Communion Meditation

September 1, 1991

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Once upon a time my father-in-law received an invitation to attend the inauguration

of the President of the United States. How about that! Don’t ask me to tell you what he

did to warrant the invitation, because I don’t know.

Maybe he made a contribution; maybe he made a speech.... Maybe it was more a matter of timing and geography. He and his brother, I think, along with their families, were about the only Democrats in all of East Tennessee. Mountains tend to produce Republicans.... If any invitations to a political victory were to be sent to that region, to whom else could they go?

At any rate, he got one.... I’ve seen it, with my own eyes. He was very proud of it. He had it framed and hung on the wall of his home. It says, “John Fitzgerald Kennedy requests the honor of your presence at his inauguration to the office of President of the United States on January 20th, 1961, in Washington, D.C.

It was an invitation to share in a celebration from the highest elected official in the land.

I am honored to announce to you an invitation to share in a celebration given by an even higher authority. It’s an invitation to share in a ritual banquet honoring the Redeemer of the world.

That’s what the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper really is...a kind of party--- please don’t misunderstand that. It’s a kind of commemoration, a kind of festival, in which YOU are the special guest, and God is the HOST.

You are here by invitation.... God wants you here and specifically urges you to come. DON’T EVER THINK THAT HOLY COMMUNION IS PRIMARILY SOMETHING THAT WE DO.... We participate of course, we receive, we respond, but we’re not the ones who get it started. We are not the initiators.

Holy Communion is primarily something God does...that’s why it’s a Sacrament. That’s the difference, incidentally, between a symbol and a sacrament--- A symbol, a religious symbol, points to God..... A Sacrament is a channel from God. And the Lord’s Supper is precisely that...HIS Supper. It’s HIS doing.

He is giving something to us, and for us. We are not co-hosts. This is not a kind of ritual block part, where everybody brings a little bit and it’s all put together. It’s not a ritualized covered-dish dinner.

The Lord’s Supper is really more like dinner theater, if you’ll not press the analogy too far. It’s a re-enactment, with food, of something God has done, on God’s own initiative, because HE loved us.... and now we are invited to His table to receive His life, His strength, His sustenance, and His gift of community as we continue our way on our pilgrimage.

Let me remind you of something remarkable and very wonderful. We do not have to be worthy or deserving to come to this table. No qualifying SAT score, or virtue level is required. We do not participate out of merit, but out of gratitude. We do not partake because we’re good enough, but precisely because we’re not good enough.

We come because He told us to.... “This do in remembrance of me....” We come because He wants us to. WE COME OUT OF THANKFULNESS. We come because He invites us, and to refuse to come at His invitation would be not only unmannerly, but disobedient.

Here we see God made visible, the spoken word made tangible, the Good News not just talked about, but dramatized, maybe the most effective way anything can be expressed.

It’s low drama in one sense...ritualized, stately, limited action...yet what it stands for is drama of the most riveting nature imaginable...maybe stretching the imagination to its outer limits.

Mundane, ordinary, everyday, earthly elements, signifying His body, the body which served and scrubbed, which sweated and ached, and finally was broken for the sake of humankind...and signifying His blood, His very life blood, which finally was poured, drop by agonizing drop, for your sin and for mine....

That’s what’s being re-presented here when we take these elements, a re-enactment portrayal of a very very wonderful thing...the sacrifice of God for the world.

There is nothing magical in the elements themselves.... Taken alone they are mundane, ordinary, everyday, and earthly, BUT MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, THROUGH COUNTLESS GENERATIONS, HAVE FOUND GOD PRESENT IN THE TAKING OF THEM. They have found their everlasting benefit that in receiving them, by faith, they have received HIM.

That’s what we’re privileged to do today.

Who invited you, anyway? Hear the announcement. THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY, MAKER OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, EXTENDS HIS INVITATION TO YOU.... Come and eat. Accept His grace, and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort.