10/4/64

Scripture: Read Luke 22: 7-22 [New English translation].

Today, in Christian churches all over the world, worshippers are united in a common observance of World-Wide Communion Sunday. In one sense, it began with isolated groups last evening. Young people of our church Pilgrim Fellowship, having spent the day at Green Lake Pilgrim Camp, wished to partake together in communion before I returned to Wisconsin Rapids. We did partake of the Lord’s Supper together as part of our re-dedication to Christian faith and practice. Another group of young folk on the same camp ground, having come from Lakeland College for a weekend of conference, also partook of the communion with their chaplain at another place on the grounds.

Today we meet here at the appointed time for worship to participate, together, in the Lord’s Supper. We are aware that other Christian folk all round the earth are doing the same, in their own way, according to their own manner, at their hour of worship. An hour ago, the Christian worshippers in Cleveland, Washington and New York were receiving the elements of communion. In Buenos Aires it was still another hour earlier; in Greenland yet another hour before, and in Iceland earlier yet. Paris and Rome found Christians at communion still earlier, by our time.

Worshippers in Denver will meet an hour later; those in San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle two hours from now. Those in our nation’s newest state, Hawaii, will gather for the Lord’s Supper approximately 4 and one-half hours from our time. On Midway Island, an hour after the Hawaiian observance, missionaries and chaplains will conduct the final observance of the day which will have begun about 24 hours earlier in the far East.

It can be a thrilling picture for us, to be reminded of the great unity we have in the observance of this sacrament. In one sense it is an intensely personal and individual matter. No one but you and God knows precisely what goes on in your own soul as you participate in Holy Communion. Even as groups of worshippers, we differ in custom, from church to church. And yet we overcome individual differences of racial intolerance, language difference, theological bickering, denominational pride, and creedal interpretation when we commune together, at the Lord’s table.

Christians around the world are more closely united by this mutual participation of Holy Communion on this special Sunday. It is one of the visible evidences that there is a dawning consciousness around the world of the essential “one-ness” of the Church of Christ in a severely divided world.

Back in 1937, William Temple, then Archbishop of Canterbury, was bringing a message to representatives of 120 church denominations at a worldwide meeting of Christians. And he pointed out that people “do not voluntarily do things together, or assemble themselves to consider the oneness of the Body of Christ (his church on earth) --- unless they already possess some sense of oneness, of belonging, of fellowship, of community.”

150 years ago, there were no Christians in two thirds of the world’s areas. Today, there is no land where there are not at least some Christians, and perhaps no more than one or two where there is not a Christian church. Someone who took the trouble to check it, found that there is a Christian church in every world capital but two.

A commonly used word for the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is “Eucharist.” This is a term derived from the Greek word for “thanksgiving.” So Holy Communion is a time for thanksgiving. It is an occasion for giving thanks for our own knowledge of Jesus Christ and of his influence and saving power in our lives; of giving thanks for the Good News of God’s love, which covers the world, and of giving thanks for the visible unity that is growing among the many groups of His people known as His church.

“Thy kingdom come” sounds possible on a Sunday like this one, as Christians of every race and tongue and condition and creed put aside their self-seeking and pride and prejudice to worship in Christ’s name. For he clearly told his disciples --- a dozen people at the time of that Last Supper, but millions of us since then: “Do this in remembrance of me.” [Luke 22: 19].

1. So we bring to the Lord’s Table our thanksgiving and praise for the goodness of God to us and to all mankind.

2. Of course we bring also our confession of sin --- the waywardness, the carelessness of spirit, the unjustified neglect, the self-seeking, the avoidances of our living. We confess our participation in corporate guilt where we allow the sins of society to persist because we have not sought the redemption of the world, as well as of ourselves.

3. We bring here our burdens. Some have a load of anxiety that seems more than one can bear. Some have the loneliness of a bereavement that is still a sore hurt. Some have found themselves estranged from those they have loved, or have found the separation from family who are away hard to endure. Some are bewildered by lack of understanding on the part of others and their own inability to understand others. And the emptiness needs filling with the nourishment of the Bread of Life. Here is a fellowship in worship and devotion that can dispel some of the loneliness, or fill some of the emptiness, or fan up the embers of confidence and courage.

4. And so we bring to this table our needs and burdens. Here also we bring our purpose of dedication. If our Christ offered his life -- his body and blood, his mind, his whole being in our behalf, we want to bring our own intent to serve him in our dedication and purpose.

