The Communion Connection

Sermon: The Communion Connection

1 Corinthians 11:23-34

** Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njP0Xn-5quw

We started this New Year off by looking at what the remnant church would look like, and one of the defining characteristics throughout history of God’s remnant is that they always went back, or stuck with the basic of the faith, that is, those doctrines and teachings that defined their faith in God as outlined in the Bible.

In keeping with this overall theme, and seeing that today we will be celebrating communion together as a family, whether in-person or on-line, I would like to take this time and talk about communion, which is considered one of two sacraments of the Protestant reformation, which was that remnant that came out of the Roman Catholic Church back in the 16th century.

Now to understand what a sacrament is; the easiest way to remember it is that these sacraments are visible symbols of the reality of God and faith in Jesus Christ. Within the Protestant churches these are baptism and communion.

Early church leaders defined these as outward and visible signs of God’s inward or invisible grace. To say it another way, they are outward signs of something that God is doing within a person’s life. And probably the simplest definition concerning communion being a sacrament is that it is a dramatization of the gospel message.

Unfortunately, communion has taken a serious hit within some churches having removed it from their worship experience saying that it is considered a strange practice and often time frightens away those who are “seekers.”

But this was not the case with the first church, as they partook of communion on a regular basis. We see this in Luke’s account of the first church saying, “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.” (Acts 2:42 NKJV)

This phrase, “breaking of bread,” was understood by the first church, and the Christian church throughout the ages, as what we know as communion, or more formally as “The Lord’s Supper,’ which was instituted by Jesus at the last Passover meal He shared with His disciples as found in the synoptic gospel accounts (Matthew 26:17-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:7-23), and in the Apostle Paul’s account of it in 1 Corinthians 11:23-28.

Now, besides some church’s removal of communion from their worship services, another problem with communion as it taken today is that it has become more centered upon tradition, and something that the church just does, without really knowing why.

Now, to explain what I mean, there’s a story about a little girl who asked her mother, “Mommy, why do you cut the ends off meat before you cook it?”

The girl’s mother said it added flavor by allowing the meat to better absorb the spices, but she also told her daughter to ask her grandmother since she always did it that way.

So the little girl found her grandmother and asked, “Grandma, why do you and Mommy cut the ends of the meat off before you cook it?”

Her grandmother said, “I think it allows the meat to stay tender because it soaks up the juices better, but why don’t you ask your Nana? After all, I learned from her, and she always did it that way.”

Getting a little frustrated the little girl climbed in her great-grandma’s lap and asked, “Nana, why do you cut the ends off the meat before you cook it?”

Nana answered, “I had to; my cooking pot wasn’t big enough.”

We do a lot of things in life, and seldom do we stop to ask why. We develop habits and traditions, and if we’re not careful, we can forget why we do certain things. The danger of familiar traditions is that they become routine and lose the power they were intended to impart.

So, in our time together today, and before we participate in communion, I’d like to take a little time to explain what so many either take for granted, or do not fully understand its significance.

But to do so, I’d like to tell you a story about a statue of a lamb that stands in the courtyard of a little church in Germany.

A group of men were working on the church’s roof when one of them tripped and fell to the ground. The other men quickly climbed down the ladder thinking that their colleague was either severely injured or dead.

When they reached him he was shaken but uninjured. You see, there was a lamb grazing next to the church when he fell, and instead of hitting the ground, he fell on the lamb. Unfortunately for the lamb it was crushed and died.

Grateful for the lamb’s intervention, the man had a statue of a lamb erected in the very place where he fell. The plague underneath reads, “Memorial to the Crushed Lamb.”