Communion

I sat at the table. Pete took a sip of his wine. There was no plate and no cup in front of me. "I wanted to introduce you to someone," he said to me. "She and I are having Communion. The Lord's Supper. The Table. The Passover meal."
"I'll take it with you."
"No," he said, "For you, Communion is tiny, tasteless wafers and a little plastic cup full of grape juice. Someone reads a few verses, you swallow the bread, you throw down the juice, and you think to yourself, Jesus, thank you for dying for my sins. You put the cup in the pew holder, and you're done. Later someone comes by and cleans up the leftovers."

"What do you think 'Communion' was like at first, Matt?
I shrugged. "I've never thought about it, I guess."
"That first year after he died, do you think we threw back our cups, took five minutes to say thanks, and then moved on?"
He made a good point. I could spend more time than that reminiscing about a good meal. "Probably not."
"We knew him, Matt. He changed our lives. Our thankfulness wasn't some theological construct. It was deep and true and unstoppable."

(excerpts from Imaginary Jesus)

I am not sure about you but I have to sadly admit that I have noticed that many see Communion Sunday as skip day... "Oh yeh, we can leave after Sunday School, it's just Communion today"

Perhaps you are one of those.

How much more special would communion be if instead of waiting on a piece of cracker and a taste of grape juice,while sitting nicely in our pews, we instead chose to sit around a table... with bread and maybe even wine... and we truly spent that time focusing on what our Savior did for us.
Would you really have to worry about drunkenness if when you looked at that wine what you saw was Jesus blood shed for you, for your sins?
Would you really over-indulge in the bread (or the wine) if when you looked at it you truly saw our Savior's body broken for you, for your transgressions?

Therefore whoever eats the bread

or drinks the cup of the Lord

in an unworthy manner,

shall be guilty of the body

and the blood of the Lord.

1 Corinthians 11:27

What if instead of a Sunday potluck fellowship, when the church gathered together to partake in a meal it was simply the Passover meal, the bread and the wine?
What if we gathered together and we simply remembered Him?
What if we sat and talked about the day we met Him?
What if we shared about how He had changed our lives?
What if we shared how He has walked with us and carried us since we met Him?
What if we purposely went into a joint Passover meal with a fellow church filled with a people of completely different background and ethnicity than ours and we united in Christ?
What if Communion Sunday was not "church skip day"?

What if instead of uniting to pick-it the abortion clinics, or uniting to fight legislation, or uniting to demand prayer in school, or what ever other political agenda we have at the moment, we united for the sake of simply remembering Him?

What if we had a Call to Remember and every church in our community, our county, our state, our nation, the nations... what if we called all our individual local congregations to come together at the same day at the same hour for Communion, to simply remember Him.
Nothing else.
No political agenda.
No pity party stories.
No martyr talk.
Nothing but a call to remember Jesus and to proclaim Him, His life, His death, His ressurection.
All and only about Him

How seriously do you take Communion?

Is it just something you do or does the weight of it sink deep into your soul and lift your heart and eyes to His beautiful sacrifice for your ugly and deceitful heart?

Is it a time for you to search the tray for the biggest cracker and the most full tiny cup while you whisper until you see everyone take their bite and drink their little cup and see your own cue, so you stop chatting with your neighbor long enough to absentmindly pop in the cracker and throw back the juice and then complain about how dry those crackers were and you need some more drink to wash it down?

After this,

Jesus, knowing that all things

had already been accomplished,

to fulfill the Scripture, said,

"I am thirsty."

John 19:28 

Maybe some make a joke of Communion so that they don't really have to think about it...

Maybe some make Communion "skip day" so that they don't have to remember and don't have to examine...

I can ask all these questions because I have been there.
I know.
I have walked into the door and seen the table and thought "man, if I had known this was today we would have went on home... or just stayed home."

I've been there so busy whispering to my neighbor that I have paid no attention to the reading of the Scripture, and I certainly was not examining myself, and I definitely was not remembering Him...

I was doing a formality, a religious duty, pass the tray grab the cracker, get the cup... 1-2-3 eat... 1-2-3 drink, let's sing and go get some real food.

That's never, ever, again the way I want to take Communion.
How about you?
Have you ever thought about that first Passover after the ascension of our Lord?
Is there any way it could look and feel like the miniscule communion cracker and miniture communion cup that we purchase in bulk at our local christian supply store in order to make it as quick and easy as possible?