On Communion: part seven

4 November 2009
Tracts for our Times, weekly devotion from Grace Church
Today we conclude our look at Sacrament of Holy Communion, as we consider…
Real Presence
Matthew 26:26-29 (New Living Translation)
26 As they were eating, Jesus took some bread and blessed it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take this and eat it, for this is my body.”
27 And he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. He gave it to them and said, “Each of you drink from it, 28 for this is my blood, which confirms the covenant[a] between God and his people. It is poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins of many. 29 Mark my words—I will not drink wine again until the day I drink it new with you in my Father’s Kingdom.”

By real presence, we mean that Jesus meets us at the Table. He is there every time the Bread is broken, the Wine is poured out, and his presence invoked.
When we come to the Table to take Communion, Jesus meets us there. This does not mean that Jesus cannot be encountered in other ways and places; but the Communion Table is one of those places where he has promised to meet us. At the Table we experience his presence in a profound way. And, we can count on meeting Christ there, again and again, each time we approach the Table. Though human hands may act as the instruments, serving the Bread and Cup, it is Jesus who stands as the true Host, meeting us with his grace each time we take the Sacrament.
This is why it is proper to invite all who are willing to come by faith to come to the Table. Even a small child or mentally-challenged-adult may meet the requirement of faith, for faith is about trust and is far more basic than cognitive understanding. Even a very small child or someone with a very low IQ can express trust, even if they cannot articulate why they trust someone.
We bring our children to the Table, believing that Jesus will meet that child with his grace. We bring our loved ones who are suffering from dementia, believing that Jesus can touch them in ways to deep to be expressed by words.
But, real presence means more than Jesus being host at the Table. We also believe that he is really present in the elements themselves; in the Bread and in the Wine. Now, it is very easy to mock this notion, thinking of the pieces of Bread as being parts of his Body. We might, for example, think that one piece of bread is perhaps a toe. Such a crass expression misses the whole point. As we partake of the Bread and Wine, we partake not of a part of his Body, but of the whole. Through the gifts of Bread and Wine, Jesus offers himself and his grace to us. We connect with him in a very powerful way and partake of the spiritual nourishment we most need.
Some traditions try to deny this idea, saying that the Bread and Cup only represent his Blood and Body in purely symbolic way. But notice Jesus’ own words: “This is my Body…This is my Blood.” Nowhere in the text does the word “represents” appear; and to insert it is to add something alien to the Holy Scripture.
Jesus extends to us the gift of his very real presence through some of the most common things imaginable, a dinner cup and our daily bread. If he can do such an amazing work through such common items, imagine what he can do through us, who cleansed through his redeeming blood, are called to be his Body in the world.


Eddie Bromley, pastor of Grace Church, a United Methodist congregation
You can now listen to the weekly devotion online at http://www.graceumchurchky.com/

