which is variously called the Lord’s Supper, Communion, the Eucharist and the Agape meal.

As most theological positions go, they run the gamut, and most center around the interpretation of one phrase: “the Real Presence,” that is, if and how Jesus Christ is present in the elements of the Lord’s Supper.

On one end of the spectrum are the Catholic and Orthodox churches, as well as some Episcopalians and Anglicans. The belief is that, from the time Jesus first uttered the words of the Institution until today, when the Eucharistic elements, that is, the bread and the cup, are consecrated, they become, quite literally, the body and blood of Jesus Christ. This is known as the doctrine of transubstantiation. The outward appearance of the bread and the wine are not altered – it still looks and feels and tastes like bread and wine – but what is called the “inner reality” is changed. The person participating in the Eucharist quite literally ingests the real, physical body and blood of Jesus, and more than that, Christ as a whole is present in the elements – body and blood, soul and divinity. Thus the act of taking the elements is a means by which salvation is imparted to the participant. Thus to be barred from communion – excommunicated – is to be barred from salvation, doomed to everlasting punishment.

The idea of transubstantiation may go back as far as the second century, though it wasn’t until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that the word itself came into common use.

During the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, at least three other theological interpretations of the Lord’s Supper came into use. As you might imagine, each of these doctrines was controversial at the time, not only between Protestants and Catholics, but among the Protestant reformers themselves.

Martin Luther introduced a different interpretation of how the elements of the Eucharist are affected by consecration. In the doctrine of consubstantiation, the physical reality of the elements is unchanged – they are still bread and wine – but the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ are "truly and substantially present in, with and under the forms" of consecrated bread and wine. Those who participate eat and drink both the elements and the true Body and Blood of Christ Himself. This is the theology of the Lutheran Church, of course, as well as the Moravian church and some Episcopal and Anglican churches.

It has to be said, by the way, that neither the doctrine of transubstantiation nor the doctrine of consubstantiation attempt to explain how the elements are physically changed or inhabited, only that these things occur in consecration.

On the other end of the spectrum are the Baptist Church, as well as most related evangelical denominations, who practice Memorialism. Huldrych Zwingli, a contemporary of Martin Luther who led the Reformation in Switzerland, developed this theology of the Lord’s Supper. His view was that the bread and wine are not changed at all when consecrated, that the elements only signify the body and blood of Christ, and are not changed in any way. Zwingli’s argument appears to be that Christ is physically present in heaven at the right hand of the Father, and thus could not be physically present in the Eucharist in either physically altering the inner reality – transubstantiation – nor physically present in, with, and under the forms of otherwise unchanged elements – consubstantiation. Congregations that practice Memorialism, in general, do not hold Communion as sacramental; rather, it is considered to be an act of remembrance of Christ's atonement, and a time of renewal of personal commitment.

The Reformer that Presbyterians talk the most about is, of course, John Calvin. This brings us to how Presbyterians and members of the Reformed tradition view the Lord’s Supper.

I wonder if you’ve noticed that, unlike worship services in other denominations, most Presbyterian worship services include a Call to Worship, but no Invocation? That’s because we believe that whenever Christians are gathered together, Christ is present with that group through the Holy Spirit. It is thus unnecessary to invoke God, or ask that God be present with us. God is here with us this morning, and every time we gather.

When we Presbyterians look at the Lord’s Table, we see what theologians call a Pneumatic Presence. I love the term because I think automatically about drills and tires, but the term comes from the Greek word for “spirit,” “pneumos.” The understanding is that the elements of communion do not change, but that Christ is present in a spiritual sense – present though the Holy Spirit – providing nourishment to those who believe, strengthening us in our faith journey.

Notice also that we Presbyterians always celebrate the sacrament in the context of a congregation or gathering of believers. In 1 Corinthians 10:16 and 17, the Apostle Paul says, “Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” Communion only makes sense in the context of community.

In some sense we share this loaf with every believer in every place and time who has ever broken off a piece of motzah, or torn off a bite of bread, or had a wafer laid on their tongue, or selected a square cracker from a passed plate… or who ever will. More immediately we Presbyterians believe that we share this loaf and this cup in common with loaves and cups and wafers and chalices all across the world, not just on World Communion Sunday, but every time the table is set for this most wonderful and mysterious of meals.

And look! The table is set! The meal awaits us. Thanks be to God!

(Move directly into the Invitation and Institution)

World Communion Sunday

I'm probably not going to have a sermon to post this Sunday. Since it's World Communion Sunday (and because I promised one of the members who is studying this sort of thing at a Christian college) I'm going to take the opportunity to teach about the differing theological views surrounding the Lord's Supper/Communion/Eucharist. I'm very likely going to do this at the Table, which means an outline and notes rather than my customary manuscript.

So, for those of you so inclined to share: what is your take on the Lord's Supper/Communion/Eucharist? Transubstantiation? Consubstantiation? Ordinalism? Something more or less than these? Please take this opportunity to educate a part-time preacher on what the loaf and cup mean to you.