One Lord, One Church, One Banquet

As the first Sunday of October, today is not only our regular Communion Sunday, it’s Worldwide Communion Sunday for Christians around the world. (Our Communion table is arrayed with different types and colors of bread symbolizing the worldwide Church’s diversity.) It’s a day to celebrate the unity of the Christian Church with our common belief in Christ as the head of His Church. A day to focus on our commonalities and set our differences aside. Although we used the Nicene Creed this morning to confess our faith, most people are more familiar with the Apostle’s Creed, which was first mentioned in a letter from the Synod of Milan dated AD390, referring to a belief at the time that each of the Twelve Apostles contributed an article to the twelve articles of that creed. However, the Nicene Creed, accepted in its final form in AD 589, was the first creed to obtain universal authority in the church, as it improved the language of the Apostles’ Creed by including more specific statements about the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Like stating the Father and Son are both God and equally divine with the same will and substance. Its Christian statement of faith is then more widely accepted by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and major Protestant churches. Both the Apostles Creed and Nicene Creed help us express our beliefs, but using the more widely accepted Nicene Creed today helps emphasize the unity of the Christian Church.

There are even differences about communion within denominations, like the frequency of Communion and whether we take Communion by coming forward and dipping a piece of bread in a common cup, called intinction, or together in the pews. Methodists use grape juice instead of wine, some only have water carried from distant wells. Some churches use unleavened bread, some use gluten free bread, some use wafers, while others in poverty may have only crumbs. Many congregations make World Communion Sunday a global celebration by inviting people to make bread for communion from their own ethnic backgrounds.

Denominations even see the bread and juice in different ways – as symbolic, as the substance of His body and blood, even as becoming the actual body and blood of Christ. Not all even agree on the day of the week for church worship. But despite these differences, all Christian churches can trace their Communion beliefs back to the Last Supper and the early church, based on the cornerstone of Christ, our risen Lord, with the foundation on His chosen disciples, and given life by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Those are our common roots for this worldwide Communion celebration this morning as we put our evolved differences aside.

Worldwide Communion Sunday originated in the Presbyterian Church in 1936, and is even celebrated in slightly different ways. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America observes a variant called “Global Church Sunday”.

Despite our different practices and beliefs about Communion, our Christian hope focuses on being fed spiritually from Christ’s Table, represented by the Great Banquet Jesus taught about during his earthly ministry. We can even see the concept of His banquet expressed in the OT. In the twenty-third Psalm, for example, the psalmist David uses the imagery of a shepherd caring for his beloved sheep, finding them good pastures in the lower lands for much of the year. But the shepherd prepares for the time he will lead his sheep to the lush mountain pastures, where sun drenched grass, watered by melted winter snows, awaits them. The shepherd had sometime previously prepared the pasture lands, removing rocks that would prevent grass growing, and possibly injure His sheep. He had removed any poisonous weeds that would endanger the sheep, being especially fatal for the lambs. In the psalmist’s words, He prepares a banquet table for them. And as long as the shepherd was present at that banquet pasture, the sheep’s predatory enemies could only watch. We, the sheep of His pasture, putting our faith in our Good Shepherd, look forward to His leading us to His banquet table in heaven, guiding us even through the valleys of the shadows of death, on our way there. Our destination, rather than the path our Shepherd leads us on, is our focus. As long as we remain in His presence, regardless of the path, we know we will arrive at our destination. But those who wander away on their own path, no matter how certain they may feel theirs is the right way, will miss the promised banquet.

In our OT reading, the prophet Isaiah speaks of the Great Banquet from a different perspective. Our passage opens with Isaiah praising God for His perfect faithfulness, for the wonderful things God had planned long ago. Isaiah was a prophet during the Babylonian exile, and even though God allowed the Babylonians to conquer Israel because of their sinfulness, Babylon was a pagan enemy that didn’t worship God. So, Isaiah speaks against Babylon and other such enemy nations who would therefore be reduced to a heap of rubble, their fortified towns to lie in ruin, their ruthless voice no longer to be heard. Such was the fate of those who did not honor the Lord God.