The End

http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm

On Communon Six

24 October 2009
Tracts for our Times, weekly devotion from Grace Church
Today we continue to look at Sacrament of Holy Communion, as we consider…
The meaning of the word “communion”
The word “communion” comes from the same root word from which we get the words community and communication. Each word is based on the idea of the meeting of people or a coming together of people. Calling the Sacrament communion reminds us that we were created to live in community with God and one another.
Sadly, sin has radically disrupted this purpose. In fact, one important way of thinking about sin is to think of it as that which ruptures relationships. Sin severs community and alienates people from each other and from God.
To think of the Sacrament of Communion is to think about what God has done to overcome this alienation, to restore us to community. The Apostle Paul writes: “For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself. He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.” Colossians 1:19-20
Through the body and blood of Christ, we are offered the gift of fellowship with God and one another. This message is presented verbally through the reading of the Word and through Biblical preaching. The message is presented in a form which we can touch and taste, through the bread and the wine of communion.
The invitation of both of the verbal proclamation and physical presentation of the Gospel is the same: Come. Be reconciled to God. But who may come? Many people know the words of Paul from 1 Corinthians 11:27 “So anyone who eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord unworthily is guilty of sinning against[g] the body and blood of the Lord.”
Many sensitive souls deprive themselves of the Lord ’s Table, fearing that may have sin which they are unaware of or of which they may not have confessed. Some believe that there is a certain level of holiness which they must obtain before they are worthy to take communion.
In verse 28 Paul does say that we “should examine ourselves before eating the bread and drinking the cup.” There is no arguing with the idea that this would include confessing our sins and asking God’s forgiveness prior to receiving the Sacrament; but any thought that we need to first have our lives in order before we come to the table is simply inconsistent with the gospel.
When we preach the gospel, we do not tell people to first get their lives in order and then come to Jesus. No. We say, come, just as you are and Jesus will give you his righteousness and make you holy. If Communion is a visible presentation of the gospel, then the invitation must be the same. It is not, first make yourself holy and then you will be worthy of the Table. NO! We come to the Table of grace because we deserve it, but because we need it.
So, what is it that Paul is warning us about? In 1 Corinthians 10:16 we read: “When we bless the cup at the Lord’s Table, aren’t we sharing in the blood of Christ? And when we break the bread, aren’t we sharing in the body of Christ?”
Paul is reminding his readers that Communion is never simply a private matter between us and God; for God is restoring, through broken body of Jesus and poured-out blood, the unity for which he created us. This unity is between us and God and between us and all of God’s people. Thus, to share in Communion is to share in holy Community.
In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul is condemning the selfish behavior of many people in the Corinth church, who were acting as if Communion were a private matter; acting as if one could be in a perfect relationship with God, while neglecting, or even mistreating God’s people (the Body of Christ). Paul says, anyone taking in such an unworthy manner as this is “sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.” That is, they are expecting Communion with God, while refusing Communion with other Christians.
Look at the words of Jesus from Matthew 5:23-24: “So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.
At the Table of the Lord, God offers us true Communion. But, if we want to live in relationship to God, we have to be willing to live in relationship with all who come to the table. Like spokes as they move toward the center wheel, as we draw closer to God, we cannot help but draw closer to one another.
Eddie Bromley, pastor of Grace Church, a United Methodist congregation
You can now listen to the weekly devotion online at www.graceumchurchky.com

Nixon's On a Rampage

Obama had a Nixonian moment this week as stooped to spar with Fox News Network. This, of course, was below the dignity of his office and was completely unecessary. Imagine if Bush had spent time wrangling with those who criticized him. He would never have had enough time to launch two wars. Let news anchor say what they will, the proof will be in the pudding. Only time and distance allow us any objectivity in deciding a president's effectiveness.

Christianity for Beginners: Part Eight

I Believe: Christianity for Beginners
Part Eight: Crucified, died and was buried. He descended to the dead.
A Sermon Series based on the book, I Believe by Alister McGrath

