August 29 2021
1 Corinthians 10:14-22, 11:17-32
There is a lot of stuff that comes across my IPad screen every day, most of which I scroll on past. But every now and again there is something that catches my eye and I click on that article. One of these articles that caught my attention this week concerned the state of Christianity in America. There was a Gallup survey done and here is what was found out: more than sixty percent of Christians in America between the ages of eighteen and thirty-nine believe that Buddha, Muhammad and Jesus are all valued paths to salvation. Over thirty percent of Christians in that same age range, eighteen to thirty-nine, say that they either believe Jesus sinned just like other people when he lived on earth or they are just not sure that Jesus was indeed sinless. The survey also found out, not surprisingly, that the percentage of born-again Christians with a biblical worldview has been cut in half in the last decade; that is a mere ten years, folks. Only six percent of Americans actually have a biblical worldview because while fifty one percent of Americans said that they had a biblical worldview, forty-nine percent of these same people also said that re-incarnation was a possibility. Further, of those fifty-one percent who said that they had a biblical worldview only thirty-three percent, a third of them, also said that they believed that human beings are born with a sinful nature and can only be saved from the consequences of their sin through the salvation offered in Jesus Christ. This means that two thirds of those who say that they have a biblical worldview believe that human beings are not necessarily sinful people. And then to top it all off, the survey also found that forty-three percent of millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, stated that they do not know, nor do they care or basically don’t believe that God exists at all.
So, perhaps after hearing these numbers it hopefully becomes clear why this summer series, where we have been going over just what it is that we believe, is so important. We live in a world where those who actually know the truth about the Christian faith are more and more in the minority. This means that the influence of a world where all sorts of beliefs are floated about is going to just get greater. We have to be constantly asking ourselves just how confident am I of what I believe? This is really what should be the takeaway from everything we have covered in this series is that we should examine our beliefs against the articles of faith so that we can have certainty of the truth that we believe in. You see, only as we are sure of what we believe in can we be able to share with the next generation the truth about Jesus Christ. Is Jesus really the same as Buddha and Muhammad? Absolutely not! We know this to be so because the God who Jesus revealed is the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the God whose very nature is love. So, our belief is not about us having to do anything to win God’s love because our faith is all about what our God has already done for us out of his love for us. Our faith is not about us trying to make ourselves better by trying to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps but it is rather God reaching down into our brokenness and lifting us up to be where he is, in the heavens. Our faith is grounded in the hope of resurrection, not re-incarnation. We will be raised a body empowered by the very Spirit of God and we know this to be true because we can experience this resurrection power in no small part here today.
I wonder if part of the problem with people getting messed up in their belief of Jesus, who he is and what he has accomplished for us is perhaps that the beauty and importance of Holy Communion has somehow been lost. You see, as we will discover, Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper or the Last Supper, or the Eucharist, has as its basic function to bring to mind Jesus and all that he has done and what he is going to do. With that in mind let’s look at the thirteenth article of faith from the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene: The Lord’s Supper. We believe that the Memorial and Communion Supper instituted by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is essentially a New Testament sacrament, declarative of his sacrificial death, through the merits of which believers have life and salvation and promise of all spiritual blessings in Christ. It is distinctively for those who are prepared for reverent appreciation of its significance, and by it they show forth the Lord’s death until he come again. It being the Communion feast, only those who have faith in Christ and love for the saints should be called to participate therein.
