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A CUP AND A CRACKER #2
A MEAL WHICH SPANS THE UNIVERSE
You know, time zones are an interesting phenomenon.
Some of us who have crossed the International Date Line and lost whole
days or lived through the same Monday twice get kind of intrigued by some
of the global implications of someone else being in a different day than
you are.
I guess I could give the microphone right back to David here, but he's
told me about a worship experience he had a few years ago when he returned
to his childhood mission home of Thailand. On a Saturday morning, Sabbath
for him, he found himself in the little northern city of Chiang Mai, 500
miles north of Bangkok, worshiping in the small Seventh-day Adventist
church there. Sizzling hot weather, 40 or 50 believers, and 40 or 50 pairs
of shoes out in the little foyer, which is the custom over there.
Now all week long, David couldn't help but keep peeking at his watch and
taking away the 15 hours separating him from California and his wife Lisa
back home. Which, most of his waking hours, put them in different days.
And all of a sudden, as he thought about it being 11:00 a.m. standard
church time even in northern Thailand he realized that many of his fellow
Christian friends back home in Thousand Oaks were also gathering at church
at that very moment. His home church family, you see, had recently inaugurated
a Friday evening contemporary church service, which began promptly at
8:00 p.m. Fifteen hours earlier. And so as he sat there on that wooden
pew in Chiang Mai, he knew that he was linked up in spirit, across 15
time zones, with all his friends back home who were sitting in pews at
that exact same moment, tuning up their guitars and synthesizers and preparing
to worship the Lord as well.
Well, maybe with today's ease of calling around the world long distance
and with global telecommunications, that doesn't seem like a big deal
to you. But friend, let me point out something. The Christian Church,
for 2000 years now, even back in those primitive dirt-road beginnings,
has enjoyed this kind of unity with one another. And one of the main reasons
for that is our topic for this week: A CUP AND A CRACKER.
We see this miracle happening on several levels, and it begins right back
on that Thursday evening when the first bread and wine were introduced.
Jesus and 12 disciples. And if you read the context of that fateful day,
there was anything but unity in that Upper Room. You can read in Luke
22 how, at that very moment in time, these 12 guys were still duking it
out over the issue of power and position. Jesus was one day away from
death, and they had no clue. The jockeying for the seat by the window
was still going on.
Well, the Bible tells us how Jesus got down and washed the feet of these
12 one-man factions. One by one He taught them to serve, to bond with
each other. All but Judas learned the lesson. And then, if you read this
story as told by John, Jesus taught them, directly and through His prayer
to God, that unity is His greatest wish for them. The communion supper
is meant to link them with Him and also with each other. John 17:23:
"May they be brought to complete unity to
let the world know that You sent me and have loved them even as You have
loved Me."
As we move into the story of the early Christian Church,
Paul's letter to the Corinthians is truly eye-opening. In chapter 11,
he spends almost the entire passage teaching them with some very forceful
and emphatic language that the Lord's Supper, the bread and the wine,
are supposed to be binding them together. Rich and poor, new Christians
and seasoned veterans the cup and the cracker are to make them all one
at the foot of the cross.
Then we can realize that for the next 20 centuries, this is a practice
that has endured. Men and women have accepted the bread and the wine.
Sometimes in the midst of persecution as in Lonnie's story yesterday.
Sometimes spread out in the far-flung corners of the earth. The emblems
of Jesus' death have endured just as steadfastly as the Cross itself.
In every country of the world, every corner . . . there's been bread and
wine and that moment of remembering. Millions of believers, all of them
thinking about the same thing. The same meditations have united us.
And now here we are in the year 1997. May I tell you two more ways that
this precious gift to the Church unites us?