Rev. Dr. Eddie Bromley Grace Church 4 October 2009
Isaiah 53 and Luke 23:26-56
Video He Was
Isaiah 53
1 Who has believed our message? To whom has the Lord revealed his powerful arm? 2 My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. 3 He was despised and rejected— a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care.
4 Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows[a] that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! 5 But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. 6 All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.
7 He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth. 8 Unjustly condemned, he was led away.[b] No one cared that he died without descendants, that his life was cut short in midstream.[c] But he was struck down for the rebellion of my people. 9 He had done no wrong and had never deceived anyone. But he was buried like a criminal; he was put in a rich man’s grave.
10 But it was the Lord’s good plan to crush him and cause him grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants. He will enjoy a long life, and the Lord’s good plan will prosper in his hands. 11 When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins. 12 I will give him the honors of a victorious soldier, because he exposed himself to death. He was counted among the rebels. He bore the sins of many and interceded for rebels.
Luke 23:26-56
The Crucifixion
26 As they led Jesus away, a man named Simon, who was from Cyrene,[b] happened to be coming in from the countryside. The soldiers seized him and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. 27 A large crowd trailed behind, including many grief-stricken women. 28 But Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, don’t weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For the days are coming when they will say, ‘Fortunate indeed are the women who are childless, the wombs that have not borne a child and the breasts that have never nursed.’ 30 People will beg the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and plead with the hills, ‘Bury us.’[c] 31 For if these things are done when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?[d]”
32 Two others, both criminals, were led out to be executed with him. 33 When they came to a place called The Skull,[e] they nailed him to the cross. And the criminals were also crucified—one on his right and one on his left.
34 Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”[f] And the soldiers gambled for his clothes by throwing dice.[g]
35 The crowd watched and the leaders scoffed. “He saved others,” they said, “let him save himself if he is really God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.” 36 The soldiers mocked him, too, by offering him a drink of sour wine. 37 They called out to him, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” 38 A sign was fastened to the cross above him with these words: “This is the King of the Jews.”
39 One of the criminals hanging beside him scoffed, “So you’re the Messiah, are you? Prove it by saving yourself—and us, too, while you’re at it!”
40 But the other criminal protested, “Don’t you fear God even when you have been sentenced to die? 41 We deserve to die for our crimes, but this man hasn’t done anything wrong.” 42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”
43 And Jesus replied, “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
The Death of Jesus
44 By this time it was noon, and darkness fell across the whole land until three o’clock. 45 The light from the sun was gone. And suddenly, the curtain in the sanctuary of the Temple was torn down the middle. 46 Then Jesus shouted, “Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands!”[h] And with those words he breathed his last.
47 When the Roman officer[i] overseeing the execution saw what had happened, he worshiped God and said, “Surely this man was innocent.[j]” 48 And when all the crowd that came to see the crucifixion saw what had happened, they went home in deep sorrow.[k] 49 But Jesus’ friends, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance watching.
The Burial of Jesus
50 Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph. He was a member of the Jewish high council, 51 but he had not agreed with the decision and actions of the other religious leaders. He was from the town of Arimathea in Judea, and he was waiting for the Kingdom of God to come. 52 He went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. 53 Then he took the body down from the cross and wrapped it in a long sheet of linen cloth and laid it in a new tomb that had been carved out of rock. 54 This was done late on Friday afternoon, the day of preparation,[l] as the Sabbath was about to begin.
Some Christians have problems experiencing God imagine the despair of the believers on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. There was no sign of Gods intervention.
Skip to the End
I want to start with end of the sermon this morning. Instead of explaining what this line in the Apostle’s Creed means and then telling you why that is important, I want to start by telling you why it is important and then telling you what it means.
Not every Christian is mystic. Do you know what a mystic is? A mystic is someone who has a strong experiential sense of spiritual things and of God’s presence. If that is you, wonderful; but if it is not, please know that you are not a deficient Christian. There are many Christians who do not walk around with a strong sense of God’s presence.
The Bible and the Church proclaim that Jesus is the King of Creation, but sometimes it doesn’t seem as if that claim is true. Just watching the evening news is enough to create some doubt about Jesus being king. But if you think it is sometimes hard for Christians living in the 21st century to believe, imagine what it would have been like to have been one Jesus’ early followers on the Friday Jesus was crucified.
As we talk about this part of the Christian story, it is important that we not skip to the end. Try to set aside what you know about Easter. Try to imagine not knowing what is going to happen two and half days after Jesus’ death. Jesus is arrested, tried, and put to death. To place strong emphasis on the fact that Jesus wasn’t just wounded, or beat up, or made unconscious, or just taken out of action, the creed says, “He descended to the dead.” That is, he was DEAD!!! And it was a cold corpse that was placed in the ground.
Try to set aside your knowledge of what happens on Easter Sunday. On Friday afternoon, everything the disciples believed was shattered. Can you imagine the questions running through their minds? Was Jesus a fraud? Had the things they saw Jesus do been an illusion? If Jesus was the Anointed One of God, come to inaugurate the Kingdom of God, how did all of this fit into God’s plan? Where was God?
This part of the Apostle’s Creed is important because it reminds us that,
The current circumstances do not always tell the whole story.
Our perspective is always limited by the very fact of our being finite beings. Our time and place in history shape our way of looking at things, sometimes in ways we are not even aware of. We never know as much as we think about any situation and we cannot always see how everything connects together. The very idea of a grand unified theory of everything, while being a noble goal worth pursuing, will always lie just beyond our grasp. We cannot and will not ever be able to understand everything, because we cannot cram it all into heads this small.
Our emotions are not always a reliable guide.
Our emotions can lead us astray. Emotions are fickle and funny. Bad burritos can make you experience a whole day as bad. And little flattery can make us blind to a con-artist’s game. Even when our emotions are right, they can still be wrong. Emotionally, the disciples were devastated, as well they should have been. The best person they had ever met had died brutally at the hands of the Romans. Their dreams of redemption and salvation had been smashed, skewered by the hammer and nails of the merciless guards. Emotionally the disciples were pulverized. In this, their emotions were right.
But their emotions were also wrong. Their emotions were telling them that this was the end. Their emotions were telling them to hide, take cover, deny they had ever known Jesus, forget about saving the world, give up hope and go home. This is how they were feeling emotionally. Some acted on their emotions. Some hid. Some denied Jesus. Some packed up and went back home. But there were a few who did not listen to their emotions. There were just a few, who while being emotionally broken, knew that the promises of God must always be put ahead anything we feel. These few went back to the tomb on Sunday morning, not knowing what to expect but knowing that the promises of God can be counted on when our emotions cannot.
That God certainly works in ways we do not always understand.
From a human perspective, on Good Friday, it looked as if God was absent. It looked as if evil had won the day. From the perspective of Holy Saturday, it looked as it death had won. From the perspective of Calvary, the hill where Jesus was hung on the cross, it looked as if all the promises of God had been defeated.
But from the perspective of Easter Sunday, we see that God was present, working in a way that the disciples mistook for God’s absence. God was working through suffering and death, to bring about the world’s redemption. God took that emblem of suffering and shame and turned it into the sign of our salvation. From the perspective of Easter we see that the Cross did not contradict God’s love but in fact demonstrated it.
Romans 5:8 (New Living Translation)
8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