Here in the Lord’s Supper, just like we learned about baptism, we have what the church calls sacraments, sacred moments, where the stuff of one reality, water in baptism and bread and grape juice in the Lord’s supper, open up to us the new reality that Christ has brought about through his life, death, resurrection and ascension. What Jesus has done for us has changed everything yet this newness can only be experienced by faith, through a new understanding of how the world now is because of what Jesus has accomplished. In the sacraments, a window is thrown open and we can see with the eyes of faith, the new creation and who we are in that new creation. In baptism, through the cleansing of the water we are initiated into the royal priesthood which is the defined life of all those who live in the life of glory won for us by Christ. To be a priest means that we serve only the one true living God and that we bear the name of God which means that we understand that God’s reputation depends on the way we live. This is the life we shall live in the world to come, a world where sin has been defeated and a distant memory. This is what we find in the book of Revelation where those in heaven are robed in the white robes of the priesthood and they are gathered around God’s holy presence, serving him, crying out, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain!” As we shall live there so also should we live that way now. This is what is declared when we are baptized. Like the people of Israel who passed through the waters of the Red Sea, leaving behind their slavery to become the royal priesthood of God so baptism is when we too left behind the slavery of sin in order that we might serve God as his royal priesthood.
In the Lord’s Supper we have the second sacrament recognized by the Church of the Nazarene. It is a sacrament because, as we had said before, it uses common elements, bread and wine, to bring to mind the new reality that Christ has brought about. Now, the Lord’s Supper tells us the whole story of Jesus in brief, broad strokes. The bread is stated as being his body, the wine or grape juice, is his blood. Here then we know that Jesus was a flesh and blood person. Here is the faith statement of the incarnation, that the Son of God took on our flesh, our sinful and corrupt flesh because this was the only flesh Jesus could be clothed in. Yet in spite of his sharing in our flesh and blood, Jesus was without sin. We know this to be true because Jesus allowed his body to be broken, his flesh pierced by nail and sword. Jesus shed his blood so that he might be for us the mercy seat where we as unholy people might at last be able to be in the presence of a holy God. As Paul stated to the church at Corinth, eating and drinking the Lord’s Supper proclaims the Lord’s death, until he comes. In that small phrase we can unpack that Jesus is coming again, and where is he coming from? Jesus is coming to us from heaven just as he did when he was born. And why is he in heaven? Jesus is in heaven because he is our resurrected Lord, who has defeated death, has been raised as a justification for the claim that his death is the true once-for-all sacrifice for sin. As the Lord who has trampled down death by his death, Jesus has ascended to the right side of the Father in glory and there he remains until the end of the age when he shall return to save those who eagerly await him. All of this is contained in that small phrase, that we declare the Lord’s death until he comes every time we partake of the Lord’s Supper.
So, yes, from end to end, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is all about Jesus, which confirms to us every time we come to his table that our faith is about what Jesus has done for us and not at all about anything we have done for him. As I heard it put this past week, Christianity is not a religion, nor is it a set of principles to follow; no, Christianity is a person, the person of Christ. So, we then must ask if this sacrament brings to our mind the whole ministry of Jesus just what is it that we are to take with us when we rise from the Lord’s table? Paul, in our scripture for today, writes that through the cup offered up at the Lord’s Supper, is offered so that we might participate in the very blood of Christ. The bread we break is done so that we might participate in the body of Christ. Paul goes on to say that those who would eat the sacrifices in the Temple would be bound together in some manner with the sacrificial offering upon the altar. Here, Paul is clearly referencing the priests, the ones who would be partaking of the sacrifices brought to the altar. So, Paul is saying that we as priests in the new Temple, we too eat of the sacrifice, the sacrifice of Jesus, who was offered up for us upon the altar of the cross. To help us understand the significance of this moment, of our eating and drinking, we must listen carefully to the words of Jesus, who speaks to us from the sixth chapter of John, where he tells us, “The bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” And further in that same chapter, Jesus continues, “I am the bread of life. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread I give for the life of the world is my flesh.” When we read the words of Jesus it begins to be abundantly clear that Jesus laid down his life, his flesh and blood, so that in doing so we might have life. Jesus understood that his life lived out in flesh and blood was a life that was for one purpose and that purpose was to do the will of his Heavenly Father. Here the truth about all human life becomes evident. We have been given a life by God, and it is sustained by God so that this life might be used to serve God and bring glory to God. We know this to be true because this was the life of Jesus, who while he was the Son of God, was at the same time, perfectly human. Through this death of Jesus that we proclaim through our partaking of this meal, we now have life. Before the cross there was only enslavement to sin and an end in the darkness of death. But now, because of Jesus through his death, we have life. This is what is written in the fifth chapter of the first letter of John, “God gave us eternal life, and this life is his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son does not have life.” So, the new way of understanding life is that life is Jesus and to live is to participate in Jesus who is our life. So, when we eat the bread and drink the juice which represents the food which keeps us alive, we are to go on to know that the bread is the body of Jesus broken for us and the juice is the blood of Jesus shed for us and it the death of Jesus which is now our life. Yet it is not just for us alone but this life is for all who are made up of flesh, which is everyone. This is what Paul was saying when he writes in the tenth chapter of First Corinthians that because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, we all partake of the one bread.Here we can come to understand that when Jesus took upon himself our flesh he in that act united himself with all who are clothed with flesh. What this means then is that, as we have discussed before, that Christ died to unite us all into one humanity. In the breaking of his body, the one loaf of which we participate, Jesus took the fragments of our broken humanity and has brought them all together to share in one common life, a life which Christ gives to them. So, to proclaim the death of Christ means for us to receive anew the gift of life which is the result of Christ’s death for us. His was a life which held forth the truth that he taught that, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Jesus was willing to die in order that he would be the first of many fruits of eternal life.
It is when we understand that our life is a gift given to us through the gift of the life of Jesus and not just our life but the very life of everyone is also a gift given to them through the death of Jesus, this is when we also understand the sacredness of every life because of the holiness of the death of the Son of God on their behalf. It is when this understanding is brought to mind that we then are empowered to have the law of God written on our hearts. We will set aside one day every week to remember that it is God who has given us life and it is God who sustains our life not the efforts of our own doing. We will honor those who have brought us into this life, our parents. We will not take another life or hate another life or disparage another life because each person’s life is a sacred gift of God. It is this sacredness of others which keeps us from seeing them as a possession to lust after, or as someone to use for our own personal gain. This sacredness is why we speak the truth in love to one another. This new understanding of life is why we also in all circumstances, whether we have plenty or not enough, in all circumstances we will learn to be content because it is not what we desire which is necessary for our life but rather we are certain that it is Jesus who gives us strength to endure to the end.
You see, Paul understood that when we know that the death of Jesus is the very source of our life, then the impact of this knowledge should be seen throughout our life. This is the point Paul was trying to make when he states that the people of Corinth were eating the bread of the Lord and drinking the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner. People have often taken these words out of context so that the original meaning that Paul was referring to gets lost. Paul wasn’t stating that we are to turn the focus upon ourselves concerning ourselves with our sins and shortcomings but he was rather he is speaking about how we look out for others. The term, “unworthy”, in the Greek has the same root as the word we know as axle. An axle can be thought of as a pivot point and this was what was used as an early scales. An arm was laid upon an axle and then items were laid on either side of the arm to see how much of one item was equal to another. It looked like a small scale teeter-totter. So, what Paul was saying was that the behavior of the people towards each other was unequal to the way that Jesus had treated them. They were at odds with each other not even worrying about beginning the celebrating of the Lord’s Supper until everyone had got there. As Paul told them there were some going hungry and some drinking to excess. In doing so they despised the church of God and they humiliated those who had nothing. How unequal was this treatment of those in need from the treatment that they had received from Christ. When we were but nothing before God, Christ gave the most precious gift of himself so that through his death we who were dead might have life. This is what the standard of our life must be is what Paul is saying. We have been given life so that we would become people who take this life and like Jesus give this life and share our lives with others. This is when we know that we have taken the Lord’s Supper in a worthy manner. We are to consider our treatment of others in light of Christ’s treatment of us. The way that we have treated people in the past can only be forgiven but how we treat people in the present and the future is a choice that can be made only because Christ has set us free to do so. The question is will we be people who proclaim the Lord’s death, the death which gave us life, by living a life where we share this gift of life through Christ with others? We must hope that we will be found not only worthy now but also when Christ comes again! Amen.
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