In my own Seventh-day Adventist tradition, it's customary for Communion
to be celebrated just four times a year. Approximately every three months,
or quarterly, we might say, I can know that when I go to church on Sabbath
morning, this is the experience Jackie and I are going to enjoy. What's
more, I can know that hundreds of other Adventist churches around the
globe might well be celebrating on that very same Saturday morning. Many
here in California, others all across North America. And then, yes, I
like to envision that church families in Russia might be having Communion
that same Sabbath. True, they did it 11 or 12 hours earlier, maybe, because
of those time zones. But that's all right. In New Guinea, Australia, in
tiny home churches in the Philippines, where Lonnie and Jeannie were last
year, there's grape juice and little crackers as believers in many different
languages whisper the words of Jesus Himself:
"This is My body. This is My blood. Do this
in remembrance of Me."
Can you imagine what a sense of global fellowship that
gives me? Listen, friend, it's a spiritual exercise I never want to miss.
Never!
But now just let me take it a step further. I say again, to know that
fellow members in my denomination around the globe might be participating
with me at that very moment well, that's a wonderful thing. But how
much more joy it gives me to realize that I'm a part of something extended
vastly beyond that.
Here's why. Again, in my Adventist tradition, every single one of our
churches practices what we call "(quote) open Communion."
Now, what's that mean? Simply this. Any Christian, of any denomination,
of any background, coming out of any tradition you can think of as long
as that person is a born-again Christian that person is welcome and
heartily invited to sit right next to me and also receive the bread and
the wine. It's an open Communion, an open fellowship.
And I think that just about every time we celebrate the Lord's Supper,
this is exactly what happens. We have visitors who are Baptists. Methodists.
Charismatics. Foursquare. Vineyard Christian Fellowship. Catholic. Christians
of every conceivable background. And on Communion Sabbath, as the bread
and the wine are passed out, we make it a very clear point to say to each
person there: "This is our time together. True, we have differences.
You may be used to going to church on Sunday, and here we are on Saturday
morning. You might have been sprinkled while some of us were immersed.
We may interpret the images of Daniel chapter two a different way than
you do. But now we're thinking about the Cross. We're considering what
Jesus Christ did for us. And you know, the blood flowed red for people
of every denomination. So this is our great moment of unity as we draw
together at the foot of the Cross."
I believe that this is exactly what Jesus intended. Even on that Thursday
evening, I believe in His divinity He could see the far-flung Church bearing
His name in the year 1997. He knew we'd be here. And He knew what it would
mean to have the bread and the wine draw us into fellowship at Calvary.
In Chuck Colson's book, The Body, he points out that Communion is a worldwide
practice and belief that is solidly and Scripturally rooted in every Christian
denomination. True, the Catholic Church has seven sacraments, while Protestants
generally have just the two: baptism and the Lord's Supper. But the bread
and the wine are present just about everywhere . . . and what a great
blessing. To quote Colson directly:
"All [traditions] would agree that the sacraments
are centered on Christ who took on flesh and died and was raised."
Well, friend, it touches our hearts that our Lord would
give us such a gift, such a time-zone-spanning, centuries-spanning treasure,
such a rare and wise institution. But let me just add one more perspective.
Evangelical writer John Stott literally opens up the gates of heaven for
us as he writes about what the Lord's Supper means to him, the cup and
the cracker. This is from his great book, The Contemporary Christian:
"On some particular Sunday perhaps only
a handful of God's people have gathered, and a heterogenous handful at
that. But then we remember, as the 1928 Prayer Book put it [and this would
be in the Anglican tradition], that we have come together in the presence
of Almighty God and of the whole company of heaven.' And in the communion
service we expressly join with angels and archangels, and with all the
company of heaven' in praising God's glorious name. That is, we are transported
beyond ourselves into eternal, unseen reality. We are deeply moved by
the glories of which we speak and sing, and we bow down before God in
humble and joyful worship."
That's an awesome picture, isn't it? Heaven itself
joining together with the Christian communities that dot the landscape
of this one distant planet. The cup and the cracker link us together with
the great banquet halls of heaven where Communion is also celebrated.
The International Date Line doesn't divide the kingdom of God; and because
of this gift, the Lord's Supper, even the vast universe, deep space itself,
can't separate us from the Christ of Calvary and the loving God who sent
Him.
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