On Communion Five

16 October 2009
Tracts for our Times, weekly devotion from Grace Church
Today we continue to look at Sacrament of Holy Communion, as we consider…
…Communion as Sacrifice
When Roman Catholics take Holy Communion, an important focus for them is upon Communion as a Sacrifice. Evangelicals and Protestants have been too quick to dismiss this important aspect of the Lord’s Supper.
The misunderstanding comes in not considering that our sacrifice is in response to His sacrifice. In fact, this is the only way in which our sacrifice makes any sense at all. At the end of the great liturgy of word and table, we pray: Eternal God, we give you thanks for this holy mystery in which you give yourself to us. Grant that we may go into the world in the strength of your Spirit, to give ourselves for others…”
Unlike the sacrifice of the pagan religions, in which a sacrifice is made to gain the favor and attention of some god, our sacrifice comes in response to the great Self-giving God who has poured himself out for our sake.
So what is the nature of our sacrifice? The Apostle Paul writes: “And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him” (Romans 12:1). So many Christians imagine themselves heroically dying for the faith. It is possible, of course, that such would be asked of us. But just as pleasing to God as becoming a martyr for the cause and dying for our faith is the even greater challenge of living for it.
In response to the Self-giving God, we offer ourselves. He has given His life and we offer to Him our lives. Sacrifice calls for sacrifice, even as the gift of self-giving love calls for the response of self-giving love.

Eddie Bromley, pastor of Grace Church, a United Methodist congregation
You can now listen to the weekly devotion online at www.graceumchurchky.com

On Holy Communion: Part Three

A meal of thanksgiving

Communion should be taken seriously, and yet, Communion should not be a somber event. In some churches, Communion seems to have the ambiance of a sad funeral. But look at how it was first observed. In Luke we read:

Luke 22:14-20 (New Living Translation)
14 When the time came, Jesus and the apostles sat down together at the table.[a] 15 Jesus said, “I have been very eager to eat this Passover meal with you before my suffering begins. 16 For I tell you now that I won’t eat this meal again until its meaning is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God.”
17 Then he took a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it. Then he said, “Take this and share it among yourselves.”
What was it that Jesus was giving thanks for? Well, first of all for the freedom and redemption God had given to His people in the Exodus and original Passover. Remember, this was the Passover meal which Jesus and his disciples were celebrating. Passover is a time of great celebration for Jewish people, as they celebrate their redemption and salvation as a people.
Jesus, of course, was extending the meaning of this meal to include what he was about to do for the world. Thus, for Christians, this meal points to an even great act of redemption, enacted for us on the cross of Calvary. So, then, we have even more reason to celebrate. Look at what the Book of Acts tells us about the way in which the earliest Christians celebrated Communion.
Acts 2:46-47 (New Living Translation)
46 They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity[a]—47 all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.
The mood was one of celebration. In some traditions, Communion is called Eucharist. The word Eucharist comes from the Greek word for being thankful or grateful. To celebrate Eucharist is to give thanks for all that God has done.
In churches were the liturgy of Eucharist is performed, the priest or pastor retells a portion of the story of salvation, focusing on part Jesus plays in God’s great plan of redemption. How appropriate. As we come to the table of Eucharist, we should remember not only the great acts of God in Jesus Christ, but also the specific ways in which your life has been touched by Christ. Let our approach to the table be one filled with great joy and thanksgiving, for all that Christ has done for us.
If the event must be somber, because of sin or tragedy, let us remember that the Lord is the one who can turn our mourning into dancing – Psalm 30:11.