“Back to the Table” June 7, 2020; St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, Denton; Numbers 9: 1-14; I Corinthians 11: 23-26; Lisa Patterson and Richard B. Culp
Lisa, our Associate Pastor, and I preached this sermon today to be shared on Sunday. It was the first time we have done "virtual" communion. The intention was to make it a dialogue about celebrating communion, but it ended up being more of a sermon (my fault on that one!).
I picked the passage from I Corinthians to connect the language of Jesus at the Last Supper with the language the early church used as it celebrated the Lord's Supper and with the language we use today to celebrate the Lord's Supper. If I had expanded the I Corinthians passage in both directions, it would have included Paul noting they have problems with how they celebrate and his warning about celebrating it incorrectly. those two points could have easily been worked into the sermon, and the sermon would probably have been better if we had done so.
On the other hand, I thought we integrated the Numbers passage well in the sermon.
Lisa: The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying: 2 Let the Israelites keep the passover at its appointed time. 3 On the fourteenth day of this month, at twilight,[a] you shall keep it at its appointed time; according to all its statutes and all its regulations you shall keep it. 4 So Moses told the Israelites that they should keep the passover. 5 They kept the passover in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight,[b] in the wilderness of Sinai. Just as the Lord had commanded Moses, so the Israelites did. 6 Now there were certain people who were unclean through touching a corpse, so that they could not keep the passover on that day. They came before Moses and Aaron on that day, 7 and said to him, “Although we are unclean through touching a corpse, why must we be kept from presenting the Lord’s offering at its appointed time among the Israelites?” 8 Moses spoke to them, “Wait, so that I may hear what the Lord will command concerning you.”
Richard: 9 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 10 Speak to the Israelites, saying: Anyone of you or your descendants who is unclean through touching a corpse, or is away on a journey, shall still keep the passover to the Lord. 11 In the second month on the fourteenth day, at twilight,[c] they shall keep it; they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 12 They shall leave none of it until morning, nor break a bone of it; according to all the statute for the passover they shall keep it. 13 But anyone who is clean and is not on a journey, and yet refrains from keeping the passover, shall be cut off from the people for not presenting the Lord’s offering at its appointed time; such a one shall bear the consequences for the sin. 14 Any alien residing among you who wishes to keep the passover to the Lord shall do so according to the statute of the passover and according to its regulation; you shall have one statute for both the resident alien and the native.
Introduction: On Maundy Thursday, the first week in April, Lisa and I invited you to join us around your tables at home. We had missed in-person worship the Sunday before, which meant we missed gathering around our Lord’s Table that Sunday. We also missed celebrating the Lord’s Supper the first Sunday of May.
Lisa: Although we did not celebrate the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday, you may remember that Richard and I spent time reflecting on the importance of that meal to the followers of Christ, including us, and the importance the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper continues to play in the life of the body of Christ.
Richard: As we explore our worship practices for the coming weeks and months, we realize that even when are able to attend limited, in-person worship, many of us will not feel comfortable returning to in-person worship for some time. Consequently, the Worship committee and the Session have considered how can celebrate the Lord’s’ Supper in a meaningful way as we worship virtually.
Lisa: Our struggle with coming to our Lord’s Table virtually is because of two competing desires: we want to come to our Lord’s Table in a way that is in keeping with the sacrament our Lord Jesus instated that night long ago and that has been faithfully followed by our own faith tradition, but we also want to provide access to this powerful gift to the church to people who find themselves needing to come to our Lord’s Table and feeling called to participate in the Lord’s Supper in new ways.
Richard: As we celebrate the Lord’s Supper today, Lisa and I will be behind the Table, leading the liturgy and administering the sacrament as we have done for years, as Presbyterian ministers have done generations, and Christians did long before the Presbyterian church arrived on the scene. You are invited, wherever you are, to participate as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.
you are not required to participate. If it does not feel right for you, then do not feel compelled to join in the communion. Participating in virtual communion is not proof of one’s faithfulness, just as not participating is not a sign of unfaithfulness.
Lisa: Jesus meets us where we are. He does not demand we come to Table, but he does invite. As we ponder that invitation, Richard and I have a few reflections on celebrating the Lord’s Supper to share with you.
Move 1: Sign and seal
Richard: We begin our reflections at The Book of Order (where else should Presbyterians start except the Book of Order?), which tells us: The Lord’s Supper is the sign and seal of our communion with the crucified and risen Lord.