And so there is a great deal we may bring with us as we come to the Lord’s Table. We may bring our sorrows, our burdens, our guilt; we may bring our praise and thanksgiving; we may bring our hopes and our dedication.

But there is a sense in which this is only a beginning. For we read, in some accounts of the Last Supper of our Lord and his apostles: “When they had sung a hymn, they went out.” [Mark 14: 26]. It was a beginning in Christ’s plan of salvation.

So this Sacrament is, for us, not an end but a beginning. It is an incident in our living meant to send us on our way for something further. Whenever it seems, in its quiet beauty, like a mountain top experience, we must come down from the mountain to help others. The benediction closes most of our services, and this one as well, with its declaration of “the communion of the Holy Spirit,” reminding us that the communion need never end, though the sacramental service closes.

I realize that I might go out from this service unchanged in vital ways. Have I retained some egotism, some false ambition, some desire for self-preferment that serves not the purpose of God? It has been like this from the time of the first communion -- that Last Supper. After that experience, the disciples could start a discussion about which of them should have the chief places of recognition! They had seen the strange spectacle of their Master washing the feet of others --- their own -- like a humble servant, but they had not yet become humble.

Could we miss some of the deep meaning of this Sacrament; failing to realize our dependence on the loving grace of Christ; failing to see our place as helper rather than mere receiver? Let this lesson be borne away with us as we go from the Lord’s table today. There are other things as well to take with us when we go --- our high resolves, for instance. If we be not on our guard to keep them, they are easily lost and forgotten. Peter swore his high, unshakable allegiance to Jesus during an hour of fellowship with him. Before the night was over --- even before a rooster crowed at the dawn --- he had denied, three times, that he even knew Jesus. Could you or I lose our balance that easily? Let it be our earnest resolve that we not lose the glow of this service in denial of our Lord or refusal in his service.

Let us go out in an assured fellowship, closer than ever before --- a fellowship that will hold even amidst the faults and failures of others and of ourselves. The one bread makes us one body. “We are not divided. All one body we” -- as we sing it in the hymn: “Onward Christian Soldiers.” We are bound, across barriers of language, geography, liturgical variation and what else, into a believing fellowship. Let us hold fast to this fellowship in our thinking and speaking to others, and about others.

Let us go from this table today in the love and care of God. Christ has prayed for you and me, as he prayed for Peter, that we fail not --- or, failing, that we return to our real loyalty. God grant us that we fail not; but if we fail or deny, God follow us with His redeeming grace and bring us back! He must have work for us to do, some care of His flock, some task of helpfulness, in spite of any failure we may make. And certainly we may show forth His grace in our own vocation to which we return from this act of worship. Let this Sacrament be to us a reminder that God does not fail, and will recover you and me if we should fail Him.

Let us go out to face whatever we must of misunderstanding or betrayal. If there should be either a betraying Judas or a denying Peter or a fleeing discipleship, as there was for Jesus, there may be much sorrow for some of us. Christ once said that one’s foes could even be of his own household. Let us thank God when it is not so; but when the contrary arises, let us be ready for any such experience that could shadow our spirits.

Surely we also go out to some service that will show forth and use the new strength that comes to us at the Lord’s table. Here we seek and receive, nourishment for our spirits, as food nourishes the body. Let it be expended in service. There was shortly a Gethsemane for our Lord, but he continued, and continues, to pour out his entire self for us and for all mankind. There are daily tasks to be done better; some familiar duties to be better fulfilled; there is some new service for each of us -- something fine for us to do. The new strength is given to us for that.

We may go out confident of victory in our world of spiritual conquest. The sacrament links us to the triumphant will of God. The world is “overcome” in His Christ and in the spirit of His Christians. We go out to a grim world, whether we be youth or matured adults or advanced in age. The world contrasts in sharp reality with the inspiration that we find at our communion. As a “sharer” in the life of Christ we are to have a part in the overcoming of the world. For it needs new life, and courage, and the new hope which the Sacrament brings to us.

We have come here in recognition and remembrance. We have brought here our thanksgiving, our confession and our dedication. We may go from this table with confidence, with high resolve, with determination to serve, with endurance, and with the assurance of God’s victory.

So let it be with us in our gathering at World-Wide Communion, right here in this church.

Amen.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, October 4, 1964.