WHAT TO SAY AT COMMUNION: REMEMBER, RECOMMIT, REJOICE. (Part 2)
Depending on the church stream you come from, you will have a certain perspective on why we take communion and how often. I personally grew up in a background where it was done every week.
Here is what it often looked like. After the sermon, an elder or another leader in the church would come up and do a communion meditation then pray. The piano player would play softly. Everyone would keep their heads bowed quietly until it was time to stand and sing the last song. Growing up with those experiences I began to have some questions.
Why is it always so somber? Don’t we sometimes say we’re “celebrating” communion?
Why do we tend to primarily focus on our sin or on the cross?
Why does Jesus call it a covenant?
Then as a Worship Pastor and a Lead Pastor it became my responsibility to coordinate where it was in the service, who was going to do it, and how to keep it fresh. Which led to a whole different set of questions.
How do we keep this from turning into a mini sermon?
How do we keep communion from feeling like a non-sequitur after preaching God’s word. (People have spent 30 minutes thinking about God’s word in one way through the sermon, and then the communion mediation is about something completely different.)
How can we tell the salvation story each week through communion?
My intention isn’t to give a full blown theology of communion. However, I would like to offer what I found to be a helpful framework that I used to help frame why we take communion. I would use this framework to explain to those who plan worship, and those who led the congregation in participating in worship through communion, to help them understand how to make it a meaningful and cohesive part of the entire worship experience.
To show you where I came up with this framework, let’s start with the most common scripture used at communion.
23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. [1 Corinthians 11:23-26]
I’ve bolded 3 phrases from this scripture. I like to summarize what is being said with three words.
REMEMBER. RECOMMIT. REJOICE.
REMEMBER: WE HAVE BEEN SAVED.
Human beings are incredibly forgetful people. God knew that, so he gave his people ways to remember him and what he had done for them. When he rescued the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, he told them to celebrate that major event with a meal. That meal included bread and wine. Hundreds of years later they were still remembering what God had done in Egypt. Jesus took those same two pieces of the Passover meal and said, God is going to save you through me. This time it won’t be from Egypt, or from Rome, but from Satan and slavery to sin. Every time you eat and drink these together, remember who your God is. The God who came to earth. The God who died for you. The God who loves you. He’s come to save you. Jesus is able to save us because he lived a perfect sinless life and took the penalty of our sin. We are no longer slaves to Sin and Satan. We have nothing to fear because our punishment has been taken from us by Jesus. So in Communion we REMEMBER WE HAVE BEEN SAVED BY THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JESUS. We are sorrowful for our sin, but we are joyful because we are now his sons and daughters.
We remember that our sin was awful enough to die for.
We remember that we are loved enough to come to rescue.
We remember where we’d be without the love of Jesus.
We remember that we are now sons and daughters instead of enemies and strangers.
We remember that Satan has been defeated.
We remember that our sins are no longer held against us.
We have a lot to remember during communion don’t we? However, we don’t just look backwards in communion. We look at the present and we…
RECOMMIT: WE ARE BEING SAVED.
Jesus talks about how He is offering a “new covenant.” A covenant is a life-long serious agreement between two parties. In this agreement both parties make promises to each other. God had made covenant’s in the past with Noah, Abraham, and David. (And Adam if you want to include it) With each covenant, God added promises. Not destroy the entire earth again by water, to create a people and nation that would be blessed and be a blessing to the rest of the world, and that he would send a king that would reign forever and bring peace and joy to the world and put an end to injustice. Jesus says all of those promises are coming true in me. God has kept his side of the covenant even though my people haven’t. Jesus is also saying, all of the promises that I have made to you, I will keep. I will give you new life. I will give you my Holy Spirit. I will help you live the kind of life that I have lived. I will make you part of my mission to love and save others. In return, Jesus asks us to keep our side of the covenant agreement. Will we let Jesus be King of our lives? Will we surrender every part of ourselves? Are we committed to his mission or are we trying to build our own kingdoms? Are we loving others the way that Jesus calls us to? The new covenant included giving us THE SPIRIT OF JESUS. Communion reminds us that we weren’t just saved from something, but that we were saved for something. God is continuing to save us and make us more like Jesus.
We recommit to letting Jesus be King
We examine our hearts and recommit to asking Jesus to help us overcome sinful selfishness.
We examine where we have used our time, talents, and treasure selfishly and recommit them to King Jesus.
We examine our relationships and recommit to asking Jesus to help us love like he did.
One of the things that keeps us from getting mired down in our failures is that communion calls us to…
REJOICE: WE WILL BE SAVED.
There is an often overlooked phrase in this scripture that says in communion we “proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.” Even as Jesus speaks about his death, he is pointing them not only to his resurrection, but also to his return! After the resurrection, every time the disciples took communion together, that phrase would have jumped out. They had seen him alive. They had watched him ascend into heaven. They were also longing for the day he would return. They believed that the rest of the promises that hadn’t been fulfilled would be when he came back. In communion, Jesus is promising to finish what he started when we returns. One day Jesus is coming back and he will put an end to the evil and injustice of this world. He will establish his kingdom and peace will reign forever. There will be no more tears, no more pain, war, disease, or divorce. We will be reunited at the great wedding feast of the Lamb.
We rejoice that our present suffering pales in comparison to the glory and joy to come for eternity.
We rejoice that we will be reunited with those who have believed in Jesus that have died before us.
We rejoice that there will finally be no more sin to cause us pain. We’ll be free from the presence of sin.
We rejoice that we will get to see Jesus face to face and experience his love and embrace.
Let’s put these ideas together with what we discovered in the earlier article.
Communion is a family meal with God, where we are welcomed as friends and family because of the blood and sacrifice of Jesus.
It is a Covenant meal, where we are:
REMEMBER: Remembering the Cost of our salvation, where a rebellious meal broke the world and God did not abandon us.
RECOMMIT: We are committing to being part of God’s mission and inviting the world to eat with God.
REJOICE: We are looking forward to when Jesus comes back and we eat together in glory.