As I have often told confirmation classes: think about a Stop sign. It announces to all the drivers that they need to stop. Everyone recognizes the sign. Knows what it means.
The Lord’s Supper announces to us and to the world that the one died on the cross for us, the one who was raised from the dead to overcome sin and death, is still connected to us, still present with us.
Lisa: Likewise, celebrating the Lord’s Supper acts as a seal. A seal like the wax seal that were on letters. If the seal were unbroken, then you knew it really was from the person. When we celebrate the Lord’s supper, we confirm God’s desire to be in communion with us and to extend God’s sustaining grace to all people.
Richard: The book of Order goes on to tell us that that “Through the Lord’s Supper, the Holy Spirit renews the Church in its identity and sends the Church to mission in the world (W-3.0409)
As we come to our Lord’s Table, we announce God’s presence in the world; God’s grace for all people; and we hear the call to go into the world and show forth God’s grace.
We look around our world and we see brokenness. Political divide. Racism. Violence. Death. Anger.
Lisa: We hear the world crying out for help, looking for a sign of hope.
what better place to find the answers? What better place to come to receive direction for how to go back into the world.
when the Risen Christ meets us at his Table, he empowers us to answer the cries of the world and to bring hope to the world.
Hope we find in the resurrected Christ. Hope we point to every time we come to our Lord’s Table to be fed.
Richard: Sign and seal.
Move 2: Presence and mystery
Richard: As you probably already know, the celebration of the Lord’s Supper grew out of the Passover tradition that went back to slavery in Egypt.
The Israelites were instructed to sacrifice a goat/lamb? and use the blood to make a mark over their door. When the angel of death came as the last plague to Egypt and killed the oldest son of each household, the angel of death passed over the Israelite households marked with the sacrificial blood.
Jesus transformed the Passover celebration into the meal celebrating how he would save the world by not letting death pass over him.
Lisa: So the Israelites took this Passover tradition with them and celebrated it. Like us, they struggled with how to do it as their context changed.
As we read in Numbers today, they celebrated the Passover in the wilderness, in their exile, as they wandered and wondered when and how God was going to save them.
They had rules about who could celebrate and who could not celebrate the Passover. But notice that in their changed context the Lord guided them to expand their rules to allow for the unclean and the aliens to celebrate the Passover. A major shift, but one that reflected their new circumstances and the grace of God that pushes us to new understandings.
Richard: We also notice that they still had some rules. The Israelites, as Christians have done for centuries, find themselves struggling to find a balance between the rules and meanings associated with the Lord’s Supper and the gift that God has.
Fast forward to the Reformation - a time when theologians argued over what it meant to say the bread was Christ’s body and the wine was Christ’s blood.
Was the bread really the bones of Christ that were literally crunched on as the bread eaten?
Or was eating the bread and drinking the wine simply a way of remembering what Jesus did?
or, was it something else?
I’m not sure anyone has quite figured it out, which puts sacrament in the realm of mystery.
Part of the reason we have rules governing our celebration of communion is to try and ensure that the mystery and meaning are still there and have value. But, of course, like the Israelites discovered, the rules change as our understandings change and we live into the mystery.
In fact, we in the Presbyterian church have had differing views reflected in our rules about communion. At one time, you had to have a token showing you were repentant.
In another era, you had to be a professing member of the church (or at least a professing Christian of another church) to come to the Table; in another era you had to be baptized to come to the Table.
Like the male ruling elders who used to wear coats and ties to church only when they were to serve communion in worship that morning, we have created rules to acknowledge and try to protect, imperfectly i might add, the sacredness of the Lord’sTable.
Lisa: but the final word is not the rules or how we protect the Table. The final word is presence, that is Christ’s presence.
We may not be able to fully explain the mystery of how Christ is present in the bread and cup, but we know the power of the risen Christ finds us at the Lord’s Table as we eat the bread and drink the cup.
I remember the first time I took communion into someone’s home. I was newly ordained and installed and was using the communion kit that a friend and member had regifted to me on the occasion of my ordination. It was a kit that had been used for many years by one of her family members who was a faithful pastor and scholar. I was aware that my new hands handling the kit were awkward, untrained, and uncertain, but I had been asked to come and so I did – after a lot of preparation and even more prayer.
I was going to a church member’s home – a fairly new member who was close to death, who had been a long-time Episcopalian, before coming to St. Andrew. The house was quiet and her mother was with her and the family dog that I knew well. We didn’t talk much because she couldn’t. I got everything set up around her bedside, and then the family said the familiar liturgy, the words and ritual especially known to those Episcopalians, including the standard Lord’s Prayer.
When it was time to distribute the elements, she couldn’t eat the bread, but she could drink a little, so I briefly dipped the bread in the cup and she drank with the rest of us. The faithful dog had been right with us the whole time, at my knee, because I had the food, so I gave him the bread that had been dipped in the cup. I don’t know and will never really know how grievously I broke the rules or if, instead, I did the right thing. But in that moment at her bedside, I believe Christ’s presence guided all of us. In my actions, in theirs, in the lips and the breath moving to say the familiar words said so many times in the past. That was one of the last times, she was able to speak. The liturgy was a strong cord that connected those believers with every time and place, on earth and in heaven, and with the community of St. Andrew from which the elements were sent.
Richard: for many of us today, coming to our Lord’s Table is different, but we know the words, we expect Christ to be present because he has been present for us before when we have come to his Table.
Today, the Table, the bread, the cup may look different today, but we recognize their connection to our Lord’s Table of our many previous trips here as invited guests.
Move 3: Community gathers
Richard: We read this morning part of Paul’s letter telling the Corinthians what Christ did and said at the Last Supper.
We hear his words and recognize them not just from the stories of the Last Supper, but we recognize them because we repeat those words, or similar words each time we gather around our Lord’s Table.
Lisa: Imagine that. Words Jesus spoke over 2,000 years ago, repeated by Paul a few years later, are still being used by us today.
We are connected through the generations by our liturgy, but also by the power of the Risen Christ who calls us to his Table in the hope and promise that one day we will feast together at a heavenly banquet.
Christ binds us together and as a community of believers in every time and place we come to the Lord’s Table.
Richard: As we gather today virtually, we lament that our current circumstances prevent us from being physically in the sanctuary together as we come to our Lord’s Table.
We miss passing the trays - seeing and serving the person next to us; or walking with others to the receive communion by intinction as Ruling and Teaching Elders and Deacons look us in the eye and tell us, “the blood of Christ shed for you; the body of Christ broken for you.”
Lisa: We miss seeing the deacons depart from worship sent out with communion kits in hand to serve the ones who cannot physically attend; we miss hearing the words of liturgy read from the bulletin or spoken from deep places of memory; we miss the energy of the solemn, joyful feast generated by the rustle and hushed movements of so many moving and feasting.
We are never bound only to those who physically gather with us in the moment.
Conclusion: During this pandemic, during the chaos of protests and looting, two astronauts from the United States went into space again.
As I was preparing for this communion service and thinking about astronauts, I was reminded of a story Buzz Aldrin, who along with Neil Armstrong landed on the moon over 50 years ago.
At the time Aldrin was a member of Webster Presbyterian Church, which was known then as the Church of the Astronauts because John Glenn, Buzz Aldrin, Jerry Carr, Charlie Bassett, and Roger Chaffee.
When he was planning the trip to the moon, he wanted to have an appropriate celebration for arriving on the moon. He originally thought of something patriotic, but then decided to do something spiritual. He went and talked to the minister, and they decided he would celebrate the Lord’s Supper on the moon.
The congregation was part of the planning as well. they gave Aldrin a chalice and elements to take with him on his trip to the moon, and they decided to celebrate communion at church when he would celebrate communion on the moon.
Shortly after arriving on the surface of the moon, Aldrin went off by himself, settled down on the moon, asked for a moment of silence, and invited people to give thanks. then he had communion. He ate the bread and drank the wine. He did not make a big deal out of it. Mostly, his celebration went unnoticed.
back on earth, in Webster Presbyterian Church, other members gathered in that hour and celebrated communion as well. A celebration that extended from earth to the moon.
In the story, we recognize the rules at play - Aldrin was a ruling elder; the session had authorized the communion; all was in order.
But we also see the expansive understanding of the power and reach of the Risen Christ, the host at the Table.
As Aldrin reflected on this event later, he wondered if communion was too exclusive because it was a Christian sacrament, but he went on to note: “at the time I could think of no better way to acknowledge the enormity of the Apollo 11 experience than by giving that to God.” (Magnificent Desolation: the Long Journey Home from the Moon, Buzz Aldrin, 2009; see also Webster Presbyterian Church’s website for more information https://www.websterpresby.org/content.cfm?id=329)
lisa: We come to our Lord’s Table from different places, but following the same Lord, hearing the same invitation, come to meet the Risen Christ.
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