River Road Church Baptist

Dr. Cecil E. Sherman

September 7, 2003

“Ideas Around Communion”

Luke 22:23-46

It was a Maundy Thursday at Broadway Church in Fort Worth. Simple service—in fact, almost stark in its simplicity. We read scripture, we celebrated the supper, and we went home. The chairman of the board of deacons, Dick Williams, went out the door and whispered in my ear ever so softly, “We did something religious tonight”—suggesting that sometimes the things we do at church aren’t all that religious. Alan Culpepper commented about the supper, “No other ceremony or act of worship has moved the church through the centuries as much as following Jesus’ command to eat the bread and drink the cup of the new covenant.” Again we stand in the presence of mystery and wonder. I think Alan Culpepper has said something all of us have sensed, though we’ve not always put it to words.

Today I’m following Luke’s statement of the supper. For three years Jesus had coached these people and now he’s down to one last sane moment before he falls into the hands of enemies, and on the morrow he will be crucified. What did he say? I have three ideas. First, he said, “Remember my life and my death.” But specifically he said, “Remember my broken body and my shed blood.” Our religion is a remembering religion. In Exodus 2 there is this powerful comment, “God heard the cry of the Hebrews in slavery in Egypt and God remembered.” He remembered promises he had made with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and he moved to keep those promises. God delivered; God remembered. Dotted throughout the Old Testament there are memory times—one is the Passover, and that’s what this meal started to be. The Passover was institutionalized memory of the Jewish people. And that’s because we are a forgetting people. So soon, so easy, so quickly we forget.

I did not realize how important memory is until my wife had Alzheimer’s. She cannot remember where we met, when we met. She cannot remember our first date. She cannot remember our marriage. Sometimes she says to me, “Are we married?” Yes. “How long have we been married?” Forty-nine years. She always says the same thing—“That’s a long time!” So maybe she’s not altogether out of it. That’s a long time. But the mind I married is gone. Only a shell is there. That’s how important memory is. You can’t know how important memory is until you have someone you want to talk with about all of the connections from the past. Then they’re gone. Memory is just as much a part of my religion. I have a clear memory of when I walked into the baptistery as a 9-year-old boy and Dr. Cauthen said to me, “Cecil Edwin, do you give your heart to Jesus?” I do. “Do you promise to live for him all of your life?” I do. That’s entry level Christianity. It is uninformed by any theology, but my ignorance was compensated by my intention and my earnestness, and it’s the floor on which everything else is built. It’s a memory.

I made promises at ordination. Some of you who are deacons can identify. You remember those promises. Who does not remember when you promised yourself in marriage? And who did not make some kind of a promise when first you held your newborn child? And you live by these memories. So, communion assigns priority. What Jesus did on the cross was the most important thing he did when combined with Easter. Communion calls the cross to mind, and we’ve institutionalized communion to help us with a memory problem.

Second idea – along with memory, it’s covenant – covenant with Christ’s people. Ancients took friendship seriously. When they broke bread together they were doing more than eating, they were promising themselves to each other. If you want a hint of this, read one of the Psalms in which a fellow says, “And my friend, the one with whom I broke bread has turned against me.” Paul Shearer has a story and I quote it, “Whenever a man was about to leave his friends and go on a long journey he gathered them round for one last pledge of his abiding love. He gave them food, told them to take it, for all the leagues between it would be as his body to theirs. Never would he be anywhere, anywhere away, not for a moment beyond the reach of that man’s heart.” Moderns in the main have missed this bond, this covenanting. Our individualism works against it. Once in a while it breaks out.

As I read Band of Brothers two or three years ago, I realized I was reading about a company of men who in training and in peril, in war and sometimes in death, came to see each other as a band of brothers. Those of you who were a part of that terror and that wonder, sometimes meet together in reunions. Why? Because you have a covenant. If you never said covenant, you’ve got a covenant. When you meet, you start where you left off. You know and you trust – you’ve got a bond. Jesus had a bond with his own. What Judas did was unthinkable by the values of that day. It says in the text, “The one who dips his bread with mine will betray me.” That was unthinkable. Absolutely unthinkable! What happened with Peter when he denied Jesus, and John’s statement of the way that denial was repaired with Peter being restored—all of this suggests the bond, what’s broken, and what’s put together again. The covenant was dear. Today we remember Jesus, but we do more. We make covenant with each other. Those who share in this covenant are joined with one another life to life, as signified and sealed in the cup, divided among ourselves. It’s something important you do with the people who are around you.

Last idea – we remember, we covenant, we anticipate. Lost in the remembering and bonding is the future tense. It is in communion. It’s in Luke’s story, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” He’s pitching it forward. Future tense – he did not see the table before him as the final banquet with his friends—it was a preview. Gilmore McClain said, “The main emphasis of Luke’s account of the supper is a feast of anticipation.” Pitching it forward. In Judaism there was a vision. In heaven, after judgment, there will be feast. The Messiah will gather all God’s chosen to a great banquet. The cares of the world are over, the saints of the ages are assembled; it’s end time and it’s celebration. And Jesus is saying, “Don’t think of communion as last supper.” Actually it was first supper.

Since the first supper, the church has remembered and looked forward to another time and place. Time will run her course. Life as we know it will pass. We will gather in another venue. The Bible calls it heaven. The details are left fuzzy. Preachers who tell you they know the detail are telling you more than they know. But Christ will gird himself in service. The church will have done her task. Eternity has begun. I want you to think this way and I want you to look forward to it. It’s the way Jesus thought and it’s the way we’re supposed to think. Can you imagine on the eve of his crucifixion—a crucifixion he predicted several times—at that time, he’s not thinking just of tomorrow; he’s thinking way beyond tomorrow? He’s thinking beyond Easter and ascension. He’s thinking about a time when all of his people are gathered.

The trouble of this world is not as real as we make it. The glory of the world to come is not as remote as we make it. Begin to think like Jesus.

CES; Lisa King, mt